What we're doing to the earth

Common Dreams has published an eloquent article about what we're doing to the earth. I simply do not know how to say strongly enough how serious this is. Read this:

The evidence is still growing, and growing worse, but we're still resisting it. When the scientists grew more serious and more impassioned about the situation, when they began giving numbers, offering proof, asking for action, we decided that we no longer believed in science. We distanced ourselves; we hoped we wouldn't be affected. The population at risk is not our population, at least not right now, so we needn't do anything right now. We might do something later. The government can do something if there's a real crisis. We trust the government to take care of us, to act responsibly. Believing this is easier than taking drastic steps to stop what's happening, particularly since this government is very much opposed to stopping what's happening. This government is very much intent on pursuing its present course, which results, as a side effect -- though the government would not acknowledge this, or even comment on the fact that it is taking place -- in the complete destruction of the affected population. The affected population is one-half of all the species presently living on earth.

Fanaticism is a driving force here, as it often is behind great crimes. This is a crime against nature, and this fanaticism is economic -- the belief that money and profit should outweigh all other considerations, including survival of the species. If we maintain our current rates of consumption and environmental strategies, by the end of this century, one-half of the species now alive on earth may be extinct. We don't know what the specific effects will be, but we know they'll be extreme. We're presiding over the greatest extermination of living species since the end of the dinosaurs. We're eliminating habitat, reliable climate, fresh water, clean air, and nourishment. We're imposing intolerable living conditions on thousands of species. The current rate of extinctions is thought to be at least 1,000 times higher than the natural level. Right now, one-quarter of all mammals are endangered with extinction; one-third of all species, animal and vegetable, may be gone by 2050.

It may not be evident to us, as we sit in our cubicles, at our laptops, but we need these other species, even those that seem impossibly small and remote. We need the Northern lapwing, the Scottish crossbill, the king protea (South Africa's national flower), the albacore tuna, Boyd's forest dragon (an Australian lizard) -- all of which are in dire straits. We're interconnected to everything. The scrawniest weed in Patagonia absorbs carbon dioxide, which poisons us, and produces oxygen, which we breathe in New York or Houston. Plants provide air, food, and medicine; every living being occupies a niche in the global mosaic. Birds transport seeds and pollen; they destroy insect pests; they clean our harbors and cities and landscapes. All living species perform functions valuable to the ecosystem, to the planet, and to the people who live on it. But species everywhere are being systematically deprived of the
possibility of life.

One half of all species on earth. Will we be able to survive ourselves as a species with that kind of destruction to the ecosystem? The author does well to describe the worship of short-term profits as fanaticism. It is a frightening kind of insanity that has taken hold of western humanity - an insanity that is truly about losing all touch with reality. The reality is that we're destroying our planet and ourselves. Perhaps it's some sort of collective death wish. If so, I can't think of anything more tragic.