Is Humanity Suicidal?

In a prophetic 1993 article titled "Is Humanity Suicidal?", Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson described two kinds of people. There are "exceptionalists" who believe humanity transcends the laws of biology and ecology, thanks to our unique intelligence. If we accidentally change the atmosphere, we can fix it with technology. If Earth becomes in some way unlivable, we'll find another planet.

Then there are "environmentalists" who believe we humans are woven into the natural world and can't survive independent of our ecosystem. Environmentalists worry that we don't understand the natural world well enough to fix it once it's broken.

That division hasn't changed much since 1993. What has changed is that Wilson's more dire predictions are today's reality.

Here's a scenario Wilson paints of the future of a hypothetical threatened forest: "In a final desperate move, a team of biologists is scrambled in an attempt to preserve the biodiversity by extraordinary means. Their assignment is the following:  Collect samples of all the species of organism quickly, before the cutting starts; maintain the species in zoos, gardens and laboratory culture or else deep-freeze samples of the tissues in liquid nitrogen, and finally, establish the procedure by which the entire community can be reassembled on empty grounds at a later date, when social and economic conditions have improved."

This is very similar to what's happening now in Haiti, where I'll be travelling next week to chronicle the efforts of biologists to collect some of the country's unique amphibians. The animals will be kept in zoos, so they can be studied before they go extinct. Their tissues will also be frozen, for future cloning possibilities.