Extinction

"…because of megafauna extinctions, being the only species to use fire, and the fact that an ability for symbolic representation and complex speech might be the recipe for a runaway species capable of rapid cultural evolution and technology development out of step with the rest of the community of life, and therefore maladapted to long-term co-existence in ecological relationship. If it looks like we’re winning the “battle against nature” right now, that’s actually what losing looks like."

"Compared to the human accomplishment of driving the globe into a sixth mass extinction... elephants are shamefully worthless and lacking a final goal, as are all 10 million species on the planet—including us."

"Having initiated a sixth mass extinction, carried out by access to energy, continued powering of modernity (via electricity, for instance) most likely means compounding ecological harm, piling up accelerating extinctions, under which conditions high-maintenance humans are unlikely to fare well."

"The scale and rapidity of these changes create credible concern that we are witnessing (causing) the beginning of a sixth mass extinction. Earth has been slapped hard, out of nowhere, at alarming speed. Although the evidence of its reeling is all around us, it is far too soon to appreciate the severity of what we have set in motion. A hard slap on the face looks red in the moment, but later appears bruised and might turn into a black eye. We are currently only seeing the instant, real-time response and not the protracted bruising to follow, which will take a long time to play out as many wild populations glide toward extinction and domino-effect failures pile up. […] Ecological collapse is extremely dangerous to large, complex, hungry, high-maintenance animals like humans. We are not likely to fare well in a sixth mass extinction of our own making."

"We have loads of evidence for rapidly declining ecological health, in virtually every measure. Accelerating biodiversity loss rates are consistent with the initiation of a sixth mass extinction. Modernity has every appearance of being grossly unsustainable."

"Extinction rates are up 100–1,000 times the background rate—and possibly higher [and] we are currently witnessing the highest extinction rate since the Chicxulub impact that took out dinosaurs 65 million years ago. […] Annual population declines tend to be in the 1–2% range among mammals, birds, fish, and insects, accumulating to average declines of more than half in less than half a century."

"Finding out that 1 million species face extinction without radical corrective changes in human behavior is akin to finding out you have a fatal disease. One day you have a thousand problems; the next, you have just one. Nothing in today’s headlines compares to the catastrophic potential posed by climate change and the decimating effects of careless consumerism around the globe."

"In what year will the human population grow too large for the Earth to sustain? The answer is about 1970, according to research by the . In 1970, the planet's 3 and a half billion people were . But on this New Year's Day, the population is 8 billion. Today, wild plants and animals are running out of places to live."

"Indeed, in the long run, extinctions of species are as inevitable as the deaths of individual animals, and it may be that the causes of extinctions are as varied as the causes of individual deaths. A wave of extinctions—a sudden diminution in the number of species—is analogous to a sudden big drop in the size of a human population, an event that deserves to be explained even though the individual people would inevitably have died sooner or later anyway. Catastrophes in human populations have many causes: war, famine, and pestilence are the possibilities that first spring to mind. There may be equally many causes for evolutionary catastrophes, as waves of extinctions could well be called. Another possibility, however, is that extinctions come in waves that are part of a recurring cycle. It would then be the cycle itself, rather than each individual wave in the cycle, that would need to be explained. If there is such a cycle, it presumably follows a cycle in the inorganic world, such as cyclic climactic changes."

"Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century."

"Given that human societies, before they migrated out of Africa, in significant numbers were as close to sustainable as we’re likely to get, that is the best we can hope for, at least for future generations. But let’s not pretend that there is some sustainable way of life for future humans (our species) that we could hope they would attain. We’ve done that experiment. Humans didn’t live in harmony with nature. They got close, but ultimately couldn’t restrain themselves from causing some extinctions and then many more extinctions when they followed their migratory traits."

"Species are threatened because of over-exploitation, habitat destruction, climate change, and so on. Efforts to reverse, or stall, a decline in population would have to go on indefinitely (i.e. would have to be sustainable) unless all of the factors involved in the decline are removed. But modernity is the cause of all of those factors so conservation will inevitably fail until modernity ends (and then there would be no conservation efforts with humans needing to be more involved in saving their own lives)."

"Long before the first kings, priests, or merchants inscribed their deeds in clay or papyrus, humans were altering ecosystems simply by moving through them. The great dispersal of our species out of Africa, beginning roughly 60,000–70,000 years ago, reshaped continents. Wherever humans arrived, waves of extinctions followed: giant marsupials in Australia, mammoths and mastodons across the Americas, enormous birds in New Zealand and Madagascar. These losses were not caused by Western civilization, or any civilization at all, but by small bands of foragers equipped with nothing more than stone tools, spears, and fire."

"Since after extinction no one will be present to take responsibility, we have to take full responsibility now."

"[The transition from Australopithecus to Homo] marked the shift from hominins that depend heavily on plants to ones that depend more on meat… Being a good predator is a general feature of our genus."

"[We] cannot bring back species from extinction… We are still driving 150 species to oblivion daily… Collapse will not change anything in our attitudes. As long as humans remain genetically identical to who they are today, I’m afraid they will collapse again, and again, after this coming collapse, and probably risk complete extinction. This is not speculation, but simply looking at historical evidence: over thousands of years we have collapsed pretty much constantly—anthropologists have documented the collapse of more than 82 (!!!) civilisations. We are now at the stage of a systemic, global collapse because we are one, united global economic machine that has used up everything on the planet. Our species is wired for growth, and we are designed to go through boom-and-bust cycles. What comes after the next bust will be a significantly smaller civilisation… There will be another, smaller boom, then collapse again. With each collapse many… “species” risk disappearance."

"[The Sixth Extinction] did not happen yesterday because we suddenly became aware of the dangers of global warming. It began 50,000 years ago when a relatively hairless primate stumbled out of equatorial Africa and began wiping out the megafauna of the time. Wherever this creature (our ancestor) went, their arrival was followed by large die-outs of megafauna. Primitive hominids were well-organized, efficient, slaughter crews. As they advanced, the mammoth, sabre-toothed cats, cave bears, giant sloths, camels, horses, and wholly rhinos fell to their stone weapons and deliberately set fires. The extinction of all of these great mega-species is directly attributable to "primitive" human hunters. The hunting down of the mega-fauna was followed by the advent of agriculture and the domestication of selected animals. Domesticated cows, goats, sheep, and pigs grew in numbers and denuded large areas of grasslands. Irrigation systems began to toxify land. Then agriculture was followed by industrial activities, and finally, by the burning off of vast amounts of fossil fuels."