“We are in the midst of a mass extinction of our own making”, the environmental activist network Extinction Rebellion stated in 2019. But how do notions of a climate changed future and the use of geological concepts such as the sixth mass extinction, influence popular understandings of biodiversity loss as an environmental problem?

In an essay (in Norwegian) published in Salongen, Marit Ruge Bjærke explores this question, and argues that although rhetorically powerful, the long timescales implied in concepts derived from geology may also serve to conceal of the complex political discussions and solutions needed to address the problem of biodiversity loss.