You can't really even talk about what's "good" for an ecosystem in this large of a context though. Any criterion you would care to come up with or name, is gonn

You can't really even talk about what's "good" for an ecosystem in this large of a context though. Any criterion you would care to come up with or name, is gonna end up being a human idea. You can't see the world except through eyes. Example: Is clear water inherently "good" or is it just something humans like? These mussels prefer the dirty water. Maybe in the Zebra Mussel Bible, the cleaning of the lake water is called "the coming apocalypse due to our greedy exploitation of nature" and the polluted years are remembered fondly as "the good times." Is an island populated by a larger number of species more finely-adapted to smaller niches, "better" than an island overrun with mostly generalists (cats and a couple of prey species)? In other words is biodiversity "good" or is it just something humans like? Certainly greater biodiversity is associated with longer periods of unchanging climate/geology/etc. that, to us, resemble our (maybe fitting, maybe not) concept of an "equilibrium." Not coincidentally these periods include the one we've been in for a few thousand years now, during which all writing, agriculture, cities and civilization developed. So we tend to think of them as "natural" and as a "norm," that we maybe will or maybe won't disturb. But those periods are only part of the story. There are also those dynamic, changing, cataclysmic periods. And when those are going on, biodiversity tends to be less initially, as shown by the mass extinctions visible in the fossil record. Just to completely take it over the top, is life better than death? Cuz the natural order seems to think they both should happen in almost exactly equal measure. Plus, "An empty glass is full of opportunity." A dead tree is a great boon to the next generation of little trees that grow on the rotting trunk, not to mention all the fungi etc. that survive by doing the rotting. I dunno, it's hard to formulate any "puny huuu-mon" judgments about anything that don't just fall apart.