> Human societies never destabilized the entire global ecosystem before, either. Viewing it as "progress" to be able to cause climate change, mass extinction an

> Human societies never destabilized the entire global ecosystem before, either. Viewing it as "progress" to be able to cause climate change, mass extinction and pollution is a bias that we should check. Aside from the fact this is incorrect, it's also rooted in a false assumption. It's a common mistake to believe the ecosystem is in some sort of steady state or equilibrium. It is not and never has been. The climate changes. The geology changes. Invasive species arrive. Someone wins an evolutionary arms race and wipes out the rest. Populations go through booms and busts - or even extinctions - because they consume resources too rapidly. There is no variable that is not in continual flux. Things only appear to be "steady state" on very short timescales, but attentive people have always noticed this - the ancient Greeks were aware of massive geographic changes, for example. When too many variables change too fast or too far, we see mass extinctions (really just an increase in the extinction rate) as different species don't make it through the selection pressure. Are we causing one now? Sure, absolutely. But not because we're special. Because we're not. We like to believe we are wise, rational technocratic masters of nature. We are not. We are causing climate change and extinctions like every other species that begins to dominate (dominate may not even be the right word - some species that don't dominate produce massive 'destructive' changes.) Probably the earliest known example is the Great Oxygen Catastrophe. No amount of trying to be more 'rational' and 'sustainable' will produce an ecological equilibrium over anything but the very short term.