But was it so unacceptable that humanity should eventually run its course? Why was it so unthinkable that we ourselves—not necessarily tomorrow or the next day, but eventually—follow the same well-beaten trail toward oblivion as the dodo, the black rhinoceros, the passenger pigeon, the Javan tiger, the sea mink, the great auk, the Yangtze river dolphin, the monkey-faced bat, the Aru flying fox, and all the countless other species whom we ourselves had driven from the face of the Earth?
