The Future of Life, excerpts
"The result has been a free market death spiral for the Sumatran rhino." "The illegal slaughter of all the rhinos quickened during the 1970s as a bizarre and unintended consequence of OPEC oil embargo. As oil prices climbed, so did per capita income across much of the Arab world." "Little wonder the pressure is intense: a poacher can earn ten years' income with a single rhino kill is willing to risk imprisonment and even his own life." (That sounds familiar, sir, oh, and he is blind) "The biotas continue to fall before our remorseless expansion, in ever-rising numbers across an ever broader arrays of plants and animals. Where originally it was mostly large land dwelling animals that were afflicted, now fishes, amphibians, insects, and plants are, for the first time, vanishing in large numbers. The dawnless night of extinction is also descending upon rivers, lakes, estuaries, coral reefs, and even the open sea."
