In 93 years, half of all life on Earth will be gone...
 
EXTINCTION
a multimedia look into the near future

In her dynamic multimedia presentation, Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent Julia Whitty shows why this is happening, how it can be reversed, who’s working on it, and what it means to us to keep our planet vibrantly alive.

If you think the fate of a shark in the deep ocean or a frog in the rainforest doesn’t matter to your own future and those of your children, think again. Whitty unravels just why 40 percent of Earth’s examined species are in danger of oblivion, and how their fate is intertwined with our own.

She shows that the disappearing plants and animals are part of a membrane of organisms making Earth alive. And how w e owe everything to it. The air we breathe. The food we eat. The materials of our homes, books, computers, medicines. Goods and services we can’t imagine we’ll need will come from species we have yet to identify. The proverbial cure for cancer. The genetic fountain of youth. Immortality. Mortality.

Weaving studies from conservation biology, game theory, social sciences, and her own decades-long experience as a natural history filmmaker, Whitty takes audiences on a fast-paced tour of the Earth and the state of life in it. Using images of plant and animal life, she illustrates the problem that seven of ten biologists believe to be a more serious threat to life on earth than global warming: the sixth great extinction currently underway. Best of all, she presents a blueprint for saving nature and ourselves.

Julia Whitty has spent the past 25 years working in the planet’s great wildernesses, from coral reefs and cloudforests, to the African veldt and Indian jungles. Her stories from the front lines are urgent, personal, poignant, and funny, revealing the wonders of science and the secret lives of animals in the wild.

Whitty is environmental correspondent for Mother Jones magazine, blogger at The Blue Marble, and an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction, including The Fragile Edge: Diving & Other Adventures in the South Pacific (2007), and A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga (2002). She’s a recipient of a PEN/Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Award, a finalist for three National Magazine Awards, winner of a John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. A former filmmaker, her more than 70 nature documentaries have aired on PBS, The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and with many broadcasters worldwide.