To start with: kudos, applause, bravo, well done, hat tip to ALL the people who work at and with BBC to produce the amazing documentary series, Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Planet Earth II, and now Blue Planet II. It's enough to make you want to install a wall sized QLED 4K TV.
For the past week, BBC America has been showing ALL of the past series as a lead up to the premier of their new series, Blue Planet II. And after binge watching, there is one conclusion that can be drawn; Earth and everything in and on it is one big system. The parts work together to sustain each other. Even more so, the development of each of the subsystems is dependent on the basic physics of the geology of the planet. Upwelling of volcanically super-heated ocean currents along tectonic plates and the sinking of ultra-frigid super-salinated water at the Antarctic fuels the ocean and air currents that work with the power of the sun to determine climate, weather, life.
And all these subsystems, these parts of the whole, living and non-living, worked together for countless aeons, with changes so incremental that the system as a whole, the living and the non-living, continued and increased in complexity and diversity. But at some point, and these turning points pass unnoticed in real time and may even be hard to recognize in hind sight, one of the subsystems started working outside of the system as a whole. The subsystem learned to manipulate other subsystems for its own advantage and often to the detriment of the other subsystems.
When this happens in a single living entity we label it cancer, the Big C. It's big because the imbalance of this tiny subsystem in one living entity is enough to disrupt it so much that that it can no longer flourish, in fact it might cease to exist.
So yes, in this system of living and non-living things called Earth, in this system, humans have become the cancer. Exploiting subsystems for our own advantage. Threatening the existence of the system as a whole. And as humans we have two options, we can become systems engineers and learn to understand, find, and stay in our place in the whole, or we could become oncologists that learn to medicate to maintain a marginally viable but not necessarily optimum nor even enjoyable existence. Or, we could be like some individuals, and ignore the warning signs of disease until the system breaks and cannot sustain itself any more.
Because, in the end, the planet won't care. It can exist as a non-living system, following the rules of physics as the sun — now just another star - provides energy and the chemicals form bonds and follow the laws of thermodynamics. As we know it, most of the universe consists of non-living systems. It will not blink an eye if the Earth becomes just another non-living system. The only ones who will really notice will be us. Or will we?