Is our sense of history confined to our limited ability to imagine times past - any kind of history - beyond the lifespan of a two, three or four generations? How scientists do it, who research with millennia in mind, I certainly cannot imagine. There is time and there is cause and effect. Many people are concerned with the extinction of all manner of species, to which our human way of life contributes. But there are mightier causes at work, over very long periods of time, which you can read about in Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker article "
The Sixth Extinction". Yes, we have a lot of work to do to reverse the reduction of biological diversity. But just because we humans made a great mess does not mean we can clean all of it up.
