Thomas L. Friedman, not known for having left-wing or ecologist viewpoints, had a disturbing column in The New York Times the other day. International experts on frogs notice that frogs as an order of the animal kingdom are threatened with acute extinction. How can this be explained? A recent conference of the American National Science Foundation came to the cautious conclusion that this extinction could only be explained by the combination of assaults on the Environment in general of the past fifty years.
Such an explanation does not call into question the way of life - what is generally called: the quality of life - under so called free market conditions. You cannot separate the continuing and ever expanding production/consumption of things (gadgets) from the threats to life in general and specific living creatures in particular. This production and consumption of things has to be called in question.
Amphibians are a special order of animals: they are the only animals which breathe through lungs, gills and skin. Amphibians must have been the first animals to have left the sea - popularly put: the missing link between fishes and reptiles. The disappearance of this part of the Great Chain of Being means the end of life itself.
(To be continued in more matter-of-fact detail)
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