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There have been five great extinctions, and the political enviros of our time claim that we are now living through a sixth — caused by human rapacity.
A special “biodiversity” edition of the politically correct National Geographic, published in 1999, claimed that the “sixth extinction” is here and now. “Half of all species could be annihilated in the next century,” the magazine claimed, without warrant. Biologist Stuart Pimm was quoted: “It’s not just species on islands or in rain forests or just birds or big charismatic mammals. It’s everything and it’s everywhere. It is a worldwide epidemic of extinctions” [4].
Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace and its president from 1977 to 1979, tried to find the evidence for these dramatic claims. A graph in National Geographic, showing the number of taxonomic families on earth over the past 600 million years, depicted a steady increase despite the previous waves of extinction. But when it reached the present day, it turned abruptly downward, indicating the losses due to our own “mass extinction.”
Moore wrote to National Geographic, asking the magazine to identify any families known to have gone extinct in recent times. He himself did not know of “any families of ‘beetles, amphibians, birds, and large mammals’ that have become extinct as implied in the text.” The reply came from a researcher who had worked on the article. She thanked him for “sharing” his thoughts “on this complicated and controversial” issue but offered no answers. She wrote:
Rest assured that… the many members of our editorial team… worked closely with numerous experts in conservation biology, paleobiology, and related fields. The concept of a “sixth extinction” is widely discussed and, for the most part, strongly supported by our consultants and other experts in these areas, although specific details such as the time frame in which it will occur and the number of species that will be affected continues to be debated [5].
Nowhere in the National Geographic article was there any recognition that the “sixth extinction” is controversial. It was simply presented as a known fact. It was also clear from the reply Moore received that the “mass extinction” was actually still in the future.
“In other words,” Moore wrote, “there is no evidence that a mass extinction is actually occurring now, even though the article plainly implies that it is. The reply also refers to the sixth extinction as a ‘concept,’ implying that it is just an idea rather than a proven fact.”
This is the level to which environmentalism has sunk. It is astonishing that it should have taken root within mass-circulation, once mainstream magazines such as National Geographic…
[4] “The Sixth Extinction,” National Geographic, February 1999.
[5] Patrick Moore, “Environmentalism for the 21st Century,” http://www.greenspirit.com, 16-18.
Tom Bethell
“Biodiversity and Endangered Species”
Chapter 6, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science
