"As we struggle to understand the Anthropocene, we might look to the physicist’s definition of extinction: the reduction in the intensity of light as it passes through an object, due to absorption, reflection, and scattering. Every atom that made each Ridley’s stick insect and each golden toad is still present on this earth, but rearranged into new forms. Silence is slipping away. Darkness is dwindling. What will fill the space each loss leaves behind?"
