Which, while making for an excellent bit of dialogue, is unfortunately not the case at all. The idea that natural systems reach an equilibrium is a fiction imposed by humans who invented the concept of “ecology” in the 20th century. Every attempt to measure an equilibrium has revealed that the system being measured is constantly changing and there is no stable configuration.

One of the first tenets of evolutionary ecology we learned in school is that all organisms need to be able to grow exponentially, to fill their niche. That's what everyone does, it grows when it's able. And humans mostly do that too.

The population expansion rate is declining, and we expect to level out around 9 billion people.

> The idea that natural systems reach an equilibrium is a fiction

There's a middle ground.

a) We invented modern medicine and now live 2-3x as long as evolution selects for.

b) We have effectively no predators. Most apex predators are limited in number based on availability of prey. We figured out how to intensively farm our prey. Therefore there's a very high bar that our population has yet to reach, which is unusual.

c) While an equilibrium observable in a short period of time may be rare in nature, over longer periods oscillations in population size correlated with availability of resources are common.

d) Since the entire system of our planet is dynamic and has had parameters changing relatively rapidly over our lifetimes (both directly and indirectly mostly caused by us), it would be unexpected to find a static relationship between species populations. Everything is adapting.

Humans don't actually live any longer. We just have less mortality at the lower end of the age spectrum which brings up the average. And it seems we still have predators if you consider covid maybe? Many countries on earth have a negative birth rate which suggests maybe there is some sort of equilibrium in my opinion. Of course I must point out my bias I am in fact a human being.

I wouldn't say there aren't stable configurations. These systems tend to bounce between strange attractors (which are stable with variance), and the set of possible strange attractors is also probably stable given the life forms that are interacting.

Of course, on geological time scales massive events can disrupt the set of possible strange attractors, but then nothing is stable or permanent as you go out in time scope so I'm not sure that matters.

Not to mention Agent Smith is dead wrong. Want to see biggest polluter/changer in the world. Plants. It's not a virus. It's plants.

Oxygen is a highly toxic compound, that's essentially exhaust gas for photosynthesis.

Plants changed the world way more than humans ever did. They redefined the basic chemistry of all other life on Earth. Because they slaughtered 97% of all life, by accident. What survived had to use/endure oxygen.

Perhaps this is a quibbling point but the Great Oxidation Event happened more than 2 billion years ago, long before plants evolved. Most atmospheric oxygen was "created" by cyanobacteria. In fact, plants - along with all other multicellular organisms - were one of the beneficiaries of the GOE as they would not have been able to evolve without it.

You are right, but cyanobacteria is a plant or plant life predecessor.

Either way. Cyanobacteria isn't a virus, like Agent Smith implied.

I find this story extremely compelling. (Is it True?)

> Because they slaughtered 97% of all life, by accident.

And isn’t this also true of humans? We’re not killing other species (and their “habitats”) on purpose, it’s a side effect of Real Goals (eg, we want fuel to heat our homes so we can survive the winter. Or more cynically, Fuel Source Executives need to sell fuel in order to consume yachts and ski vacations).

See great oxidation event.

Also destroing x% of species isn't same destroying x% of life.

If there are ten species of 2 individuals and 80 individuals of another species, you can kill ~90% species while killing only 20% of all life. If you kill 90% of all life you have to kill 90 individuals.

All equilibrium is temporary and imperfect. In the complete absence of external influences (which in the extreme in practice is impossible) ecosystems do indeed reach something approaching equilibrium, certainly with fluctuations in predators and prey, but no violent, sudden disruptions.

There's a whole genre of YouTube videos made by hobbyists who establish ecosystems in glass jars and seal them for many years.

https://youtu.be/Es6DDuMmhAM

Edit: With (of course) the external influence of light ;)

I remember that quote but it's not backed by reality. Plenty of mammals haven't reached a "natural equilibrium" and are destroying fauana/plantlife unchecked.

Some examples from present time-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia, http://www.iucngisd.org/gisd/100_worst.php

According to the ideology that nature should be/have become static and that all changes are therefore due to humans, the rabbits are just a symptom of human destruction.

We live in a finite world. Equilibrium will happen. Given enough time, the rabbits will run out of food and start to die off. Or a predator will be introduced (or evolve) that will feed on the rabbits and flourish.

Which is exactly why I do not worry about so called "invasive species" (cats, kudzu, english ivy, ...)

Only humans are truly invasive.

We’re just as invasive as the other ones, exploiting our own environment as much as we can.