Eric R. Pianka - The Vanishing Book of Life on Earth (2004)

 

Introduction

 

The great North American tall grass prairie — we just took it and turned it all into agricultural lands. We exterminated the bison, wiped out the Indians, destroyed the prairie dogs and those black-faced ferrets. We just erased an entire ecosystem. Now this was very nice for Americans because that rich topsoil has allowed us to grow food and we can feed ourselves and the rest of the world and we’ve grown fat and apathetic and miserable as a result of it. We’ve lost the bison — we’ve lost an awful lot that we’ll never be able to recover. 

Today I want to talk about an impending doomsday. I’m going to go down, down, down and then I’m going to try to come up just a little bit at the end.