“Être Libre.”

they start talking to a human and the human is like "haha yeah that's a crow!" and the alien researcher is like "you called it a 'bird' earlier, is that a different name?" and the human is like "oh a crow is just one species of bird, there's like, 10 others out there"

"On this planet?"

On Earth, the inhabitants are just. Playing and walking LITERALLY STEPPING ON CARPETS OF ORGANISMS the whole time. the aliens are like "it doesn't hurt them??? Can't you just...move them to a place where you don't have to step on them?" and the humans are like "no of course not, grasses evolved to tolerate being stepped on, and besides, more plants would grow there if we tried to move the existing ones"

Alien: I don't understand...why would you not place the solar farms in an area of the planet with no existing ecosystem?

Human: ...what?

Alien: You have rather sophisticated protective gear and have done some space exploration, surely you could establish them in an area of the planet to which life is not yet adapted?

Human: ...there isn't one.

"I don't think you understand what I'm saying. Only 25% of Earth's species have been formally described, at most."

"that's...that's most of them."

"Yes?"

"Well...I suppose the ocean trenches and abyssal plains must be difficult for you to reach...where did you have to travel for your discoveries?"

"Wait. I believe this is something your language refers to as needing 'unpacking.' The current biodiversity represents a historical low point?"

"Well, a local minimum, as the math people say. But yeah, I think there was some recovery after the Younger Dryas about ten thousand years ago, but for every new species humanity creates intentionally or unintentionally, tens or hundreds have been wiped out. We're not proud of this."

"We will need time to digest this, to the point I'm afraid to ask the next question: NEXT great extinction?"

"Yeah, I forget how many there've been total, and there's some arguing over how bad it has to get before it really counts. A comet or meteor strike 65 million years ago wiped out the majority of life...the majority of species or even genera...there's entire classes of life we didn't know ever existed until we found their fossils a few hundred years ago. And then there's the Permian, when a good chunk of a continent erupted and I think we lost...ninety percent of all species? Maybe more? I'd have to look it up. There was also a mass extinction that just happened because all the continents got pushed together and apparently that was bad for life on land and in the sea. You're looking a little faint...do you need to sit down?"

"But...even a single great extinction has always meant the end of life above the unicellular level, on every world we've visited. This planet has evolved complex incredibly ramified life repeatedly despite three mass extinction events?"

I have to race to sign up to volunteer trips because even with dozens of spots available, people rush to devote their unpaid free time to helping the environment. these trips often fill up within hours. people care.

you will see a lot of bad news because that is the kind of news that people pay the most attention to. I know this more than you'd think from my optimism- not only do I live somewhere facing some of the most extreme ecological issues on the planet, I also spend my time studying the Bad Stuff every single day.

- wish i could do nothing with you