Environmentalism and extinction control are one of the few sound 'public goods.' Defense or flood control, for example, are more efficient when handled federally - as opposed to privately. The contention that man is responsible for an unhealthy and ever-widening array of extinctions is no longer an argument. It's a quantifiable reality tested and retested. Despite science's collective humility, self-doubt and propensity to check and recheck whether its collective fly is open, many in the world defy logic and drink uncontrollably to the tune of mindless piddle on this subject.

Just about any species that has ever lived on the Earth, now no longer exists. Evolution works that way. But the rate of extinction today is unnatural, despite the ludicrous arguments that, surprisingly, come up quite often. 'Man,' they say, is 'just another animal,' and in a frightening misunderstanding of Darwin's ideas on natural selection, 'If we kill off a species', its just natural selection, one species' against another.' Then, it is said that 'species die off all the time, it is no different now than ever before.'

Daily extinctions are a reality, perhaps with regards to bacteria. Certainly not whales or primates. It is of course, "a capital mistake," said Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia, "to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." Surprisingly, the opponent of protecting species from extinction uses the argument that 'environmentalists care more about snail darters than people' quite often.

Usually, the debater who bases his arguments on the nature of his opponent, rather than the logic of the issue, is short on the facts and needs a cheap route to making his point. Certainly, extinction debate has as much to do with economic resources as it has to do morality or science. Roughly half the oceans' useable resources are farmed every year - a dangerous overuse of what will become the primary staple of developing nations this century.

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