In the Year 9595

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man's gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
In the Year 2525

OK - so its a corny song, but I can still remember the lyrics and tune from back when I was a 12-year old sixth grader discovering rock and roll in 1969. Curiously, the message of ecology and man's impact on the earth is even more true today than it was over 40 years ago when this song was penned in 1964.

Here's a modern take on the same concept, A Lonely Universe Without Us, pondering whether we will last as a species.

Not altogether bummed out yet? Check out this article, which adds to our species peril yet another issue to consider, by going beyond Global Warming to something called the Holocene extinction event.

You probably had no idea. Few do. A poll by the American Museum of Natural History finds that seven in 10 biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, a more serious environmental problem than even its contributor, global warming; and that the dangers of mass extinction are woefully underestimated by almost everyone outside science. In the 200 years since French naturalist Georges Cuvier first floated the concept of extinction, after examining fossil bones and concluding "the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some sort of catastrophe", we have only slowly recognized and attempted to correct our own catastrophic behaviour. Animal Extinction - the greatest threat to mankind

Sighhhhhhh.