Reply #10: As the late George Carlin famously noted:

[Orrex]

"The planet is fine. We're in a lot of trouble."

He was deriding the "save the planet" slogan that was so popular in the early 90s. He further suggested that we "ask the people of Pompeii if they think that the planet needs our help." If the planet wanted to get rid of us, it could do it with the equivalent of a mild shrug (which Carlin demonstrated along with a short of "shivering" sound).



Of course, while we're still here we're doing a great job of fucking up huge swaths of the ecosystem, but maybe mass extinction is the basic purpose of humanity? I mean, can you name anything that we--as a species--are better at doing on a large scale?