371 | Kyle Harper on How Humans Have Shaped Life on Earth

Hello, everyone, welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. You may have heard that species of life forms here on earth are dying out at an unusually high rate. Sometimes this is called the sixth extinction or the Holocene extinction or the Anthropocene extinction. Just compared to the rate at which species go extinct, which of course always happens, right? There's never any moment where No species go extinct for an extended period because life is dynamic and things happen, but the rate of can change over time. Uh there have been a series of catastrophic extinctions in past history millions of years ago.

But right now species are dying out at a greater than usual rate, noticeably And we know why it's because of us, because of human beings changing the planets in different ways. But the precise extent to which what's going on right now is best described as a new massive extinction event is slightly controversial. And longtime MindScape listeners will not be surprised to learn the situation is somewhat complicated in various ways. So it's not that species are not going extinct. That's absolutely true.

But is that the right way to think about what is happening? Uh in general, human beings are causing all sorts. changes to the earth, to the biosphere, to the ecosystem. And Species going extinct is part of that, but is it the most important part? Is it the special part? Uh what else is going on, and what can we possibly do about it if we think that there is Oh cause to stop.

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