The Inevitability of Extinction
I think it's cute when the bleeding hearts among us get all misty eyed over a dwindling species. God forbid our grandchildren’s grandchildren (who, realistically, are as obscure to us as the contemporary semi-strangers we exchange forced nods with as we pass on the sidewalk) might not experience firsthand the unique and precious characteristics of the spotted owl or polar bear.
The fact is 99.9% of all the fantastic creatures that have ever existed, from the microscopic to the gigantic, have already gone extinct. Over the past 500 million years, since the dawn of complex life known as the Cambrian Explosion, the earth has produced untold billions of distinct species. Virtually all of them have already past into the annals of natural history.
And the present-day animals we feel so responsible for preserving (mostly to teach our kids the alphabet and admire together in zoos), they owe their very existences to the opportunities created by the departure of their predecessors.
We are overly obsessed with preserving the status quo, freezing the Earth as we know it into a snapshot we can show a thousand years down the line. The problem with that notion is that there are far bigger processes than our aerosol cans and gas-guzzling traffic jams at work.
Every million years or so the Earth undergoes a cataclysmic event: volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions that muck up the atmosphere for long enough to destroy pretty much everything at the zoo (including the visitors), ice ages that would make you trade in your car for a snowmobile and your house for a cave under a thousand feet of ice, and even (as its been theorized) massive solar flares that would cook you and everyone you know faster than a bag of microwave popcorn.
Whether we pull the trigger on our demise, or Mother Nature does it first, is probably a 50/50 proposition at this point. Either way, as far as most species go, we’ve had a hell of a run.
So maybe we have sped things up a bit. Maybe there would still be schools of cod in the Atlantic without the invention of fish sticks. Whatever the case, let’s not blame ourselves too much.
When we worry that we’re the ones ruining the party, we’re giving ourselves way too much credit. The Earth will renew itself, probably without us, or at least the vast majority of us.
The things that we think of as “manmade”, (plastic, plutonium, Hot Pockets™, the exhaust of one hundred million, four thousand pound SUVs) are as much a part of nature as a rotting piece of fruit. Sure they might take a few thousand more years to break down—the Earth has nothing but time.
As highly as we like to think of ourselves, we aren’t nearly consequential enough to kill a 500 billion year old planet. We’re just starting to see the end of the line for us, and it’s a tough pill to swallow. The only positive spin is to appreciate how far we’ve come.
As for my grandchildrens’ grandchildren? I don’t even know their names.
Don’t get me wrong. I am sorry about how things seem to be shaping up for future generations. But, as we all continually remind the younger ones, whoever said life was fair?
The fact is 99.9% of all the fantastic creatures that have ever existed, from the microscopic to the gigantic, have already gone extinct. Over the past 500 million years, since the dawn of complex life known as the Cambrian Explosion, the earth has produced untold billions of distinct species. Virtually all of them have already past into the annals of natural history.
And the present-day animals we feel so responsible for preserving (mostly to teach our kids the alphabet and admire together in zoos), they owe their very existences to the opportunities created by the departure of their predecessors.
We are overly obsessed with preserving the status quo, freezing the Earth as we know it into a snapshot we can show a thousand years down the line. The problem with that notion is that there are far bigger processes than our aerosol cans and gas-guzzling traffic jams at work.
Every million years or so the Earth undergoes a cataclysmic event: volcanic eruptions and asteroid collisions that muck up the atmosphere for long enough to destroy pretty much everything at the zoo (including the visitors), ice ages that would make you trade in your car for a snowmobile and your house for a cave under a thousand feet of ice, and even (as its been theorized) massive solar flares that would cook you and everyone you know faster than a bag of microwave popcorn.
Whether we pull the trigger on our demise, or Mother Nature does it first, is probably a 50/50 proposition at this point. Either way, as far as most species go, we’ve had a hell of a run.
So maybe we have sped things up a bit. Maybe there would still be schools of cod in the Atlantic without the invention of fish sticks. Whatever the case, let’s not blame ourselves too much.
When we worry that we’re the ones ruining the party, we’re giving ourselves way too much credit. The Earth will renew itself, probably without us, or at least the vast majority of us.
The things that we think of as “manmade”, (plastic, plutonium, Hot Pockets™, the exhaust of one hundred million, four thousand pound SUVs) are as much a part of nature as a rotting piece of fruit. Sure they might take a few thousand more years to break down—the Earth has nothing but time.
As highly as we like to think of ourselves, we aren’t nearly consequential enough to kill a 500 billion year old planet. We’re just starting to see the end of the line for us, and it’s a tough pill to swallow. The only positive spin is to appreciate how far we’ve come.
As for my grandchildrens’ grandchildren? I don’t even know their names.
Don’t get me wrong. I am sorry about how things seem to be shaping up for future generations. But, as we all continually remind the younger ones, whoever said life was fair?
posted by J. Bovenizer | 10:22 PM
4 Comments:
As unfair as Al Gore winning the Nobel prize over legitimate scientists?
I think the points brought up in this post represent a slightly more "Inconvenient Truth"
I'm in the market for a new car...that large gas-guzzling pickup never looked better.
I agree...use it or lose it
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