Summary
In his article “Is humanity suicidal?” E.O. Wilson wants to bring to attention that the ecosystem of the Earth is declining rapidly and human kind plays a crucial role in it. He describes the historical line of how this poor situation has happened. In addition E.O. Wilson provides strategies of how people can cope with arising eco-problems. “Juggernaut theory of human nature” is one of the key discussions of the author with the reader. This assumption explained by Wilson is that humans are so egotistic, that they will try to avoid any understanding of the arising environmental problems until it will be no time to go back.
It is interesting how the author shows examples of mass species extinctions, habitat devastations, contaminations, rising atmospheric CO2 levels and etc. in a subjective way.
Although Wilson demonstrates a very bad situation of global environment, he still wants to show his optimism for humans. This hope is represented by people’s capability to realize what can and cannot be controlled in this natural world. Humans are not able to copy all of the complex relations and interactions that persevere among the billions of different species on earth, states the author.
This situation can be changed by centering of attention on environmental harm lessening and the endorsement of policies to decrease negative human impacts on ecosystems. Humans have to limit their power over natural ecological processes.
Discussion
My opinion is a bit more optimistic, than the one presented in the paper, but I could agree that people should modify their attitude and actions in order to survive on Earth, because we sometimes fail to comprehend how dangerous and long-term the effects, that certain behaviors have on our environment are. Author says that we have time and capabilities to prevent an environmental catastrophe, and in my opinion this phase of prevention has to start now, or as soon as possible.