Re: 1 in 8 plant species threatened with extinction

[boddhisatva]

                To whom....,




        Lou P.s posts go too far, leaving science behind and drawing the
issue of plant extinction into a dystopian vision of the world.  The
conditions that create new species are isolation, stress and novel
combinations of closely related species.  In that way we are actually
creating an environment for *faster* species creation.  Witness the rapid
changes in bacteria as a result of antibiotics.  However, the process for
species formation among all but the simplest of creatures is very slow and
our speeding up the process is a drop in the ocean compared to our direct
species destruction.



        peace