Last Straw

It’s a tru­ism like no other that the large major­ity of us value life, and as an exten­sion of this — being a meas­ure of life—biod­iversity.

That human beings, there­fore, are to blame for a massive and ongo­ing decrease in biod­iversity is the most incrim­in­at­ing piece of evid­ence to reveal just how badly out of sync human insti­tu­tions are with their val­ues, and, of course, how out of sync they are with life itself.

The Gaia hypo­thesis indic­ates that one way or another humans will stop being the cause of this decrease in biod­iversity. Whether that means the end of our civil­isa­tion or its adapt­a­tion remains to be seen.

One dis­turb­ing prac­tice of humans, at least since we turned to agri­cul­ture, has been to seek our and des­troy other spe­cies that com­pete with us for food and ter­rit­ory. The fol­low­ing video of Joshua Klein at TED touches on this topic in an inspir­ing way.