Environmental experts have been warning people for decades about climate change and global warming. The loss of so much of the ice in the Arctic, rising sea levels encroaching on habitats in locales where the temperatures continue to rise dramatically and certain species going extinct are all harbingers of what some say could be the next mass extinction. Most researchers attribute this to human activity and its negative impact on the planet.
A short history of the previous mass extinctions however shows that the planet has been depleted and subsequently renewed several times. These events, the first beginning over 440 million years ago, happened entirely without a contribution from humans. Instead there were weather impacts, like volcanoes or asteroids which caused a domino effect of mass die offs. Despite these devastating ecological events, the earth rebounded every time. New species appeared and they evolved to weather the new climates. Experts believe a sixth mass extinction could be on the way, based on the human impact on climate change. There's a ways to go before it happens, but reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution would be a good idea.