Homo sapiens - going, going, gone
A UNITED NATIONS REPORT ON MONDAY said that over 1 million species of plants and animals are in danger of extinction because of human activities. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:
What is the true meaning of protecting species? Many media outlets describe it as a moral obligation for humans. Some even claim that extinction of animals threatens the survival of the Earth, calling on people to "save the Earth and save ourselves".
It is good that they promote species protection, but the cause is not what they describe. Actually, the mass extinction of species has little, if anything, to do with life on Earth. Since life originated on Earth about 3.5 billion years ago, there had been at least five mass extinctions, each of which killed more than half of the life on this planet.
