I don't want to be depressing, here, but - how do you cope with it?

[stopbush]

3. By realizing that 99% of the species of plants and animals that have existed on this planet

have gone extinct, and most of them long before human beings ever got here to help with their demise.

Sure, we're good at destroying life, even our own lives, but to the planet and deep time, we're a pimple on the Earth's butt.

Man will eventually go extinct as well, and the Earth will go along on its merry way, with new life forms rising as quickly as the others die out. According to PLOS Biology, "some 86% of existing species on Earth and 91% of species in the ocean still await description. Between 16,000 and 18,000 new species are described every year."

I guess it's a question of which species YOU feel sympathy/empathy toward. Does your respect for life extend to cockroaches, or do you draw the line at animals that remind you of humans? You know, big-eyed baby seals, dogs and cats. Do you tend to endow these creatures with imagined human-like emotions to go along with their human-related characteristics?

Do you mourn over the loss of insect and plant life forms as you do over white rhinos? If not, why not?