The Beginning of the End for Life as We Know it on Planet Earth?
There is a Biocentric Solution.
Commentary by Paul Watson
Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Does humanity have a future?
We are presently living in what conservation biologists refer to as the Holocene extinction event. This is the sixth global mass extinction event in last 439 million years. The previous five extinction events wiped out between 50 to 95 percent of species each ttime. The most recent event was 65 million years ago at the end of the Jurassic period, a cataclysmic occurrence that exterminated the dinosaurs, the dominant group of species at of that period. Evolution addresses the diminishment of biological diversity through speciation, but it takes at least ten million years to build up diversity of species to the level prior to a mass extinction event.
The world ten million years after the Jurassic crash was radically different than the world of the dinosaurs. The world after the Holocene extinction event, the one we are in now, will be as radically altered and most likely one of the species that will not survive the event will be the present dominant species – the human species.
In a way, the Holocenic extinction event could also be called the “Holocenic hominid collective suicide event.” After all, we Homo sapiens are the last survivors of the hominid line, a group that has been on its way out for some time. The beetle family, for example, has some 700,000 species by comparison. Odds are many of the beetle species will survive the event, whereas we will not. But the reality is that what is happening now is the result of the collective actions of us hominids. We are the ruthlessly territorial primates whose numbers have soared far beyond the level of global carrying capacity for the deadly behavioural characteristics that we display.
This did not happen yesterday because we suddenly became aware of the dangers of global warming. It began 50,000 years ago when a relatively hairless primate stumbled out of equatorial Africa and began wiping out the megafauna of the time. Wherever this creature (our ancestor) went, their arrival was followed by large die-outs of megafauna. Primitive hominids were well-organized, efficient, slaughter crews. As they advanced, the mammoth, sabre-toothed cats, cave bears, giant sloths, camels, horses, and wholly rhinos fell to their stone weapons and deliberately set fires. The extinction of all of these great mega-species is directly attributable to “primitive” human hunters. The hunting down of the mega-fauna was followed by the advent of agriculture and the domestication of selected animals. Domesticated cows, goats, sheep, and pigs grew in numbers and denuded large areas of grasslands. Irrigation systems began to toxify land. Then agriculture was followed by industrial activities, and finally, by the burning off of vast amounts of fossil fuels.
Full article
http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_070504_1.html Also see website on the Cave Bear
http://www.angelfire.com/dragon2/leavesandtrees/hunted/bear/cave.html