Brust is bust...Freeman Washington - WriterJuly 24, 2002 18:10:56Brust's comment "speaks volumes" about human ignorance, a primary
cause of what leading research biologists call the "Sixth Extinction". Evidently Brust cannot teach himself anything now that he is an "educated" grown-up apologist for environmental degradation, but many others can and have. Among the many self-taught experts past and present who had some impact on the world we live in are Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, the Wright brothers, Marconi and more recently Bill Gates and Stephen Spielberg. Hundreds of
thousands of IT professionals who give us this amazing thing called the net are self-taught as are many respected conservationists. In "We've Seen the Enemy and the Enemy is Us" I stated that 20-50% of earth's species will be wiped out in this century. According to the calculations of respected research biologists Stuart Pimm and his colleagues, "50% of the world's flora and fauna could be on a path to extinction within a hundred years" (National
Geographic). In my view, the conditional tense gives the many Brusts of the world an excuse to ignore reality. | 
