Mr. Callahan
24/08/18
As extinction became popularized, theories developed on what caused it; Charles Lyell, an Oxford-educated scientist, believed that extinction wasn't a quick, sudden event but a gradual and slow process. When Charles Darwin discovered Lyell's Principles, he found that his claims about the world were true. After returning from his travels, Darwin developed his theory of natural selection; he believed that life forms were constantly competing against each other for food and shelter. Therefore if a species went extinct, it was because other species were better at finding food and resources. With this being said, Darwin believed that it was easier to observe species extinction rather than a new species emergence. One example is the demise of the auk; auks used to number in millions until humans hunted them for food and fuel. I connected this to how technology and population growth have caused humans to increase their impact on the environment. Due to improved ships and the growing demand for fish, Europeans regularly traveled to Newfoundland until the auk’s extinction in 1844.
Even so, Darwin didn’t view humans as responsible for species extinction. As stated in the text, “At the heart of Darwin’s theory… is the denial of humanity's special status… Either there had to be a separate category for human-caused extinction, in which people really did deserve their special status as a creature outside of nature…” This passage interested me because it reveals that Darwin held humans and animals to the same status whereas Kolbert argues that humans are very different from animals since we alter the environment and hunt species for our benefit. Darwin most likely thought the way he did since at the time, there wasn’t a lot of information on the extremity of human actions. It wouldn’t be until severe disasters and high extinction rates when people realized that they were the cause of the Earth’s demise.
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