Existing in the natural world

One very powerful argument for the continuing process of evolution is that virtually all living things in an ecosystem are related and interdependent. This is why we have indicator species. This is why we have a food chain. All animals evolve as the environment changes and, with the species around them, put pressure on selecting the forms that follow.

Herein is the rub. Humans are not a part of this network. We break all the rules of ecosystem interrelationships. We can exist with no evolutionary pressures even while completely altering the ecosystem around us, remaining virtually independent, and in many cases ignorant of it.

We can, however, look at cases such as Easter Island in which the humans so altered their environment that they could no longer exist in it. Where are the global limits? Will there be a global collapse of the ecosystem and our place in it? Or will we gradually kill ourselves by altering our climate and thus food production, and polluting our air with ozone and particulates? Or, and this seems relatively unlikely, will we use the intelligence that separated us from the natural ecosystem to realize our limits and our impact, and find a self-regulated course in the global ecosystem that will sustain our place in it?