Stanford Scientists Warn That Civilization as We Know It Is Ending

The mass extinction crisis was discussed by several scientists on the program "60 Minutes". No one had any positive news.

Tony Barnosky told CBS that his work suggests that extinction rates are moving at 100 times the rate seen in Earth's four billion-year history of supporting life.

The worst mass extinction episode since the dinosaurs has been caused by rapid population loss. Most of the life on our planet at the time of mass extinction has not been recovered.

At least the trappings of our technological civilization may be included.

Paul Ehrlich, who also appeared on the show, said that the next few decades would be the end of civilization.

Even if humans survive in some capacity, the wide-reaching impacts of mass extinction, which include habitat destruction, breakdowns in the natural food chain, and more, would cause modern human society to collapse.

Barnosky said it is too much to say that the planet is going to be fine. Our way of life is being killed by us.

Do you mean in other words? The havoc we'rewreaking on the planet will be very unpleasant if humans don't drastically course-correct. It's a grim warning, but other experts are saying the same thing.

Ehrlich is a mass extinction icon. He published The Population Bomb, one of the first modern books on the dangers of excess human development and population growth, back in 1968, and was considered an alarmist for the controversial predictions he made at the time. Although not all of his predictions came true, two big ones, that greenhouse gases would melt polar ice and that humanity would overwhelm the wild, have definitely materialized. His reasoning for their realization is depressing.

"Too many people, too much consumption and growth mania" is a reality that Ehrlich says is showing no sign of slowing down.

The existence is not sustainable. Ehrlich told his interviewer that they would need five more Earths to maintain their lifestyles. Where are they going to come from?

"Resources that would be required, the systems that support our lives, which of course are the biodiversity that we're wiping out," he said. Humans are sitting on a limb that is being cut off.

The planet is in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.