Endangered Mammals May Decline by a Quarter

When I see headlines such as these, I do not know whether to laugh, cry, scream, or fire off a letter to the editor. (Whoops—writing daily letters to my editor, Robert Schlesinger, is my job. Oh well. Back to my main point.) It's so typical of mainstream media to report the news but leave in the shadows the reasons behind headlines in deference to our old friend, political correctness.

Today's example: "A quarter of world's mammals face extinction, survey finds."

According to the story:

BARCELONA, Spain—At least one-quarter of the world's mammals in the wild are threatened with extinction, according to a survey released Monday that blames the loss of wildlife habitat, hunting and poaching for the steep declines.

The bleak assessment was released in Barcelona at the World Conservation Congress, a meeting of 8,000 scientists, conservationists, business leaders and representatives from governmental environmental ministries.

What is the real reason we are losing animal species? Because the human species has overpopulated and is in the process of destroying the planet, we're taking every other species along with us. Consider this optimistic projection made in 2004 by the United Nations:

The world's population will stabilize in 300 years to about nine billion people, with an average life expectancy of 95 years, the United Nations predicts. In Japan, where people already tend to live longest, the average person will hang on to 106 in 2300, says a UN report released Thursday.

I say "optimistic" because, if we keep going as we are now, creating and promoting greenhouse gas emissions and depleting necessary resources such as oil, there won't be a human population on Earth in 300 years. We will have been obliterated by a series of storms and weather patterns that make Hurricane Katrina or the Asian Tsunami look like abecedarians.