George Carlin is a clear thinker and very funny, definitely one of my favorite comedians. I like heady comedy. He simplifies things though, and this is a good e

George Carlin is a clear thinker and very funny, definitely one of my favorite comedians. I like heady comedy. He simplifies things though, and this is a good example. Humanity is causing geological-scale effects on the planet and we need to address that. It's not as if the planet were being damaged already and we just came along and tried to stop it, we're the ones causing the damage. He's correct to say that '90%' of species that have existed have already gone extinct(actually, I believe it's much, much higher than that, I think 99.9%). However, if Bill Bryson is to be believed, the rate of extinction has risen dramatically due to humanity, I believe Bryson said that it is 5 times greater than what it would be sans-humanity. There are times in the earth's past where there has been a much higher rate of extinction for a short time, the most recent event like this took out the dinosaurs. I believe the first one occurred when the atmosphere was 'poisoned' with oxygen from the first plant-like bacteria. As thinking entities, it's our responsibility to not allow our effects on the planet to have such a catastrophic outcome.