Arguments about global warming aside, the fact is that humans have directly and indirectly caused massive ecosystem changes. The ecosystems of the planet will never be the same. We can never make North America, for example, like it was 300 years ago when buffalo roamed freely. We can never remove imported species from the Great Lakes. In the same way if the caribou are threatened by the tree line moving north they will likely not be able to survive as well as they survive now. The reason is that they are not free to move. Man is here to stop them. Man will not allow species to move freely into new habitats. To my knowledge, this has never been a factor before.
The great responsibility we now have is to debate and decide which species we allow to survive, and which species we allow to die. Which species do we allow to evolve? Many species have become extinct, and others have changed and evolved into new ones. The difference today is that we are interfering in this process. Polar bears are endangered for example, but do we allow them to die out, or do we go to extreme measures to somehow preserve them? Given the huge changes in ecosystems and species of the geologic past, how is it that we feel we must keep the planet exactly as it is now forever? The new factor is our huge technological and population impact on the world.
Can we simply allow a species to die out given that we are also denying the chance for a new species to evolve and fill the now empty niche? Is the new species homo sapien?
We have a lot of very difficult decisions to make. Let’s not pull obscure facts from the internet and use them to defend dogmatic opinion. Let’s try to agree on how we are to control nature since this is inevitable.
