- To me, what really stood out... And I always say, look, I'm not a scientist, I'm relying on what scientists tell me. And I think many scientists would say that what we're doing to the chemistry of the oceans is the most significant. One-third of the carbon-dioxide that we pump into the air ends up in the oceans almost right away, and when CO2 dissolves in water, it forms an acid, that's just an unfortunate fact.
This is absolutely a sobering thought. Sure we can recognize that what we are doing to our planet is harmful, but can we stop ourselves from doing so? I personally believe it will be to difficult for humanity to overcome this collective action problem, so I have my fingers crossed that we will be able to ride this out.Here's the big thing I took away, and it’s a very sobering thought: Many of our best qualities as humans —our creativity, our cleverness, our cooperation, the fact that we can work in these huge societies, and pass knowledge on from generation to generation — those things can turn out to be damaging. It's not just that we go out and poach things, although that's a problem. We've very smart and inventive and we can change the planet by doing things that have no evil intent. For example, going on vacation and bringing a bat fungus from Europe to the United States completely unintentionally. So it's not always clear how you would separate out what we do just by being human from what we do that has all of these unfortunate side effects.
I've never been able to figure out quite how I personally feel about the impact we have on the climate/other species. After all, we are a species. If, say, capybaras did all that we've done and eliminated so many other species, in 500 million years someone would look back and say, "Wow, those capybaras sure were the most successful species of all time." And we are the most successful species of all time. The question from a utility standpoint is whether we've hit the backwards-bending portion of our existence, where our very success is what costs us.