Washington • There are roughly eight million plant and animal species in the world. One of them — homo sapiens — may soon wipe out a million of the rest. And we’re just getting started.
That's the depressing bottom line from a comprehensive new United Nations report on biodiversity. Species are going extinct at a rate unmatched in human history — and the die-off is accelerating. It sounds melodramatic to say that we're killing the planet, but that's what the scientific evidence tells us. And ignorant, short-sighted leadership makes optimistic scenarios elusive.
Species extinction is one of those problems whose vast scale, in space and time, makes it difficult to comprehend, let alone address globally.