Hello everyone.   My name is Akira Sasaki.  I am a Japanese sophomore student going to ISB, International School Bangkok.  I am joining I*EARN as a part of History class in my school.  I am interested in animal extinction, and I used to research about extinction in English class to write a research paper.  Through the research, I found many resent articles and writings about animal becoming extinct by many causes coming from human behavior.  In the research paper, I concluded that that people's behavior is greatly contributing to extinction happening.  For example, people are cutting down the forest to urbanize the land, bring more people into the place and make our lives more easier.  Cutting down the forest is causing animals' lives to be harder.  It will decrease animals' living space, and also deconstruct the nature to cause the food chain to break.  In addition, some people are catching and killing endangered species in order to make own property.  Even thought there are other causes of extinction, our acts are surely harming the nature and leading animal to become extinct.  I think it is wrong that only living thing to prosper and become happy is human being.  I believe that there are ways so that both people and animal can live together.  Human is the smartest living thing in earth, so it is our duty to consider about earth's future. Please tell me how do you think about this problem.  Also, if you had any good plan to save animals, write it.  Akira Sasaki, International School Bangkok     Hello Akira,   I would like to thank you for voicing your thoughts about the Earth's creatures. It is a very devastating thing, animals' extinction.   I would like to listen to what you have to say about solving the extinction problem. But in order to solve the problem, one must identify the problem's source. I think the biggest problem is society. The problem is that so many people rely on it. But the actuality is that society doesn't really exist.   Let me elaborate a bit. Every decision one makes is always up to the individual. When you decide to throw out paper instead of recycling it. When one person decides to buy Styrofoam. When one person decides to drive a car. When one person says "oh, it's just me, one little thing that I do isn't going to affect much, right?"  It is that type of mentality that really hurts the Earth, that selfish mentality.  I have many other opinions, feelings, facts and beliefs that I can't voice in this conference. In respect to people's opinions, feelings, facts and beliefs.  I think that the world is actually controlled by the ignorance of the masses, not even Kings or Prime Ministers have as much control as Ignorance does. The Earth won't be saved, it will be Salvaged. One day, years from now, everyone even the ignorant people will look at the mass destruction, caused by their mass ignorance. Then they will have had enough and then, through the use of technology, hey will resuscitate the Earth.  That is all.  Keep the telecommunications flowing, Michael Gonzalez, 17