Extinction On My Mind /11:
Extinction’s pronouns – ours

The sixth is the only extinction that has been caused by a creature of the Earth – us

By Randi Hacker

March 13, 2025

You know, once you start thinking about extinction, it’s hard to stop.

Lately, I’ve been looking into past mass extinctions. There have been five, so far, and we are currently experiencing, if not encouraging, the sixth, which is unique in that it is the only extinction that has been caused by a creature of Earth, namely, us, humans. In fact, some scientists think that the Sixth Extinction, the Holocene Extinction, should be renamed, not after Donald Trump, although he is one of the greatest enablers, the Anthropocene – that is, the human-domination – Extinction.

I’m for that. I’d have stickers made if I wasn’t so against stickers.

Mass extinction, the idea of a lifeform simply ceasing to be, is a relatively new concept, first presented in a lecture given by Georges Cuvier in Paris in 1796 in which he talked about the extinction of the mammoth, which creature many people at the time still believed was roaming around some of the wilder parts of North America.

Mass extinction, the idea of a lifeform simply ceasing to be, is a relatively new concept, first presented in a lecture given by Georges Cuvier in Paris in 1796 in which he talked about the extinction of the mammoth…

For a couple of centuries, it was an accepted belief that, like evolution, extinctions occurred slowly, over millions of years.

And then, in the late twentieth century, Luis Alvarez and his son Walter turned that belief on its ear when they proposed that it was an asteroid colliding with Earth that caused a sudden extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs and not a long and languorous die-off after all.

The Alvarez Hypothesis, as it is known, is widely accepted largely due to the existence of the Barringer Crater that is taken as evidence of an extraterrestrial impact.

Mass extinction doesn’t mean all lifeforms die out entirely. It means that some lifeforms die out entirely. For example, in the first extinction, the Ordovician Extinction, which occurred 445 million years ago, it was mostly types of marine invertebrates that went extinct, and their extinction took place over millions of years. It’s cause? Perhaps the movement of the great continent Gondwana into the earth’s Southern hemisphere or perhaps it was that ice age that changed the water chemistry. It’s hard to say.

After that, there were 75 million relatively stable years during which Earth became a world of creatures such as the placoderm (armoured fish) and the tiktaalik (a link between fish and legged animals).

And then came the second extinction, the late Devonian Extinction, which occurred 370 million years ago, and is thought to have been caused by a great proliferation of land plants, which, in turn, caused widespread marine anoxia, which, in turn, caused the extinction of many marine lifeforms including the placoderm.

‘For a couple of centuries, it was an accepted belief that, like evolution, extinctions occurred slowly, over millions of years.’

More than a hundred million years fly by, and then, 252 million years ago, the third extinction, the Permian-Triassic Extinction, also known as the Great Dying, occurs. Ninety-five percent of all marine species became extinct, as did 70% of all land-dwelling vertebrates. This extinction was caused by gradual climate change followed by a series of catastrophic events including volcanic eruptions, some extraterrestrial impacts, and the sudden release into the atmosphere of a lot of greenhouse gases from fissures in the ocean floor. Earth became a biological desert. It took 10 million years for the planet to bustle with life again.

Which it did, but only for about 40 million years.

Because of the fourth extinction, the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction, which occurred 201 million years ago, just a few millennia before the great continent Pangaea broke apart. The cause? Unknown, but it was catastrophic, either an asteroid or volcanic eruptions. More than half of all marine species and most large amphibians disappeared, as did the ancestors of the dinosaurs…

…who would be wiped out in the fifth extinction, the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction, a catastrophic extinction, and one that occurred a mere 66 million years ago when that asteroid smashed into the earth, taking out seventy-five percent of all species on the planet and creating the conditions out of which human beings would arise.

See, that’s the thing about mass extinctions: No matter how they occur, suddenly or over the course of millions of years, they massively reshape life on Earth, first, by wiping out most of it, and second, by creating conditions for other lifeforms to arise.

‘… in the late twentieth century, Luis Alvarez and his son Walter… proposed that it was an asteroid colliding with Earth that caused a sudden extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs and not a long and languorous die-off after all.’

This brings us to the sixth extinction, the Holocene or Anthropocene Extinction; ours, which is distinguished by the nearly uninterrupted extinction of species over the last 10,000 years as humans have come to dominate the planet.

Ours is both a catastrophic extinction and a long-term one. We are the catastrophe that is bringing this extinction about. But unlike an asteroid or a volcanic explosion, great numbers of species won’t be wiped out all at once. No. Thanks to our toxins, ours will be a more drawn-out extinction, with other species pre-extincting along with us. Certainly, marine life will suffer great losses; marine life has been among the hardest hit in all the past extinctions, sensitive as it is, to ecosystemic change. Our warming seas and our rising seas and our more freshwater seas, and our anthropogenic-toxinated seas, do not bode well for marine life.

In past extinctions, the avian species have fared better, able, as they were, to fly somewhere less inhospitable, but, because of us, there will be very few places that aren’t inhospitable for them to fly to. They’re already falling out of the skies.

And then there are the land vertebrates, which include us. Past mass extinctions have not been kind to us land vertebrates. The odds are against us.

Maybe you don’t believe humans are headed for extinction; you don’t have to. After all, with each mass extinction, there was that 5%, that 30%, that 50% of species that didn’t die off. Maybe you believe that humans will be among that percentage in this, the Anthropocene Extinction. It’s possible, certainly, but I don’t see it. Every new iPhone, every commercial for Secret full-body deodorant (to prevent us from smelling like a human), every flush of our Lysol Power-cleaned toilets, every latex glove that is discarded with every meal served and every medical exam given, every jet flight to a destination wedding is an act of participation in our extinction. It’s almost as if we prefer to be the catastrophe.

