Several decades ago, a detachment of the American right cut itself loose from reason, and it has been drifting along happily ever since. If the birthers are more evidently kooky than the global-warming "skeptics" or the death-panellers or the supply-siders or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, they are, in their fundamental disregard for the facts, actually mainstream.

Some of these species that are now no longer with us were killed off by a fungal disease that was moved around the planet by people.

Neanderthals were pretty smart, and if we actively killed them off, then probably we did so in the same way that humans kill each other.

In a poll commissioned by Time and CNN, two-thirds of American parents said they think that their children are spoiled.

It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion. The losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys.

What are the Chinese doing, what are we doing, what are - so we need, both the developed world and the developing world, really need to be moving, once again, getting all your arrows in the same direction if you want to have any impact.

There's this idea of shifting baselines. It was coined by a guy named Jeremy Jackson. It's the idea that every generation takes what it sees, and says, "Okay, well, that's the norm."