We're Vampires, Baby, Sucking Blood From The Earth

“The world needs TV shows that DEVELOP solutions to the problems that humans are causing, not stupify the people into destroying the world. Not encouraging them to breed more environmentally harmful humans. Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.”

You probably recognize that from “My Demands,” the manifesto of James J. Lee, who took three people hostage at Discovery headquarters in Washington D.C. on Wednesday before being shot and killed by a police sniper. The only way to save the planet, James insisted, was to stop the birthing of “parasitic human infants.”

He was insane, no doubt. And no one should ever take hostages or use guns or homemade explosives to make a point. But, strangely, as a report the very next day by Discovery’s own Jennifer Viegas proves (and I was never so happy to see that byline; I sort of have a crush on her), Lee was kind of right. Apparently, the earth is now undergoing its sixth “mass extinction event,” an event the scientists attribute entirely to human activity. As John Alroy, a researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences at Australia’s Macquarie University, told Viegas:

“There is no precedent at all for what we’re doing. All well-understood extinctions in the deep fossil record are tied to environmental changes that were not triggered by the behavior of individual species, such as the asteroid impact 65 million years ago that wiped out the terrestrial (non-avian) dinosaurs.”

It has yet to be determined whether this current mass extinction event will be as devastating the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event that wiped out 90 percent of the planet’s species 250 million years ago, earning it the cheery nickname of “The Great Dying.” I hope it’s not. But since human beings are actually thriving while all these other species perish, I’m sure if we really set our minds to it, we could make this an even GREATER dying!

That last part is weird and fascinating. Scientific American’s David Biello explains how our existence dooms so many of the earth’s other life forms-and actually makes our own existence less pleasant in many ways. Less pleasant in many ways, but better fed.

“Farming drives much of the ecological damage humans do: from habitat loss (and decreasing biodiversity) to messing around with the cycle of nitrogen through the environment. So while there are costs associated with the loss of other ecosystem services-an example on my mind this anniversary week is the loss of wetlands that helped doom New Orleans to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina-our continued success at farming trumps them.

Seen in this light, it’s like the aliens from Independence Day. As president Bill Pullman said, “They’re like locusts. They travel from planet to planet, their whole civilization. After they’ve consumed every natural resource they move on. And we’re next.” Except we’re not next.

The squirrels are next.