The cause of each of these mass extinctions was cataclysmic geologic change—radical chemical changes to the atmosphere and oceans, when continents slammed together, split, gathered and glaciated over the South Pole, drifted away. Even the fallout from gigantic meteor impacts and volcanic upheavals took thousands and millions of years to wreak permanent havoc.

There is a sixth mass extinction: the Late Quaternary. The Quaternary Period, divided into the Pleistocene and Holocene Eras, is, in geologic time, the present day. In the past hour, six to ten known species went extinct. 60,000, at least, last year. While the previous extinction events were all caused by massive climate change, or geothermal eruptions, or massive meteor impacts,  now, for the first time in geologic time, there is a biotic, living cause: you and me. The method of our biocide is destruction of ecosystems, overexploitation of species and inanimate resources, human overpopulation, agriculture, pollution.

It is common knowledge that we are in the midst of worldwide environmental collapse. What isn’t common knowledge, it seems, is that such destruction is nothing new to humans. Our current crisis, although accelerated by the industrialization of the past 400 years, began 10,000 years ago when humans turned to agriculture—and is likely but the second stage of the late Quaternary extinction. The first stage began 60-100,000 years ago when the first modern humans began to disperse from Africa. Extinction has always followed in our wake. There was never a noble savage, no natural man, we have never lived in harmony and balance with nature—not as a species. These are the givens: every human activity functions intentionally or unintentionally to kill. What we love, what we hate, that we are not ruining the world, that we could stop if we wanted to, the notions of objectivity and reason: these are the delusions and rationalizations we use to veil the sadness of all this dying. Of course, in terms of geologic time and its millions-of-years-at-a-time perspective, this latest mass extinction is happening so rapidly and so recently that almost, and for all practical purposes, it hasn’t even happened yet—just like this moment, and this moment, this moment—or the moment I rounded the corner of the house and approached my tadpole barrel.

The smell was rank and sticky. By the time I was an arm’s reach from the barrel I had my t-shirt over my nose, but I could still taste the smell, like a hundred dozen nightcrawlers left in a car in the sun. I awkwardly removed the screen with one hand and looked inside.