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Humanity's Fitting Place on the List of Mass Extinction Events

A Whole Epoch Named After Us

By Sam BakerPublished 6 years ago 3 min read
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Let's be honest: apart from the Cyanobacteria that first introduced oxygen into the atmosphere, no other species has had such a significant influence on the Earth than mankind. So much so, in fact, that it is said we are now entering the next mass extinction event. This is a statement that shouldn't be taken lightly, considering that previous extinction events were caused by the likes of Chicxulub impact, the 170 km wide meteor that killed off the dinosaurs. Having us, as a species, put in the same list as such events has a very profound effect of putting things in perspective. In the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s existence, it has experienced a lot of change, from the creation of life, to severe ice ages and interglacials, to massive volcanic eruption and finally to us, a stage in the Earth's life known as the Anthroposcene Epoch. That’s right, a whole epoch has been named after us, a single species. When looked at from the perspective of a human life span, the changes don't seem too severe, making it hard to actually comprehend the fact that our influence on the planet does fit in this list rather well. We need to look at it on a scale of millions of years in order to fully appreciate what we have done; something which I am aware is very hard to comprehend.

As I am asking you to contemplate our time on this planet in a geological timescale of billions/millions of years, it is also necessary therefore, to also look at the future effects we will have on the planet in this same timescale. The great mass extinction events before ours drastically changed the functioning of the Earth system for good. The oxygen introduced by the Cyanobacteria may have killed the majority of the anaerobic life at the time but it gave rise to all the aerobic organisms we see today, including us. Although the meteor killed the dinosaurs, without it mammals most likely wouldn't be as dominant and wouldn't have reached the higher levels of consciousness to create us. Who knows, maybe we would actually have intelligent lizard humanoids in our place instead. So from the perspective of looking back on these events millions and billions of years after they have happened, they could be deemed as positive rather than negative events. Maybe, therefore, millions of years from now our descendants will look back on the Anthroposcene from the same perspective as we are able to look back on the other previous mass extinction events and say, "Thank god for the Anthroposcene or we wouldn't be here now and the world would look completely different."

There could also be another benefit from our taking Earth for granted. Our descendants, while most likely not as populous and wide spread as we are now, will have a much greater respect and understanding for our unique planet, meaning that mankind can live in harmony with Earth once more. I feel it is important to take this optimistic view, as much of the damage we have done is now irreversible.

This brings me onto my last point, Mars. Our neighbour, this enticing red planet could, in the now hopefully near future, provide solace for humanity. By this, I mean it is not beyond the realms of possibility that humanity could bring life to its desolate surface. Elon Musk’s company Space X, for example, is paving the way in space-faring technology. Mr. Musk is so confident, in fact, that he has made rather bold and exciting claims that he aims to see people living on Mars by as early as 2024, moving us out of the realms of Sci-fi to that of reality. Mars has all the essentials for life: water, carbon, and oxygen in the form of CO2 and Nitrogen. So with a massive push from mankind, it could be possible to make Mars habitable. This, I feel, is an obligation that mankind must do to make up for our destruction on Earth. While this sounds far-fetched and almost ridiculous to me, in conjunction with an equally concerted effort to protect this incredibly special and unique mote of dust we call Earth, it seems the only way in which we can properly make up for what we have done to Earth over the past few centuries.

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