Prologue
There was a large bonfire, and I was sitting in the grass. Many other campers sat nearby; we were young teens and there was much gossip to be had, but I was more of the introspective type (= loser). So I went off to be introspective, away from the fire, closer to the lake shore. I spread myself out on the ground and peered into a bright moonless sky, far from the city lights.
I began to think about space, the vast distances between celestial objects, and to imagine that I could see the starfield in its full, three-dimensional splendor. The sparkling dots in the night sky were really giant balls of plasma, and there was nothing but near emptiness and many years separating their starlight from my retina. This endeavor, of course, was futile. It’s like trying to see substantial curvature of the Earth while out on the open ocean. But the effort was not without its rewards: I had never before really attempted to put myself, and our planet, in context with the vastness of space and time. I later brought myself to my feet feeling very humbled and quite small, though at the same time a little more at peace. After all, I am, as are we all, born of the stars.
Life
There is some debate over the exact definition of life, and by extension, some uncertainty about when precisely we can say that life came into being. There is some consensus, however, that at some point complex organic molecules with the capacity to store information (nucleic acids) began replicating themselves, and that competition for resources to fuel these chemical processes gave rise to natural selection.
Think about that for a minute. We are all, even young earth creationists, products of chemical reactions. Complex life became a different and favorable way for cells to replicate themselves. The slow rise of self-awareness amongst primates, and perhaps several other species, is a product (or byproduct?) of natural selection. Humans have a tendency to anthropomorphize strictly physical phenomena, particularly those that are difficult to understand. Evolution is not logical or reasonable. The organic computer that we call the human mind was not designed intelligently, but came into being via natural selection, a stochastic process.
Thus we find ourselves, an outcome of a long, seemingly unlikely chain of astronomical, geological, and chemical events: a species with the ability to probe and model the inner-workings of the cosmos. While the universe moves unknowingly, we watch.
Extinction
Many species have come and gone as life continues into its third era. Evolutionary dead-ends occur from time to time. When species loss happens rapidly, and across many families, it is termed an ‘extinction event’. There is evidence to suggest that humans are playing a part in such a cataclysm, dubbed the Holocene extinction event.
We have had it pretty good over the last 10,000 years: our numbers have grown by more than three orders of magnitude. Civilizations have flourished. But our success has come at a cost to biodiversity, and is rapidly changing the chemistry and climate of the planet that we live on. The Earth has witnessed similar events in the past.
The Oxygen Catastrophe
2.7 billion years ago, anaerobic organisms were already living in the vast wastes of a young planet. Then, a revolution in metabolism occurred with the advent of oxyphotosynthesis. The result: after 300 million years of emitting, these new life forms had produced enough molecular oxygen to poison many of the primitive, anaerobic species, and thus created an early ecological crisis. Though this catastrophe turned out to be necessary for the evolution of life as we know it (a good thing for us), biodiversity at the time was hit hard.
Cyanobacteria were not aware of what they were doing to the Earth’s chemistry. On the other hand, (some) humans are keenly aware of the rate at which we are altering the concentration of certain gases in the atmosphere. I suppose it is possible that our actions, like those of the cyanobacteria, will eventually give rise to even more successful beings. But even if it is true that we are laying the groundwork for hyper-intelligent cockroaches, we, and many other animals, won’t live to see the evolution of such creatures. If human intelligence is to be an evolutionary success, we must use it to avoid extinction.
Obstacles
It is probably safe to say that multicellular, intelligent organisms are the only life-forms conscious of death. Natural selection has driven the development of remarkable traits in even single-celled organisms, but there is little comparison to be made between elephants, which lovingly caress their ancestors’ bones, and amoebae.
Many species don’t have the capacity to 'care' about their survival. We do. Sadly, though, humans have developed traits that blind us to our looming self-destruction. We tell ourselves stories with no basis in reality to explain our existence and the universe we occupy. In some cases, these stories have stunted widespread scientific understanding of our unique ecological situation. Limitations on our sense of scale have led many to be skeptical of anthropogenic causes of global warming and biodiversity loss. It is difficult for some to understand how quickly everything is changing on a geologic timescale. Humans are hard-pressed to think outside of their individual spheres of influence. We distract ourselves, and rarely consider the future of our species as a whole. We’re violent. We must overcome these traits if we are to survive into the near-future.
It is difficult to be optimistic about our prospects as a civilization. Just look at the recent headlines. Killers in Mumbai were able to steal the world stage, wasting innocent lives and resources in their deluded quest against imagined foes. This, despite the fact that the threat of terrorism is miniscule compared to the threat of natural disasters, exacerbated by overpopulation and climate change. 2,000 people lost their lives and 20 million were displaced during the 2007 monsoon floods in South Asia. My guess is that security and terrorism, though, and not global warming, will dominate political discussions in India for some time. This sort of thing has happened before in other nations, and will happen again; too many trillions of dollars will continue to be used to beef up ‘security’ instead of green infrastructure, an investment that will provide little comfort to future generations facing worldwide famine and wars over resources.
Epilogue
Plutonium Page authored a diary earlier this month that begged a question:
Do you ever wonder if we, as a species, are screwed?
More specifically, I would ask,
Will humans destroy themselves before something else does?
My answer to the question is qualified:
No, but only if we can learn to think outside of ourselves, and see humanity in the context of Earth’s biological and geological past. This is a difficult proposition when many people are struggling just to get by. We have to keep reminding ourselves, somehow, of what is at stake.
When was the last time you looked up at a brilliant night sky, and allowed the far-traveled starlight to spark a fire in your mind?
an article on the Holocene extinction event
IUCN