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What if the scale and scope of a problem were so enormous that it was nearly impossible to imagine it, and so you had a hard time being horrified by it? The problem of endangered species may be a mere microcosm of a global event of apocalyptic proportions. By all accounts, 70% of biologists agree that the Earth is currently undergoing a mass extinction, the sixth such event since the formation of the earth 4.7 billion years ago. Species die out all the time—the normal “background rate” of extinction. Studies are now showing that extinctions are occurring at 100 to 1,000 times that rate. Fifty years from now, it is estimated that between one-third and two-thirds of all plant and animal species may be lost. Some say that eventually the current mass extinction event could wipe out as many as 90 percent of all species living today. According to biologists, the current mass extinction is different from any past extinction in two striking ways: - It will do its damage 1,000 times faster than before—in hundreds, not hundreds of thousands of years. - This time it’s being caused not by geological events, but by one of the species—humans. According to experts, human population explosion and its consequences are the culprits: the clearing of forests, the spread of modern agriculture, land development and construction, over-harvesting of species, relocation of exotic species, and the pollution of air, water, and soil. While scientists appreciate the problem, the general public does not. The big picture is too big. Every species and subspecies of great ape on the planet is now endangered. Experts predict that the Great Barrier Reef will have vanished in 40 years. Too much is happening; it’s hard for a typical individual to notice, understand, remember and piece together all the reports and studies. Hundreds of years, hundreds of thousands of species, the whole earth, all the contributing factors—it’s nearly impossible to grasp. Ironically, as rapid as this extinction is proceeding, it seems too slow to notice. You take a walk in the park, and it's a beautiful day, no devastation in evidence anywhere. Can someone whose whole life transpires in less than a century notice a process that takes hundreds of years? How can a well-intentioned, good-hearted individual acknowledge that his or her own species is responsible for such a thing? Not all scientists agree there is a problem. Some point out that not all species will be lost, and humans are likely to be among the survivors. When the aliens finally arrive, they aren’t organic life forms at all, but machines that have evolved from organic life on a distant planet thousands of years ago. Ideally suited for the difficult conditions of space travel, their journey has brought them to Earth. After careful study, the aliens conclude that a deadly virus is spreading across the entire planet and is rapidly killing off species and devastating the environment. They discover that the virus is self-conscious and thinks of itself as an intelligent form of life...
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Dennis E. Coates is CEO of Performance Support Systems, author of MindFrames, a brain-based personality assessment system (www.initforlife.com) and co-founder of the Train-to-Ingrain alliance (www.train-to-ingrain.com, info@train-to-ingrain.com, 800-488-6463), which delivers a reinforcement-centered approach to learning and development that achieves permanent, measurable improvements in workplace behavior and positive impacts on business results.
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