Evolutionary blink of an eye

So, the current rate of species exctinction is almost one hundred thousand times more rapid than the natural rate, according to this article. What does that mean? Probably not a lot. Considering science has only identified a fraction of all organisms on earth, and most of those we can see with the naked eye are ecologically unimportant. We could kill every green plant on the planet, for example, and still have enough oxygen for a hundred years or so.

Does it mean we should be worried? Possibly, but worrying about it is not going to solve the problem.

Does it mean we should do something about it? Probably, but when it comes down to it, we are the only species with any kind of values system, so if we wipe ourselves out, there won't be anyone left to whom it will matter.

And the whole thing will start all over again.

Quite reasonably, the best all around solution.

Before we arrived, there were no problems, because there was no one around to couch a situation in such terms, nor even consider the world around them in such systematic theoretical framework. Things ate other things, they lived, they procreated, they died. The measure of success was the number of viable offspring any individual contributed genes to. If evolution is a kind of never ending experiment, then it may just be that this course of investigation has reached it's ultimate potential.

Time to return to basic principles, perhaps. It has happened before.