Extinction is a difficult concept to grasp. It is an 26 _eternal____ concept. It’s not at all like the killing of individuals lifeforms that can be renewed through normal processes of reproduction. Nor is it simply 27 _diminishing____ numbers. Nor is it damage that can somehow be remedied or for which some substitute can be found. Nor is it something that simply affects our own generation. Nor is it something that could be remedies by some supernatural power. IT is rather an 28 __absolute____ and final act for which there is no remedy on earth or in heaven. A species once extinct is gone forever. However many generations 29___succeed__ us in coming centuries, none of them will ever see this species that we extinguish.
Not only are we bring about the extinction of life 30 _on a vast scale___, we are also making the land and the air and the sea so toxic that the very conditions of life are being destroyed. 31__As regards___ basic natural resources, not only are the nonrenewable resources being 32_used up____ in a frenzy(疯狂) of processing, consuming , and 33_disposing____, but we are also ruining much of our renewable resources, such as the very soil itself on which terrestrial(地球上的) life depends.
The change that is taking place on earth and in our minds is one of the greatest changes ever to take place in human affairs, perhaps the greatest, since what we are talking about is not simply another historical change or cultural 34__modification______, but a change of geological and biological as well as psychological order of 35__magnitude___