This is a guest post from by PhotogHog, who made this thoughtful comment in response to (as part of the conversation with) Stranded Wind’s discussion Contemplating Human Extinction.
The Earth is ancient far beyond the understanding of most people. There have been giant continents, populated repeatedly with immense herds of large animals, innumerable deadly carnivores, forests stretching thousands upon thousands of miles, and deserts that today would encompass whole, and large, continents.
The Earth has also had many climates. It has been a hot, blasted wasteland, and it has been a frozen ball where once nearly the entire planet was covered in thousands of feet of blue ice.
It has been a garden with forests and seas stretching around the globe, a place where unknown millions of forms of life have arisen, lived for eon after eon after eon, and then perished. Many left no trace. Over that gulf of time, the Earth has been many things, and it has been each of those many things for millions and millions of years at a time.
We humans will become extinct. It is an absolute certainty, and there is not even the least shred of doubt about it. In the long run, we’re all extinct.
The only question is whether it will happen sooner because we let the corporations push us into extinction through greed, or later because we regain control of our lives.