THE ALAOTRA GREBE IS EXTINCT AND I’M NOT FEELING TOO WELL MYSELF

As I make my way to the computer to try to write what I hope to hell is the best and most ingenious, maybe the most igneous, and ceratinly the most complex piece of fiction I have ever attempted, and which, at my age, I have at least to consider might be my last novel, I see the sorry Louisiana pelicans on TV defiled with oil and I know that most of the poor creatures will die. I read the story below about how yet another species of birds has become extinct and are gone from the planet. I see the corporate machinations that turn apocalypse into a profit/loss cost effectiveness study. I see the distorted and distorting face of that idiot grifter Sarah Palin, who all too recently danced through the nation chanting “drill baby drill.” (Is there such a thing as the fatuousness of evil?) Fugue moments of fury and despair overtake me. How far from its end is my tether. I take time off from Doc40 to cope. But I’m back. Read the following and weep, and then turn with a snarl and continue to fight no matter how hopeless.

“One more step in what scientists are increasingly referring to as the Sixth Great Extinction is announced today: the disappearance of yet another bird species. The vanishing of the Alaotra grebe of Madagascar is formally notified this morning by the global conservation partnership BirdLife International – and it marks a small but ominous step in the biological process which seems likely to dominate the 21st century. Researchers now recognise five earlier cataclysmic events in the earth's prehistory when most species on the planet died out, the last being the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event of 65 million years ago, which may have been caused by a giant metorite striking the earth, and which saw the disappearance of the dinosaurs. But the rate at which species are now disappearing makes many biologists consider we are living in a sixth major extinction comparable in scale to the others – except that this one has been caused by humans. In essence, we are driving plants and animals over the abyss faster than new species can evolve.” (Click here for more)

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