Extinction is a difficult concept to grasp. It is an (26)_____ concept. It’s not at all like the killing of individual lifeforms that can be renewed through normal processes of reproduction. Nor is it simply (27)_____ numbers. Nor is it damage that can somehow be remedied or for which some substitute can be found. Nor is it something that simply affects our own generation. Nor is it something that could be remedied by some supernatural power. It is rather an (28)_____ and final act for which there is no remedy on earth or in heaven. A species once extinct is gone forever. However many generations (29)_____ us incoming centuries, none of them will ever see this species that we extinguish.
Not only are we bringing about the extinction of life (30)_____, we are also making the land and the air and the sea so toxic that the very conditions of life are being destroyed. (31)_____ basic natural resources, not only are the nonrenewable resources being (32)_____ in a frenzy (疯狂) of processing,consuming, and (33)_____, but we are also mining much of our renewable resources, such as the very soil itself on which terrestrial (地球上的) life depends.
The change that is taking place on the earth and in our minds is one of the greatest changes ever to take place in human affairs, perhaps the greatest, since what we are talking about is not simply another historical change or cultural (34)_____, but a change of geological and biological as well as psychological order of (35)_____.
