7/8. The Snowy Egret, The Emperor Penguin, and the Climate Canary — Steven Moss — Moss describes the beautiful Snowy Egret, nearly driven to extinction during 19th-century "plumage wars," when its feathers, priced equivalently to gold, were harvested for women's millinery fashion. Moss emphasizes that the resulting systemic cruelty toward birds catalyzed women to establish conservation organizations including the Audubon Society. Moss identifies climate change as the current existential threat, exemplified by the Emperor Penguin, facing projected 98% extinction by 2100 due to habitat loss from sea ice decline. Moss characterizes the penguin, alongside migratory warblers affected by phenological mismatches with earlier insect emergence, as a "miner's canary" providing early warning of impending ecological and climate catastrophe confronting humanity.
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