In the Red

I noticed this in the Indy Letters page: Time is short to avoid a new mass extinction of species

Now I know that I'm easily impressed by titles, so I accord Prof. & Dr. perhaps more than I should, but this makes for interesting reading. I'd never heard of the Red List 'til now.

Read behind the lines of this: if a successor species exists that's able to understand [extinction] at all, as having had a completely new cause: humanity. There'll be an extremely thin layer of rock dividing deeper levels full of diverse fossils from shallower levels with hardly any. The marker layer will contain abundant plastic polymer molecules, radioactive decay products from artificial nuclear fusion, and distinctive concentrations of metals.

I don't know if the author means it this way, but my main take is that are simply too darn many of us. The rest are consequences of that. Nice to see our political leaders have their priorities right, then. Not.