Hello. Today, September 24th, is the global launch of Creatures United, a campaign organized by my

Stanford colleague, Herardo Sabios, intended to raise global awareness of the ongoing extinction

of Earth's wildlife populations. Humans are biological organisms.

We are animals.

We are mammals.

We are primates.

Humans are related to every other creature on Earth.

We share almost 99% of our DNA with our close cousins, the chimpanzees and the bonobos.

90% with cows. 80% with cats,

70% with mice, 60% with fruit flies. Humans even share 50% of our genetic DNA with bananas

and mushrooms. It is a profound truism that humans share a common ancestry with all other living

things on earth. As we're becoming aware, the continued growth of the energy-hungry

superorganism, the web of the human enterprise is now taking a great toll on the natural world.

In addition to the expansion of human habitat into once wild places and the pollution

from the rapid release of ancient carbon into the atmosphere, we are now also directing

around 40% of the net primary productivity Earth gets from the sun towards the human system, leaving

only 60% or so for the other 8 million species.

There are 1.5 million known species of insects.

In total, they function as tens of trillions of tiny robots doing tasks for which

there is no replacement, even with, especially with human technology. They are variously

pollinators, decomposers, and food sources for birds and animals in Earth's trophic pyramid.

It is now estimated that we are losing insect biomass between 1% and 2% a year,

...