Discussion»Questions»Environment» Does man's impact on the environment made to be seen as no more significant than any other natural event that has brought life
Does man's impact on the environment made to be seen as no more significant than any other natural event that has brought life
to near extinction obscure the fact that recovery time between natural near extinction level events is now reduced making the probability of the next extinction level event NOT near level but complete.
I can’t make heads or tails of the intent of your question here, but I think there is an omission in your line of thought There is no ” recovery time“ from extinction. Once a species is extinct, it is lost. We (the Earth) lose a species of life nearly daily now, none of these will ever recover.
Further, man’s impact on the environment is far beyond comparison to any natural events, other than the types of extreme calamities that caused the previous mass extinctions. What we have in this ongoing cycle of human-caused extinction is a slowly rolling death train. All life is at risk. We are damned poor custodians of our world.
This post was edited by Don Barzini at January 1, 2018 9:55 AM MST
I think Don Barzini has answered well, what seems to be what the question tries to ask!
I would though take "recovery time" to mean life in general, not any one species or even genus.
Don is right that once a species is extinct that's it, but life generally does recover from mass-extinctions. However, it takes so long that it would be practically meaningless in human-history terms - assuming of course that ours was not one of the lost species!
Don Barzini 