@enzyme
"For similar reasons, that's why I'm increasingly unfazed by conservation disasters. It's unlikely that anything we'll do will end all life"

I've been bandying the same theory around my increasingly incredulous friends for a while now... first time I've heard someone else express it.

It's not just that it's unlikely that anything we do will end all life, it's that even if we destroyed 99% of the planet's biodiversity tomorrow, then over the blink of an eye (in terms of geological time), that biodiversity will recover - albeit in a different form.

Each ecological niche will recover, or be replaced by analogous ecological niches, and will be filled by an organism adapted to that niche - just as the organisms that occupy them change over time anyway.

If say, all the orangutans die out tomorrow, another organism will come to fill that ecological niche (although probably not in the lifetime of our species), just as the orangutan itself has come to occupy an ecological niche previously occupied by something else. If all the orangutans don't die out tomorrow, then over time, the same would happen anyway.

By "time" - I mean a long-ass period of time. But still, a blink of an eye in terms of geological time.

That's not to say that conservation doesn't matter - it's just only important for the here and now, for the biodiversity we have at present.

And I'm not saying "Pollute away", just that ultimately (as long as we don't end up blowing up the entire planet), it doesn't matter if we royally fuck things up.
( rofl harris, Thu 17 Jul 2008, 11:23, Reply)