"Humans got here in an ecological context surrounded by uncountable and unknowable interdependencies. It’s enormously risky to let our ecological ignorance suggest that we don’t need what we don’t understand—especially when we have ZERO evidence that humans can survive in a world depleted of its biodiversity. I get angry thinking about people who blithely make such a counterfactual and irreversibly devastating assumption. Nor should we imagine ourselves as being able to survive the sixth mass extinction we have initiated. Animals higher on the food chain have a harder time in such epochs. Humans are voracious (big brains to feed and a lot of un-furry surface area to keep warm), and therefore are ecologically expensive. If the Earth tightens its belt, don’t assume that humans will fare well. We are summer children borne of “good” times, where “good” translates to “biodiverse.” Cleverness is no guarantee against starvation, as countless clever humans who have starved can’t tell [us]."