Humans Triggering Role Into Sixth Mass Extinction

Impact Of Humankind on Extinction

In the past, it has taken life ten to thirty million years to recover after such an extinction, 40 to 120 times as long as modern-looking humans have been telling tales by firelight. Moreover, Williams and his team argue that future changes driven by humanity may go so far as to create not just a new epoch in geologic history – such as the widely-touted Anthropocene – but a fundamental reshaping of Earth on par with the rise of microbes or the later shift from microbes to multicellular organisms. Thirdly, humanity has become a massive force in directing evolution. He added that even conservation is impacting evolution.

They define the technosphere as «the global, energy consuming techno-social system that comprises humans, technological artifacts, and technological systems, together with the links, protocols and information that bind all these parts together». Basically, the technosphere is the vast, sprawling combination of humanity and its technology. Haff argues that in our thousands of years of harnessing technology – including the first technologies like stone tools, wheels and crops – the technology itself has basically begun to act practically independently, creating a new sphere , but like nothing the planet has ever seen before.

«If humans were to go extinct tomorrow, then our impact on

the biosphere would be recognisable as an epoch boundary – like the boundary between the Pleistocene and Holocene,» Williams pointed out. «After us, a few tens to hundreds of thousands of years in the future, the biosphere would find a new equilibrium without us, and probably with its biodiversity largely intact».

If the changes made to the biosphere by humans continue to accelerate and are sustainable, and if our interaction with the technosphere becomes a major component of Earth’s future trajectory, then the changes can be argued to be really fundamental, The scientists argue then that the changes would be so extreme, and so unlike anything that the Earth has ever seen before, that it could represent a geological shift as big as the rise of microbes on the planet or the rise of multicellular organisms. «We are not in a mass extinction event yet, and it’s very important to emphasise that, because it means we can still make changes,» said Williams.

The scientists agree that to avoid mass extinction – and tackle the current environmental crisis – is possible but will require large-scale changes not only in how society operates but how humans view their relation to the natural world.

By Catalina Botero and Jazmin Ruiz,

Step 8 Blue, Project Class