And with the petroleum industry leaking oil into the seas and methane into the air, it just proves how much life on Earth is not respected.

Figure 3 — Declines since 1970 in marine, freshwater and terrestrial vertebrates. From Global Biodiversity Outlook 2, a publication of the of UNEP's Convention on Biological Diversity. "Based on published data from around the world, the Living Planet Index aggregates trends of some 3,000 wild populations of species. It shows a consistent decline in average species abundance of about 40% between 1970 and 2000; inland water species declined by 50%, while marine and terrestrial species both declined by around 30%"

Sometimes I think the Republicans and their cronies simply loved living in the 1950s.

July 30, 2009 (click here)

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all
    —Emily Dickinson

Hope is a duty from which paleontologists are exempt.... If hope is the thing with feathers, as Emily Dickinson said, then it's good to remember that feathers don't generally fossilize well. In lieu of hope and despair, paleontologists have a highly developed sense of cyclicity. That's why I recently went to Chicago, with a handful of urgently grim questions, and called on a paleontologist named David Jablonski. I wanted answers unvarnished with obligatory hope.
    —David Quammen

Occasionally I am asked what I think the future will look like, not just in the next few years or in 10 years, but several decades from now. Frankly, it's hard not to cringe, because my honest appraisal is not likely to be met with much enthusiasm. Some people harangue me via e-mail, asking why I don't write about over-population and other great disasters. Well, I write for the association for the study of peak oil & natural gas, so I usually confine myself to energy supply & consumption, alternatives to fossil fuels, and economic or scientific issues that bear on these subjects....