‘… the sixth extinction, the Holocene or Anthropocene Extinction; ours… is distinguished by the nearly uninterrupted extinction of species over the last 10,000 years as humans have come to dominate the planet.’

Sure, some of us will last longer than others, especially those who live in gated bunker communities, but I believe the end of our species is inevitable. Remember: It took 10 million years for Earth to bounce back after the Permian-Triassic Extinction. I doubt we can last that long; we’ve barely lasted 300,000.

And I believe that our extinction, along with the extinction of whatever other species we take with us, will, just as all past mass extinctions have, provide the conditions for new life to arise.

In my novella, Ellie’s best friend, Dee, an artist, imagines what that new life might look like.

Ellie has walked to Dee’s house to look at a new painting. It’s all been very hush-hush. Not even Henry has seen it.

Ellie knocks. Henry opens the door.

“Ellie,” he says. He steps outside, and they hug each other.

They walk around to the back of the house. The air is soft and cool and smells of chlorophyll and damp leaves with just a whiff of decay. The sky is a powder blue caress. It is a glorious day on Earth.

“So, just how serious are you about this whole extinction thing?” asks Henry.

“Dead serious,” says Ellie.

Henry laughs. Ellie glares at him. “It’s not a joke, Henry. We’re past the tipping point.”

“No hope?” asks Henry. He has stopped laughing but a small smile lingers at the corners of his mouth.

“Well, that depends on what you mean by hope,” says Ellie. “If you mean saving humans from extinction, I don’t think there’s any hope of that. If you mean saving the planet from extinction, I think there’s still hope.”

“Surely the two go hand in hand,” says Henry.

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” says Ellie.

“So, what, you’re advocating for human extinction?” asks Henry. He has stopped walking and is staring at Ellie.

“Not advocating, Henry,” says Ellie, “so much as bearing witness to it.”

They continue walking.

“Women and machines will save us, Ellie,” says Henry.

Before Ellie can say “No women and machine talk now, Henry,” Dee throws open the studio door and says, “No women and machine talk now, Henry,” and ushers the two of them through the door, giving Ellie’s arm a squeeze as she passes.

The studio is warm, and the light falls softly through the clerestory windows. In the exact spot where all the light pools, stands an easel draped in a floral bedsheet.

Tacked to the walls are pencil sketches. Dozens of them. The one closest to Ellie shows a planet floating in space with landmasses that might once have been North and South America. This sketch has a thick black X drawn through it, and the word “boring” written across it in angry black capital letters. The sketch next to it has a big question mark coloured like the Earth. This sketch also has a thick black X drawn through it but instead of “boring,” it has the word “Please!” written across it in angry black capital letters.

“They all have Xs,” says Henry.

And, indeed they do. Every last one of the sketches tacked to the wall has a thick black X drawn through it.

“I had a hard time settling on a concept,” says Dee.

“What did you settle on?” asks Ellie.

“Well, ever since that talk we had on the day of the flood,” says Dee, “remember? I’ve been thinking about what comes next and…” she pulls the sheet off the easel.

Ellie and Henry gasp. Ellie puts her hand over her mouth.

What they see is flora. Vines. And flowers. And leaves. And trunks. And fungi. And more vines. Kinetic and glistening and sinuous. They fill the canvas, some as thick as an elephant’s leg, others as thin as a single hair. Here and there, through a break in their entanglement, can be seen a sliver of sky, strikingly blue.

At first, the flora seems familiar, like something you might have seen in a photograph of a jungle somewhere near the equator, maybe.

But on closer examination, you find that the vines and such aren’t what you thought they were. Not kudzu. And not a liana. Not a creeper. Nor an orchid. Not a palm tree. In short, nothing that exists on this Earth.

Something that flies sends a winged shadow to the floor of the glade, and there is the suggestion of something moving through the undergrowth.

And buried in the lower left corner, almost overgrown by a vine that is not bougainvillea, is a computer. A laptop. Open. The screen is dark and covered with moisture and a thick coat of yellow pollen. A slender emerald stalk unfurls between the Q and the A keys.

Dee points at it and says, “That’s for you, Henry.”

“Where’s the woman?” asks Henry.

Dee backhands him on the upper arm. Then they both laugh.

“Well, it’s brilliant,” says Ellie. “Simply brilliant.”

‘Meanwhile, we’re not extinct yet, and so we can still catch our breath at the sight of a pair of hawks… air conduct Mozart’s 39th symphony in the living room… breathe in the scent of reefer on a mild spring evening in a city where it’s still illegal.’

Meanwhile, we’re not extinct yet, and so we can still catch our breath at the sight of a pair of hawks (Red-tailed? Red-shouldered? Cooper’s? It’s hard to say.) as they fly into the sunrise; we can still air conduct Mozart’s 39th symphony in the living room; we can still breathe in the scent of reefer on a mild spring evening in a city where it’s still illegal.

Every day is a beautiful day on earth.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of WestmountMag.ca or its publishers.

Feature image: Barringer Crater by Emma Buchman – Pexels

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Randi Hacker has been a writer and editor since the 20th century, and she’s been writing about the environment for more than thirty years, mostly to empower young people to take agency in their future. Satirical essays written with a partner appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Punch and Spy, among other publications. Her YA novel, Life As I Knew It, (Simon & Schuster) was named one of the Books for the Teen Age by the NY Public Library, and her TV show, Windy Acres, written with Jay Craven, was nominated for a New England Emmy for Writing. She just retired from her position as the resolutions copy editor for the State of Vermont, a job that has forever damaged her relationship with the comma. randihacker.com