Humanity has long changed the environment around us ever since we left the trees, natures most adaptive species has migrated around the world changing the world around us as we go. Initially our effect was not more than the background caused by localized changes. However with our exponential growth over the last century coupled by our ever increasing material needs and unthinking abuse of the world we live in, we now have become a destructive force on a par with catastrophes of the past.
Five great extinctions have gone before all due to natural calamity, we have now started the sixth and humanity is responsible for this latest extinction cycle. It begs the question as a species have we become so successful as to ensure our own end, this has happened before in isolated environments, but now it could be on a global scale.
Blithely we continue to pollute and change our very climate with little apparent thought and meanwhile species extinction rates climb ever higher. Some estimate this rate as being one hundred times the background rate and maybe even as high as a thousand times. At what point does this effect our own survival chances? A less diverse ecosystem is a more fragile one, at what point does it collapse?
After previous mass extinctions is has taken tens of millions of years for biodiversity to once again progress normally. Could this be our lasting legacy to our own end? The rate of change we are causing cannot be ameliorated by evolution of current species its just too damn fast, the biosphere is becoming less diverse hence less resistant to change.
The sign of a truly adaptive species is to adapt to the environment, it is time we stopped adapting the environment for our own needs and to cherish what we have. If we continue down this path all logic leads to one conclusion, our own species will go the way of the dinosaurs but the only difference is we did it to ourselves.
We have but one world, why don't we give it the respect it deserves? Can we adapt our own behavior in time?