Planet Earth vs Humans. Who’s Winning?

 Planet Earth vs Humans
Who’s Winning?

Every year, many species become extinct, simply by their inability to survive. New species emerge. These are facts. In a sense, we are guests of our planet, which has very strict rules for survival. It will do what planets do everywhere. It responds to threats and tries to survive them. Fires burn out because the extent of forests is limited. Species die out because they destroy their own food supplies, or cannot compete. Storms fade out because they cannot sustain their energy to continue. Plagues of locusts cease for lack of food, though they would destroy all life, themselves included, given a continuous food supply. Volcanos stop erupting because the internal pressures are exhausted. Earthquakes end because of tectonic relief. Predation ends when the prey is essentially exhausted. Populations are limited because of the limitation of food supplies, disease, and disasters. This is because our planet limits natural disasters in many ways. It protects itself, signaling extinction for violations. 

Recently, we’ve seen the emergence of humankind. Exceptionally aggressive about resources, humans have come to dominate the planet with a global greed for materials, and energy sources, both driven by a lust for consumption. It is possible that when humans developed intelligence, it stopped normal evolution and ventured into a chaotic evolutionary form or even instability.

Right now, with climate advocates in a fury, with human conflicts raging, with population explosion, with planetary exploitation continuing, and with technological domination, our threatened planet may have marked us for extinction – or severe diminution. Mass insanity is emerging. Countries have become lazy, purposeless, or power-crazed. As well, while natural disasters have not increased, they appear to have become worse owing to a massive increase in population and consequential deaths.

This is an alternative look, not quite a theory, of our planetary status as viewed by Planet Earth. Are the climate enthusiasts something like evangelistic zealots, trying to slow down or prevent our demise? We know most of the climate arguments are made with highly incomplete information and possibly questionable models. Only a few dozen people worldwide understand the full nature of these models making such dire predictions – decades into the future. We know well that making untested predictions is a certain pathway to creating impossible problems*. As well, most of the financially powerful climate advocates are simply using the arguments to enhance personal power, wealth, and control. So, a reasonable question to be asked is whether they are functioning on a type of calculation, intuition, or belief.

So, we ask: Are we destroying our planet or is it our planet destroying us? And who’s winning?

This question seems odd, even to me. We all agree the planet is not a conscious entity in any sense we understand it. However, our planet is a system with multiple components all of which are constrained by the laws of physics and most possibly those of survival. It has survived multiple threats and continues to this day, surviving. Humans, however, have had a much briefer tenure and care little about the destruction of any species, including itself. It has controlled itself by limiting wars, even nuclear-types, but now it faces biological threats through human-manufactured diseases, and possibly even worse, a new form of intelligence (AI) that will render humans irrelevant and thus be followed by extinction. You see, Earth simply allows excesses that lead to extinction, like a plague of locusts, not actively pursuing it.

To date, my best estimate on who’s winning goes to Planet Earth. Almost no matter what humans do, the Earth will survive. (It really doesn’t care one iota about humans.) Even considering the worst humans can do, the Earth will be back in business within millennia. Even millions of years is a trifle for Planet Earth. Human life and survival are far more fragile. For the Earth, the worst that can happen is a collision with some gigantic meteor, and that’s far beyond reckoning.

*Here we give one form of impossible problem, that of pursuing an incorrect solution to a given problem, leading to greater problems, for example in a deep rut from which escape is difficult. Think of the possible consequences of the wrong medical diagnosis and treatment. The patient does not get better, but worse.  In the present case, diagnosing the Earth to be a victim (of us) may be incorrect.

Humans should not worry about saving the planet, but saving themselves.