The Earth is experiencing its sixth mass extinction. An estimated 30,000 species are disappearing each year, three or more every hour of every day. By 2050, up to 50 percent of all species could be gone. The most recent of five previous mass extinctions was 65 million years ago and caused the demise of dinosaurs and the majority of other species. But some life forms survived past calamities — asteroid impacts, volcanic eruptions, global warming, glaciation, gamma-ray bursts, or whatever else they may have been — and a few have lived on to the present day. Will they survive the mass extinction that is currently underway? Will we?

Over the eons, some species — algae, horseshoe crabs, and cockroaches, for example — have proven themselves better able to adapt to catastrophic change than others. One species, Homo sapiens, meaning wise man but more commonly referred to as modern man, had a close call about 70,000 years ago, when a combination of events — drought, eruption of the Toba supervolcano, global cooling — cut its numbers to as few as 2,000. But the species somehow made it through that period and ultimately thrived, its numbers having grown to 6.7 billion today. Many other species, including a close relative, Homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthal man, have failed their tests of adaptability.

There is something very different about the sixth mass extinction from those that preceded it. This extinction is not caused by natural cosmic, geophysical, or climatic changes, but rather by the growth and habits of one species — modern man. He has destroyed habitat and entire ecosystems, overhunted, overfished, and overharvested other species, depleted natural resources, polluted the land, the water, and the atmosphere, and disrupted the climate of the planet. He has done so by leaving his niche within nature and attempting to dominate the natural world. As paleontologist Niles Eldredge puts it, “Homo sapiens became the first species to stop living inside local ecosystems. . . . Indeed, to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems — converting land to produce one or two food crops, with all other native plant species now classified as unwanted ‘weeds’ — and all but a few domesticated species of animals now considered as pests.”

The impact of man on the Earth threatens to be as disastrous to life on the planet’s surface as the impact of a giant asteroid. And like an asteroid, the human impact has also left a cloud of debris encircling the planet. Most disturbingly, as with asteroids whose paths are destined by the laws of physics to end in destruction on Earth, neither the target planet nor its life forms has any defense against this threat. Although these words prove that some part of his consciousness is aware of the consequences, man seems incapable of restraining himself. He is compelled to continue his procreative and destructive ways, even if it precipitates a mass extinction of life on Earth, an event that may claim his own species among its victims. Hey, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

So I return to my original question. Will humanity survive the current mass extinction? No one can know for sure, but I suspect that Homo sapiens will adapt to a world bereft of half its species, a world of climate extremes, a world overrun by ten billion or more humans before their civilization and their numbers necessarily decline. They will hang on until the end, until the supply of algae, horseshoe crabs, and cockroaches is no longer sufficient to sustain them.

For more information about the sixth mass extinction, click this link, and here, here, and here.