Everyone loves an apocalypse, and none more so than the one that sped the dinosaurs to their now legendary status. Having been a popular theory for 30 years, last week scientists finally reached a consensus that it was indeed the after-effects of a juggernaut meteorite crashing 65 million years ago into what we now call Chicxulub in Mexico that triggered the end of the dinosaurs' reign on Earth.

The reasons for loving this particular catastrophe are easy to understand. Dinosaurs are awesome. Giant meteorites are awesome. And of course, the combination of the two opened the door for the rise of the mammals. Our own story begins with that cataclysm.

"Consensus" has unfortunately become a dirty word outside the scientific world, thanks to those who disagree with the overwhelming majority of scientists about man-made global warming, but fail to offer any science in return. Unlike climate change, though, many issues remain with this extinction event. Sixty-five million years later, the pattern of extinction looks decidedly uneven. Dinosaurs were wiped out, but many similar-sized crocodiles survived. Amphibians managed to come out of this apocalypse relatively unscathed. Sharks survived, but plesiosaurs perished. Much work remains to be done.

Nevertheless, this consensus on the fate of the dinosaurs is welcomed by people such as me who worry about such things. But let's not get too attached to it. On the grand scale of extinctions, the Chicxulub meteorite is a drop in the ocean. There have been five major extinctions in the history of life. 251 million years ago was the big mama, erasing 95% of sea species and 70% of land life.

It is important to recognise that although 10-mile-wide rocks crashing from space are not the norm, extinction itself is. About 97% of all species that have ever existed currently do not. We may be in the midst of a mass extinction, though probably not on the scale of those 65 or 251 million years ago. Up to a third of all species are "committed to extinction", according to current models.

But it is the speed at which we are losing species that is truly significant. The explosion caused by the Chicxulub meteorite would have been enormous, melting rocks into glass, and vomiting forth mile-high tsunamis. But don't assume that the dinosaurs abruptly keeled over. In the aptly named Hell Creek in Montana, dinosaur fossils have been found dating from up to 40,000 years after the impact.

Climate change is also the planetary norm, but the rate at which the climate is changing since industrialisation is unprecedented. This is reason enough to accept the scientific consensus that we are the root cause, and the same goes for current extinctions.

We have evolved the capability to partially excuse ourselves from natural cataclysms, at least at a species level. Our ability to adapt and survive far outstrips the speed of the same process in natural selection. Should a colossal rock fall from the sky and block out the sun for a thousand years, the effect on humankind would be devastating, but not terminal. Should we continue to ravage the Earth's resources to the extent that human life is unsustainable, it is not in the realm of total fantasy for us to ditch this planet, and set up somewhere else in the universe.

But these are not reasons to be complacent. We exist as a part of this planet, not merely on it. The loss of biodiversity from a mass extinction will be devastating to everyone's lives. Unlike with the previous extinctions, we have the power to slow this current one. We will all have to change our lifestyles to adapt to the world that we have created, but by moderating our impact on extinction, that change won't have to be apocalyptic.