Humans will suffer in the current mass-extinction event

An event is occurring that is scientifically verified and in the public domain, but is not given sufficient credence by the general public. This event is, simply put, the greatest extermination of life on Earth since the Permian-Triassic extinction event which took place at least 252 million years ago.

For those who are unaware, the Permian-Triassic extinction event was the third of five prior major extinction events that have occurred in Earth’s history – and the most destructive hitherto. Over a period of 15 million years, approximately 95% of all ocean life became extinct, as did nearly 70% of all land-based life forms. While the exact cause(s) of the extinction event are unclear, the devastation it wrought is all too clear.

To some, it may seem like a tall tale to say that we are now living through a sixth extinction event that rivals the carnage caused by the Permian-Triassic extinction event. That human activity is the cause of this extinction event also seems far-fetched. But the facts bear out these conclusions. The destruction of natural habitats to provide accommodation for the 7.8 billion humans now living on this planet has been fatal for many non-human species.

According to researchers at Brown University and Duke University, who published their findings in 2014, the average annual rate of species extinction in pre-human times was 0.1 extinctions per 1 million species. The current annual rate is 100 extinctions per 1 million species – 1,000 times higher than the average rate. Furthermore, the researchers anticipate that the rate will increase to 10,000 times that of the average in future. In short, things will get worse, and to reverse this decline of the natural environment, transformative change is required – that was the conclusion of the academic journal Science in December 2019, which explicitly pointed to human consumption as the cause of that decline.

To say that human beings are indifferent to the mass extinction caused by their destruction of these natural habitats is to understate the case. This blasé attitude towards the current mass-extinction event has been articulated perfectly by Thom van Dooren, an anthropologist who researches the cultural, ethical, philosophical and political consequences of species extinction. Van Dooren states that this indifference is rooted in the concept of human exceptionalism, which sets human beings apart from the natural world. In a 2014 interview with National Geographic, he elaborated on this fallacy:

Rather than thinking of ourselves as an animal, we have a long history, in the West at least, of thinking of ourselves as either the sole bearers of an immortal soul or a creature that is set apart by its rationality and its ability to manipulate and control the world.

There are a whole lot of consequences that flow on from that kind of an orientation to the world. And some of them are very damaging for our species and for the wider environment.

It is true to say that the notion of human exceptionalism has been deeply embedded in Western intellectual history. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis (1:26), we find the following attitude to how humanity relates to nature:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Of course, many other species existed for millennia before humanity emerged, so this is an ahistorical assumption. Nonetheless, it is one that asserts that the environment and other species exist for humans to use and abuse as they see fit, and has of course been highly influential in shaping Western attitudes.

The notion of a ‘Great Chain of Being‘ further influenced these attitudes, as it posited that all natural and supernatural phenomena are linked in a single hierarchy that is arranged from the minerals at the bottom of the chain, with vegetables a level above. Above vegetables come animals, and above those come humans. One level above humans are the angels, and finally at the top of the chain is God.

Despite the obvious Christian features, the origins of the Great Chain of Being theory are pre-Christian. In Aristotle’s History of Animals, we find animals ranked over plants, warm-blooded animals ranked over cold-blooded animals, and man ranked over all animals by virtue of being ‘rational’.

This exceptionalist attitude has become a danger to the natural world since the Industrial Revolution, as it dismisses any restraints against the destruction of nature in the pursuit of profit. And despite the consequences of that destruction becoming more and more apparent, this attitude persists.

The folly of human exceptionalism will not prevent humans from being affected by their impact on the global environment. Indeed, there are several ways in which humans will feel the consequences of the mass-extinction event that is currently taking place.

Fish present one major example of how humans will be affected by the mass-extinction event. On average, each individual human consumes 20kg of fish per year, making up between 6.7% to 17% of protein intake according to the FAO. In fact, consumption of fish is higher in developing countries.

And consumption of fish is particularly high within populations on islands and coastal areas, where fish constitutes up to 70% of protein intake. The fact that 90% of marine fish stocks are now either fully fished or over-fished is dangerous for these populations, as 400 million people in Africa and Southeast Asia rely on fish to provide them with protein.

The attempt to get around such consequences – the so-called ‘green revolution‘ – may have provided short-term gains in exchange for long-term disaster. Starting in the mid-20th century, the ‘green revolution’ did lead to a higher production of rice, wheat, and other food grains, particularly in the Indian subcontinent and Mexico. However, such intensive measures require chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which will have dire environmental consequences. Furthermore, such measures are cost-prohibitive for poorer farmers. They will end up with lower yields of these crops than they would have with older strains of the crops, for these had the advantage of being adapted to the local climate and thus being more naturally resistant to diseases and pests.

The coronavirus pandemic that hit the world in late 2019-early 2020 is a consequence of humans destroying natural habitats to make room for farms, housing, and mines. Climate change and live animal markets have also played their part. All of these activities have put animal wildlife in closer contact with humans, and thus increased the chances of infections passing from wild animals to humans – which are animals, too.

That is how SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) broke out in 2003, as the disease passed from animals such as Chinese horseshoe bats and masked palm civets to humans. And Covid-19, the coronavirus strain that emerged from the Wuhan wet markets and spread worldwide, is thought to have spread from a species of horseshoe bat, too. Small wonder that Ingers Andersen, the UN’s environment chief, has warned that Covid-19 is a ‘warning shot’ that humanity’s destruction of the natural world will not only affect the planet and non-human species, but humanity as well.

Sadly, it seems at this time that humanity remains deaf to that ‘warning shot.’ That being the case, things are likely to get worse in the years to come.

Image credit: Wolfgang Eckert