Mass extinction event has begun on Earth because we forgot our place in creation

We are to be caretakers, not managers.

Sixty-five million years ago, the sky tore open in a blinding flash of light. A second later, a tremendous asteroid collided with the Earth somewhere off the prehistoric Yucatan peninsula. The impact threw so much dust and soot into the air it blotted out the sun for months to years. By the time the sun came out again, most of the planet and animal life on the planet was dead.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Sixty-five million years ago, Earth suffered its most recent mass extinction event. A mass extinction event occurs when the great majority of living organisms become extinct. Typically, over 90 percent of these creatures are lost. We are most familiar with the "Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event" that killed the dinosaurs.

Historically, every mass extinction event has been the result of some natural cataclysm. A super-volcano fills the atmosphere with poisonous gasses. An asteroid hits the planet. Perhaps a gamma-ray burst bathes everything in deadly gamma radiation.

Now we could be in the midst of a sixth mass extinction event, caused not by asteroids or volcanoes, but by human activity.

According to research, the extinction rate has jumped 1000 times since 1900. This means in the last century or so, a thousand times more species have gone extinct than would have happened naturally. The reason for this is human activity.

Habitat destruction is a chief culprit. Forests are cut down to create fields, which displaces a great number of plants and animals. Many organisms die as a result of losing their natural, established homes. Balances can be upset, particularly as predators are killed. This allows prey species to flourish, such as rodents which also consume human produce. Disease sometimes follows.

Over hunting and over fishing is also a problem. Fish and wild game have been getting smaller in size as humans are obsessed with catching and killing the largest creatures. Fewer animals live to old age which means the wild animals we do catch are smaller than they were historically. Over-fishing is emptying the oceans of fish and fishermen report ever-increasing difficulty in their trade.

Modern technology also makes harvesting plants and animals easier and faster, speeding up depletion. Sonar can help fishermen locate schools of fish. Machines can now take trees that took over a century to grow and turn them into planks in a matter of minutes.

Pollution poisons rivers and the soil, and global warming is making the deserts grow. Acidification in the oceans is causing the world's coral reefs to bleach and die.

As humans, we see ourselves as stewards of the Earth. We are the dominant, apex species on the planet. We can manipulate the environment to suit ourselves and where we cannot manipulate it, we can adapt. Few other species even come close in this ability.

We're intelligent, so we can learn from our past, we can think and reason far better than any other creatures on the planet.

We have the privilege of being stewards of creation. But at some point, we decided that creation can be owned. We could sell and rent little bits of creation to our neighbors. Then some of us could control more of creation than others. We could become lords of our realms, and others would be compelled to serve us.

We created a market where the demands of greed ruled and we bent men's backs to serve the masters of greed.

The sixth mass extinction is now underway and in a hundred years or a few, the world will be a much less colorful, abundant place. It will be bleak and barren in many places.

We can reverse this trend, but it will take massive effort to change the way we think about creation and our role as stewards. We have gone too long seeing ourselves as managers rather than caretakers.

Today it is the whales, tomorrow the elephant and the seal perhaps. After that, will it be your sons and daughters? You cannot eat money.

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