Life on this planet has existed now for almost four billion years. During that time, of course, there have been a number of extinction crises, when large numbers of species have suddenly disappeared from the planet. We're going through a period that looks like a major extinction crisis, but it's different from any other situation that has ever existed in that it is being driven by a single species. We're in an absolutely unprecedented situation.
Human beings are now the most numerous mammal on the planet.
So as we approach the end of the millennium, we find that our own species is in that terrible phase of exponential growth when our numbers are skyrocketing. We're adding three more people to the planet's population every second. Human populations are skyrocketing at the very same time that our capacity to produce food is declining. That's an absurd claim for which there's absolutely no evidence. Because of the tremendous technological capacity of our species, we're adding toxic materials to the air, the water and the soil on such a massive scale that there's nowhere you can go on the planet without encountering the toxic debris of this activity.