Should we rescue endangered languages?

[c172]

I recently listened to a webcast about how Alaska has made some of its native languages official state languages, in an effort to promote efforts to conserve languages that are in danger of becoming extinct.

Is there a point to spending money to save a language from becoming extinct?

It always makes me marginally sad to hear when the last person who had such-and-such native tongue has passed. I do love linguistic variety. Heck, I was conlanging for a while.

But the fact is, we will never be exposed to even a large fraction of these languages, so it's not like we are missing out. As for the progeny of those whose mother tongues are endangered, I would suspect they'd mostly want to learn the language, and culture, surrounding them, anyhow, and that forcing yourself to keep with certain languages might be a bit isolating.