warranted .
We are different from the other living creatures. The normal rules don’t have to apply to us. Just because we evolved in nature doesn’t mean we can’t break new ground. In fact, human pride might be just the thing we need to save nature from us.
The mice of Gough Island are doomed because they’re going to eat themselves out of house and home. Just think what would be possible if they could stop, realize the path they’re on, and make adjustments as a group. They can’t, though. They’re mice. Even though it would benefit all of them to back off on the meat consumption and bring their populations under control, naturalselection just can’t get them there. Even though in the long term, all mice could win by taking that strategy, eating less or having fewer babies would cause conscientious mice to lose out to any mice that kept on being selfish jerks. Evolution, as a process, can’t deal with problems like that. The mice won’t be saved by their own instincts.
But we’re not mice. Instead of pretending we are, let’s use our massive brains to come up with some solutions. Let’s stop assuming our natural instincts are the way to go and start acting intelligently. Let’s have a little pride in humanity.
Earth’s human population hovered around 1 billion for centuries, but our numbers have been rapidly climbing ever since the Industrial Revolution. Today there are 7 billion of us. Throughout our expansion, we’ve wiped out animals and plants everywhere we’ve gone, and that decimation continues to this day. Humans have wiped out big, charismatic animals every time we’ve arrived on a new island or continent, but that doesn’t mean we need to do that to the whole planet.
Part of the problem is that we can live our lives with no accountability for the environmental consequences of our choices. The person who uses the remote starter to warm up their SUV for forty-five minutes before driving it to work will wake up in ten years on the same planet as the person who rode a bike to work all winter. People get their benefits as individuals, but we all pay the costs together, same as the doomed mice of Gough Island. III
The problem’s not just fossil fuel emissions either. Humans are killing rhinos, elephants, gorillas, and countless other endangered animals for no reason other than to make a few bucks. Putanother way, those of us in the Western world have allowed things to get so unfair that while I stop at a Starbucks drive-through on the way home to get a fifth of my daily required calories from a sugar-filled iced drink, someone on the other side of the world is eating an endangered fruit bat because they have no other way to get the protein. That’s where acting “naturally” has gotten humans so far.
We have a choice. One option is to keep on focusing on the short term and let the planet fend for itself against our selfish individual wants and needs. It’s not like the world would end. Sure, we won’t have pandas or tigers or blue whales anymore, but evolution will continue, just as it has after other extinctions, and in a few million years, some new group will start to fill the roles in nature vacated by the animals we know today.
The alternative, though (am I hitting you hard enough over the head with this?), is for us to stop acting like mice and treat biodiversity as though it matters. We need to act as though nature has value beyond calories or dollars, even though our DNA doesn’t have that appreciation built in. However deadly and selfish and brutal nature may be, it’s unique, beautiful, surprising, and more valuable than words can express.
One important step in protecting nature is to make an effort to connect with it. The experience I got from having a botfly can’t be mimicked by any human-built theme park or 3-D movie. When you see something real, for yourself, it makes a difference to the rest of your life. For me, seeing a real-life sac-winged bat changed me much more
We are different from the other living creatures. The normal rules don’t have to apply to us. Just because we evolved in nature doesn’t mean we can’t break new ground. In fact, human pride might be just the thing we need to save nature from us.
The mice of Gough Island are doomed because they’re going to eat themselves out of house and home. Just think what would be possible if they could stop, realize the path they’re on, and make adjustments as a group. They can’t, though. They’re mice. Even though it would benefit all of them to back off on the meat consumption and bring their populations under control, naturalselection just can’t get them there. Even though in the long term, all mice could win by taking that strategy, eating less or having fewer babies would cause conscientious mice to lose out to any mice that kept on being selfish jerks. Evolution, as a process, can’t deal with problems like that. The mice won’t be saved by their own instincts.
But we’re not mice. Instead of pretending we are, let’s use our massive brains to come up with some solutions. Let’s stop assuming our natural instincts are the way to go and start acting intelligently. Let’s have a little pride in humanity.
Earth’s human population hovered around 1 billion for centuries, but our numbers have been rapidly climbing ever since the Industrial Revolution. Today there are 7 billion of us. Throughout our expansion, we’ve wiped out animals and plants everywhere we’ve gone, and that decimation continues to this day. Humans have wiped out big, charismatic animals every time we’ve arrived on a new island or continent, but that doesn’t mean we need to do that to the whole planet.
Part of the problem is that we can live our lives with no accountability for the environmental consequences of our choices. The person who uses the remote starter to warm up their SUV for forty-five minutes before driving it to work will wake up in ten years on the same planet as the person who rode a bike to work all winter. People get their benefits as individuals, but we all pay the costs together, same as the doomed mice of Gough Island. III
The problem’s not just fossil fuel emissions either. Humans are killing rhinos, elephants, gorillas, and countless other endangered animals for no reason other than to make a few bucks. Putanother way, those of us in the Western world have allowed things to get so unfair that while I stop at a Starbucks drive-through on the way home to get a fifth of my daily required calories from a sugar-filled iced drink, someone on the other side of the world is eating an endangered fruit bat because they have no other way to get the protein. That’s where acting “naturally” has gotten humans so far.
We have a choice. One option is to keep on focusing on the short term and let the planet fend for itself against our selfish individual wants and needs. It’s not like the world would end. Sure, we won’t have pandas or tigers or blue whales anymore, but evolution will continue, just as it has after other extinctions, and in a few million years, some new group will start to fill the roles in nature vacated by the animals we know today.
The alternative, though (am I hitting you hard enough over the head with this?), is for us to stop acting like mice and treat biodiversity as though it matters. We need to act as though nature has value beyond calories or dollars, even though our DNA doesn’t have that appreciation built in. However deadly and selfish and brutal nature may be, it’s unique, beautiful, surprising, and more valuable than words can express.
One important step in protecting nature is to make an effort to connect with it. The experience I got from having a botfly can’t be mimicked by any human-built theme park or 3-D movie. When you see something real, for yourself, it makes a difference to the rest of your life. For me, seeing a real-life sac-winged bat changed me much more
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