

If Half of All Species Go Extinct, Will One of Them Be Us? - hawleyal
http://nautil.us/blog/if-half-of-all-species-go-extinct-will-one-of-them-be-us

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archgoon
"We know how to not cut down trees; we know how to not hunt animals to
extinction; we know how to reduce our carbon emissions. The question isn’t one
of possibility, but of desire and ethically arduous sacrifice."

Do we now? Ignoring the idea that it's simpler to predict the economic,
political, and ecological consequences of stopping large amounts of economic
activity (which, the article should recognize, is the exact damn problem
they're trying to avoid solving); how DO you actually convince all 7 billion
people that it's in their best interests to stop doing things that will let
them put food on their family's table?

HINT: Non trivial problem.

~~~
Ygg2
The thing is, we kinda can put food on every family table, problem is most
families we don't have an infallible way to do so.

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waps
If you believe in evolution, then presumably not, assuming humans really are
fit, which our current situation would seem to indicate.

On the other hand, generally what happens is that species grow larger and
heavier (because that allows for increased energy efficiency at the cost of
reduced adaptability), and then disappear. That's why larger animals are
disproportionally likely to go extinct. We are quite large.

So the short answer is : the jury's still out. After all, if we are not in
fact better than other species, why should we survive ?

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Humans are fit, to our current situation. That's the point. We are perhaps
more flexible than many other species, but we are not infinitely flexible.

As the article, in one experiment, removing a top predator caused certain tree
species to die off (the predator controlled the beasts that gobbled the
trees). There are cascading downstream effects.

Removing half of all species might, just might, change the environment so much
we no longer fit it, we can no longer adjust. Or perhaps some of us will
survive.

Note that your last sentence betrays a common misunderstanding about
evolution: some notion of superiority. Evolution isn't about superiority, it
is about goodness of fit, how well various species fit their environment. This
isn't fitness as in strength, it's fitness as in suitability. It's not
optimization, it adequate-ization.

