A segment of Democracy Now discussing the recent U.N. report featured Ashley Dawson, author of EXTINCTION: A RADICAL HISTORY, as a guest.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Ashley, you’ve written an entire book on the radical history of extinction- your response to this report?

ASHLEY DAWSON: Well, the report, I think, is really a landmark report, and it shows that the crisis we face isn’t just one of climate change. In some ways, it’s comparable to the IPCC report from last October, which really sounded a really important alarm about the system that we face and its potential collapse. But, what this shows is [that] it’s a crisis of multiple different dimensions, and that it’s driven by an economic system, which is fundamentally destroying the terrestrial systems that we all depend on.

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SHAIKH: So, scientists warn that melting sea ice in the arctic due to climate change will have catastrophic [effects] on coastal cities, biodiversity, and the global economy. President Trump, of course, has called climate change a “Chinese hoax.” So Ashley, your response to what Pompeo said- just hours after this U.N. report was released,

DAWSON: I think it typifies the kind of “extractivist” attitude, which, as I said, is destroying the planet. I mean, to give one concrete instance, we have been exploiting land so much, and degrading land, that we only have about 60 harvests left, right- 60 agricultural harvests left.

SHAIKH: What does that mean?

DAWSON: It means about only 60 more years of food, potentially. So, we’re not only talking about the kind of crash of biodiversity and potential extinction for a lot of species out there; we’re talking about a kind of fundamental crisis of humanity, its relationship to the natural world, and our relations to one another.

Watch the whole segment here.