Around 252 million years ago, the “Great Dying” took out 90%
of the world’s species. About 66 million years ago, a meteor caused the
extinction of three out of four species, including those known to us as
dinosaurs.[1]
After 1.8 million years of existence, our own species is triggering yet another
mass extinction event, according to a study in the journal Science by Stuart
Pimm and Clinton Jenkins. According to Pimm, species are now going extinct at about
ten times faster than scientists had thought. Prior to the arrival of homo
sapiens (i.e., our species), the extinction rate was about 0.1 out of a million
species per year; as of 2014, the rate had climbed to 100 to 1000 species per 1
million.[2]
Behind this evolutionarily abrupt bump is not only the complicity of our
species, but also unforeseen consequences that could easily take homo sapiens
out of the equation.
Beyond the positive correlation of our species and the rate
increase, Pimm and Jenkins posit a causal relationship, pointing in particular
to habitat loss due to the territorially expansive attribute of an expansive
human population globally. Climate change and overfishing, both of which are
related to the increase in the human population, are also salient factors.
As observable as this leap in the extinction rate is, the
implications may elude our cognitive grasp, and thus be especially dangerous
for our species. In other words, our collective failure to manage our
population level may result ironically in the downfall of the species.
In another study in 2014, Rodolfo Dirzo points to the
overexploitation of resources and habitat destruction as examples of human
activities responsible for the rise in the extinction rate of species. Since
1500, 322 terrestrial vertebrates had gone extinct, with the remaining species
declining in numbers by an average of 25 percent; for invertebrates, the
typical decline in population is a whopping 45 percent.[3]
With these stark changes naturally come unforeseen consequences. “We tend to
think about extinction as loss of a species from the face of the Earth, and
that’s very important, but there’s a loss of critical ecosystem functioning in
which animals play a central role that we need to pay attention to as well,”
Dirzo said in a statement.[4]
Even amid all of our advanced technology, we are a species that lives within
ecosystems; the collapse of such a system means all bets are off in things like
food supply that we take for granted.
For example, “(w)here human density is high,” Dirzo
continues, “you get high rates of [animal decline], high incidence of rodents,
and thus high levels of pathogens, which increases the risks of disease
transmission. It can be a vicious circle.”[5]
Rodents and pathogens can of course hit our food sources as well as us.
Ironically, our own technological advances can exacerbate the potential harm.
Air transportation, for example, could turn the massive
spread of the Ebola virus in Africa during 2014 into a worldwide pandemic. Even
as we were congratulating ourselves on finally accepting what climatologists
had been telling us for over a decade concerning the harmful impact of our carbon-dioxide
emissions on the planet’s temperature, we were blissfully unaware of the
contribution being made by methane, a gas with ten-times the “greenhouse”
effect as carbon dioxide, through leaks in extracting and distributing natural
gas—the “clean” gas—as well as in the melting of the permafrost around the
Artic. With the kind of scales to which our technology can be applied, both the
unforeseen impacts and the damage can be much greater than we know. Put another
way, we have increased the size of our footprint so much as a species that we
cannot get our minds around all of the unintended consequences.
In short, we have gotten too big, both in population and the
scales in which we chose to operate, for our own good. While our genes are
doubtlessly quite pleased with their success in replication, they are clearly
not smart enough for their own long-term survival. The human brain seems
naturally inclined to assume the absence of unforeseen implications rather than
holding as a default that they exist “out there” even if we have not yet
detected them. As superior as our species’ brain is, it sports a major flaw in
having or adopting a schizogenic (i.e., a variable that maximizes itself without
limit) mentality rather than one that is homeostatic, or steady-state (e.g.,
ecologizing).[6]
This explains why we have been so hesitant as a species even to reduce the
increases in our carbon footprint, let alone bring it down to a level at which
the warming of the planet will allow for the continued survival of our species.
In short, we tend to be all about maximizing—even as if it were an end in
itself—in line with our greed and hubris rather than valuing the achievement of
equilibrium in line with, rather than puncturing, the ecosystems within which
we live and breathe.
[1] Seth
Borenstein, “World
on Brink of Sixth Great Extinction, Species Disappearing Faster than Ever
Before,” The Huffington Post, May 29, 2014.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Sara Gates, “Earth
Is in the Early Days of a New Mass-Extinction Event, Researchers Warn,” The
Huffington Post, July 25, 2014.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Ibid.
[6] On
this distinction, see Gregory Bateson’s Steps
to an Ecology of Mind.
