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Humans will eventually become extinct. People treat that as a radical thing to say. But the fossil record shows us that everything eventually becomes extinct.

Elizabeth Kolbert

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Elizabeth Kolbert
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: January 1
Author
Environmentalist
Journalist
Writer
The Bronx
New York City
Becomes
Fossil
Shows
Fossils
Become
Eventually
Everything
Treat
Humans
Radical
Thing
Treats
People
Record
Records
Extinct

More quotes by Elizabeth Kolbert

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Neanderthals were pretty smart, and if we actively killed them off, then probably we did so in the same way that humans kill each other.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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We can't say that when x happens we get a mass extinction. To the extent we understand mass extinction, one has been caused by glaciation event, one has been caused by a massive climate change, and one has been caused by an asteroid. These events turn out to have no precedent.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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The Earth is big. There are huge natural forces that have worked over geological time. But it turns out, when you look carefully at the geological time, you can't find anything like us.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart—the mutations that make us the sort of creature that could wipe out its nearest relative, then dig up its bones and reassemble its genome.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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When you drive to the grocery store, your intention is not to change the world, it just happens to have that impact. So we've done a lot of things without even realizing it, and yes, just being unusual, as you say, does not put you above, in a sense, any of the other organisms with whom we share this planet.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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As best as can be determined, the world is now warmer than it has been at any point in the last two millennia, and, if current trends continue, by the end of the century it will likely be hotter than at any point in the last two million years.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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One of the reasons that people, many people, many environmentalists are critical of President [Barack] Obama's policies towards global warming is on the one hand he says the right things and he says he's committed to trying to reduce our current emissions.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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Well in the scientific there is virtually no debate over certain things. For example, that we are changing the world. Humans are changing the world very radically, very dramatically. Climate change, which I assume is one of the points you're alluding to, is at the heart of this.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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Some of these species that are now no longer with us were killed off by a fungal disease that was moved around the planet by people.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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People sometimes say we need to be really almost on a wartime footing if you want to change. Our whole economy is based on burning fossil fuels, which is taking CO2 out of the ground and putting it up into the air.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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I don't think there are too many places left that humans haven't pretty thoroughly explored.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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It seems that the Neanderthal DNA that modern Europeans and Asians (and also Native Americans and basically all non-African people) are carrying around is random. This means there are different bits and pieces in different populations, but it doesn't seem to amount to much that's significant.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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People tend to focus on the here and now. The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the course of their daily lives, it will be too late to prevent much larger, potentially catastrophic changes.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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We have all this Paleolithic art that suggests that our ancestors really venerated animals and that they depended on wild animals to survive - as opposed to domesticated animals that we depend on. Would it radically change things if we had more rhinos in our midst? I kind of suspect it would.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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You've got to do everything, everything's got to be pointing in the same direction and you've got to really turn this whole economic engine from one that's based on fossil fuels to one that isn't.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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Increasingly developing countries are asking for aid to help deal with the consequences of climate change, which we don't want to give.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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If in your lifetime you watch a species go extinct, or plummet almost to the point of extinction, that is a sign that something really serious is going on.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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Of the many species that have existed on earth - estimates run as high as fifty billion - more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. In the light of this, it is sometimes joked that all of life today amounts to little more than a rounding error.
Elizabeth Kolbert
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In a poll commissioned by Time and CNN, two-thirds of American parents said they think that their children are spoiled.
Elizabeth Kolbert