If mass extinctions of animal and plant species are going extinct can mankind be far behind?

 This is the question that all human beings who have studied this in high school or college are asking, and I am one of them.

One of the things I learned while studying about this in Mt. Shasta online was that plants and animal species are having to go to higher and higher altitudes to survive. So, one of the interesting things is that tree line will likely move upwards on Mt. Shasta as a direct result of much hotter days to much higher altitudes like the tree lines above in the mountains above Los Angeles in the Angeles National Forest in places like Mt. Waterman and Mount Baden Powell and Mt. Baldy. As a boy and young man I often visited all these places and have been to the top of Mt. Waterman, Mount Baden Powell and Mt. Baldy for example when I was young and growing up in Glendale between 1956 and 1969 when I was 21 years old.

I also have climbed to the top of Mt. San Gorgonio which at over 11,000 feet is the tallest of the southern California mountains. It's true that Mt. Whitney is the tallest mountain in California, but from about Santa Barbara south, Mt. San Gorgonio is the tallest southern California mountain. It is across from San Jacinto peak which is just above Palm Springs and there is a tramway from near Palm Springs to close to the top and I have taken this tramway up with family and friends several times over the years. It can literally be 120 degrees in Palm Springs and at the top of the tramway it might be only 70 or 80 degrees on any summer day. The top of the Palm Springs Tramway is 8,516 feet.

But, there is a limit to how high most species can go too. For example, a mountain is only so high and at times winters can be very cold on top of some mountains too. And all these species (both plant and animal) are limited in various ways (for example, trees cannot walk) so the ones already planted just die but their seeds might blow on winds higher and higher on the winds and survive.

Then there is the MEGADROUGHT in the western states of areas of California, Southern Oregon, Parts of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and parts of Texas that are troubling locals a lot because for example, Lake Powell has dropped over 100 feet in water levels over the past 2 or 3 years which is unheard of there in any group of years!

So, the megadrought and the resulting fires caused by the megadrought is turning much of the west right now into more of a desert than it already was.

Where I live on the northern Coast of California it's not so bad because fog often feeds the trees water in the coastal ranges where I live and tends to keep them alive with water moisture from fog and mist off the Pacific Ocean.

But, if you go 10 or 20 miles inland it can get pretty bad from lack of water many places here in California.