Agree. Humans are atypically successful because we don't simply adapt to existing environments... we actively "transform" (destroy) environments to suit ourselves.

I have a feeling that's possibly just a property of life itself, reshaping its environment to maximize its ability to continue. Even simple one cell organisms cluster together to form biofilms to better survive in their niche.

It's a question of degree. Humans are uniquely adaptable, but only on small/medium scales.

We don't have the evolutionary intelligence to manage a planetary ecosystem without destroying it through overconsumption.

Intelligence is partly about scope. The smarter you are, the wider your predictive horizon.

Humans are semi-smart - good at small/medium problems, not smart enough to understand, build and maintain very complex multimodal systems with many moving parts.

Citation needed? Everything seems fine currently.

+1.5°C

We are literally and figuratively shitting where we eat on a global scale.

Ecosystems we dependon for survival are shrinking, becoming I hospitable to life or straight up disappearing.

See Tainter's work on the collapse of complex systems, and watch this nice video from B. Sid Smith. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WPB2u8EzL8

Humans are the only species I know of that goes out of its way to eradicate other species they find annoying, particularly without understanding said species' role in the ecosystem. And we're definitely the only species that has an economic system that rewards superorganisms that accidentally poison the entire ecosystem and then lie about it.

If you watch something like "Life on our planet", there have been species that basically hunted the seas empty of their food sources and then died out, so we're not that unique in that respect, but we are extremely efficient about it.

bc we accessed oil