Pronoiac Alert: Tune in to the Catastrophic Die-Off.

Being pronoiac doesn't mean ignoring loss. On the contrary, to be a collaborator in the conspiracy to dispense blessings, we have to be acutely aware of what's not working.

In my opinion, the single greatest thing on the planet that's not working is the current Mass Extinction Event. Have you heard of it?

Climate change is on its way, promising unpredictable impacts on the way humans live. But we're already in the midst of an even more profound shock: the greatest die-off of species since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Biologists call this a Mass Extinction Event, just the sixth in Earth's 4.6-billion-year history.

Not in some projected future, but right now, animal and plant species are vanishing at a record rate. If the trend continues, a quarter of the mammals will be gone in 30 years, and half of all species will be exterminated by 2100.

Global warming is only one cause of the destruction of Earth's precious eco-diversity. The more crucial factors, all caused by human beings, are pollution, expanding urban areas, industrial-scale agriculture, logging, mining, and the overuse of natural resources.

So while I'm passionately in favor of reducing our carbon footprint and doing all we can to stop heating up the planet, I'm concerned that we don't get sidetracked on that project to the point that we neglect an equally worthy task: stopping the Mass Extinction Event.

The fact seems to be that most people aren't even consciously aware of the ongoing annihilation. Everyone knows about global warming, but maybe just one of every 20 people have heard that we're losing species at a catastrophic pace.

And yet I think we all feel it in our bones and dream of it at night. As a result, we carry a huge load of unacknowledged grief around with us all the time. If you wonder why you sometimes feel down or anxious for no apparent reason, this secret tragedy may be a factor.

For a good collection of information about the current Mass Extinction Event, go
here.

And check out this recent article for a summation of the problem.