ronsterm, "And what exactly is the problem with our survival being at the expense of other species? Isn't this Darwinism at work? Survival of the fittest and the fittest survive. DA is a Darwinist so what is his problem? Is this too crass a view?"
Kalmsg "Yes it is to crass and also is not a sustainable model."
And I agree with ......
Kalmsg. Why?
A simple explaination is offered as follows in this analogy:
In a very simple ecosystem we have grass, sunlight, atmosphere, climate, rabbits and foxes.
The fox regulates its population numbers in accordance with the rabbits.
One day the rabbit population explodes. Yippee, the foxes set about mass reproduction too. The distinction is that the reabbits are much faster than the fox. Much faster at reproducing.
The next day the ecosystem is alive with rabbits and foxes. Fox numbers increase in tandem with rabbits. Their reproduction rate is a function of rabbit abundance.
Suddenly, drought descends and the rabbit population is faced with the loss of foraging resources. It's population declines in accord with the loss of grass, but also in accord with the predation by foxes.
Problem.
The fox regulates its population in accord with the rabbit and does not have a direct link to fundamental environmental factors like the rabbit does. The rate in which the rabbit can recover (i.e. faster) is another piece of insight into what happens next.
What happens next is the fox drives the rabbit population close to extinction, but not quite. The odd rabbit will survived here and there. BUT, the population of Foxes remains high and gets very hungry.
This is what leads us to something called the Extinction Deficiet. The fox is now faced with a rapid population decline at a rate that it cannot pull out of. Its fecunditidy rate was unsustainably high and now faces extreme adversity without respite.
Which animal is going extinct?
The rabbit will probably survive, but the fox will probably go extinct.
See my simple point (oh and I am aware that the issue is far more complicated).
This is Darwinism in its extreme is it not! We humans are the fox. We assume too much (i.e. rabbit populations remain high/ abundant). I think darwinism does not exclude us as organsims.
