On a geological time scale, the history of life on earth has recently been a struggle. But that struggle has driven the evolutionary process, that throws up ever more novel life forms. Currently it has thrown up us humans, which today dominate the planet.
Life first appeared in the oceans over 3.5 billion years ago, but didn’t change much for the next 2.8 billion years. Then the earth got very cold and turned into a snow ball and nearly all life was snuffed out. But this crisis forced evolutionary change and multi-cellular life forms started to appear on the sea bed.
On geological timescales, species go extinct all the time, but since the snow ball earth there have been five large mass extinctions, when over 50% of species died out, and in the Permian Triassic extinction event, over 90% of species disappeared. Life, of course, bounced back after these events, but never the same as before. These shocks to the system, meant the cooking pot of life was tipped over, and when evolutionary processes had scooped up the mess on the floor, a new meal was served.
What do all these mass extinctions have in common? The answer is a rapidly changing environment caused by a rapidly changing climate. Whether is was global temperature rises due to volcano’s pumping out carbon dioxide or dramatic global cooling because of an asteroid impact (or both at the same time), when the climate changes rapidly, species that are evolutionary adapted to their niche environment, can’t adapt fast enough to the new situation, and go extinct. Species who can migrate, are small or burrow to avoid the worst of the changes, may be lucky and pass through the event, but when the climate settles down to more stable conditions, the world they enter is radically different and they share it with new life forms.
Humans only became numerous after the climate changes of the last ice age when they developed irrigation and farming techniques that produced plentiful food and spare time to learn and develop other technologies. As a result we have our global communications, global transport systems and global trade networks. However, this rapid technological advance has not given us time to adapt our evolved human behaviour of small minded, selfish individualism and group tribalism, that leads to competition for status and frequent periods of warfare. Thus we find it almost impossible to act for the good of the entire species.
Today we have realised that we humans are the cause of another rapidly changing climate, that will lead to environmental problems similar to the mass extinctions of the geological past. To many this is almost unimaginable and incomprehensible, that collectively we are changing the entire planet, but when examined the facts are undeniable. Instead of volcano’s pumping out the CO2, it is our burning of fossil fuels that is the cause. Nobody likes to think of the implications, but the fossil record is clear, a rapidly changing climate, leads to many species going extinct. It is true life recovers when eventually the climate stabilises, but this takes hundreds of thousands of years.
Exactly what is going to happen in the coming years is not precisely known, but the earths atmosphere, oceans and land are the same as they have always been and will react to change in exactly the same way as they did before. With our technology, the wealthy part of humanity is likely to survive, albeit in a vastly impoverished and degraded world that will never be as beautiful again. We will have blood on our hands forever more, and because we knew what we were doing and the likely consequences, we will not be able to plead innocence to the crime, which could have been averted.
To avoid this disaster of our own making, we need to act against our evolved nature and use our collective intelligence to act for the greater good of our species, which means for the greater good of all species. We need to rapidly switch from our current cheap, accessible and convenient fossil fuel energy sources to emissions free renewable energy sources, or we will change the planet for thousands of years to come. And to do this we needs to stop acting tribally and start acting globally as one. How ever there is no chance of this if right wing nationalist strong men, who are only interested in their own status and the status of their country, become predominant.
To avoid the worst that man made climate change will entail, humanity needs to evolve, or it will have to deal with the next mass extinction, that risks our own food sources. If it doesn't, evolutionary processes will be forced uncontrollably upon us.
