On Extinction and Evolution

I recently read an article warning that sea turtles could soon become extinct due to human influences (hunting and pollution among the primary causes). Reading this, especially after the announcement a few months ago that the Yangtze River dolphin is officially thought to be extinct, made me both profoundly sad and pissed off at the same time. It's just unbelievable to me that in this day and age we as a species can continue to engage in activities that result in the complete eradication of another species from the planet. Permanently. It's the same sadness and anger that I felt when I heard about priceless treasures being destroyed in Iraq's museums shortly after the Hussein regime collapsed.

Some people think that extinctions are good, or at least they cannot be bad since they are simply a product of "natural selection" and a natural part of evolution that results in the "survival of the fittest" (and who wouldn't want only the fittest to survive??). I strongly disagree with this point of view.

It's true that in the classical sense evolution through natural selection results in the survival of the fittest. I think that "evolution" through human intervention is far from natural selection. With natural selection, there are many forces acting upon the populations of species which balance each other out normally. With human intervention, all of those forces are made insignificant and the pressure on a threatened population due to hunting, habitat destruction and/or pollution become far too much to bear very quickly. Humans' technologies in particular give them the power to overcome any potential roadblocks to the complete and total annihilation of any species. If we so desired, we could harness our great technological powers to eradicate every reptile, amphibian, bird and mammal species from the face of the planet in just a few decades. (It would be too difficult to eradicate all the little creepy crawlies like beetles and spiders and whatnot, since there's just so damned many of them and they reproduce -- and mutate -- too quickly!)

If we were crazy enough to embark upon such a blood quest, then I think that it would be more fitting (no pun intended!) to call the results the "survival of the most homicidal." At that point, we may be able to survive with our own agricultural plant strains and domesticated livestock, but it's really hard to say. Out in the wild, the populations of plants and insects would be reeling as certain species gained great benefits from the sudden absence of larger predators, while others would have died off due to the loss of animals that played an important role in the normal life-cycle. (For instance, many plants rely on birds and mammals to help them spread their seeds and to keep populations of parasitic insects down). It's quite probable that the entire ecosystem of the planet would basically implode upon itself and only a few species in each region would survive the great struggle for survival. After this, there may be very profound implications for the atmospheric balances of carbon dioxide and oxygen, depending upon which plant species survive. Large parts of the earth may start to turn into desert as plants die off. And of course, it's hard to say what new viruses or bacteria might not crop up in response to the strange and extreme changes occurring in the ecosystem.

All in all, I think the chances for human survival following such a scenario would be very meager and so in the end the "survival of the most homicidal" would be short-lived and would give way to "survival of those lucky enough to have the appropriate attributes for surviving in the drastically changed ecological and environmental landscape". Of course, that's just another way of saying "survival of the fittest", and so we would see a return to natural selection as the primary driving force of evolution.

Evolution is what it is. It happens, without plan, inevitably. I think the likelihood of our completely halting evolution altogether by killing off every living thing on the planet is zero, but I think we could come pretty damn close by at least killing off everything except the bacteria and viruses, which I have a feeling will always be around.

Of course, my scenario is very extreme. But I think it's important to realize that virtually any species out there is vulnerable to being eradicated by human activity. If we continue with business as usual and simply view it as a process of natural selection, weeding out those "unfit" for survival, then eventually our own number will be up and we'll be the ones deemed "unfit" for survival in the world we've created.

Finally, I think it's important to clarify that the word evolution only applies to life. Once a species becomes extinct it has ceased to evolve. To be sure, life on the planet as a whole continues to evolve, but that particular path of evolution has reached a dead end (another unintended pun, I'm sorry!).