Without the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, is doubtful that human beings would ever have evolved in the first place. By comparison to the effects of the that meteorite, all of the human activity in the world that has ever occurred since the first human being who hunted for prey or started a fire is infinitesimally small and utterly insignificant.

More importantly, human concern for animal species extinctions seems to be largely predicated on our anthropomorphic impulses: that is, we have the greatest empathy for animals that remind us of ourselves or that seem appealing or "cute" to us. Consider the different way that we regard tuna and dolphin for just one example. We hunt the former so aggressively that we are on the verge of having to maintain wild tuna populations artificially if we hope to continue eating as much sushi and tuna fish sandwiches as we wish. Other...
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