43 pages • 1-hour read
The Future of Life
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Rapid Disappearance of Biodiversity Relative to the Rate of Discovery
Even in the most extreme environments on Earth—such as hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor—there is life, in the form of bacteria and archaea. In slightly more hospitable environments, such as the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, one can find an even greater variety of life, including fungi and microscopic animals such as rotifers and mites, “McMurdo’s equivalent of elephants and tigers, yet all but invisible to the naked eye” (4). Expand this lens to the most biodiverse environments on Earth—such as the planet’s tropical forests—and we have a picture of a world that is bursting with millions of species, all of which are adapted, through evolution, to their specific ecological niche.
Yet, Wilson notes, we know very little about life on Earth, including how many species there are—estimates range from 3.6 million to over 100 million. Many species, such as those found in the ocean, have only been catalogued in the last several decades, and it’s unclear how many more, especially among microscopic organisms, still await discovery. What is certain, however, is that species are rapidly disappearing due to human activity. This fact gives additional urgency to the mapping of the world’s biodiversity, Wilson says—an urgency Wilson underscores in the book by describing the wide breadth of forms that life can take.
Formidable challenges exist for the scientists doing this work. Throughout the book, Wilson documents the various factors that drive extinctions, which often occur just as the species is uncovered. The exact cause of species decline is not always apparent, as it is often a consequence of the interaction between various forces; for instance, while habitat destruction is the main reason for the decline in amphibians, it’s exacerbated by, in some places, the human-caused hole in the ozone, which boosts UV-B radiation. This example speaks to how profoundly human beings have altered the planet. Given the scale of this alteration, it is unsurprising that humans are also ignorant of the far-reaching consequences of their actions, making it difficult not only to understand biodiversity loss, but also to stop it.
The negative consequences of human activities aren’t restricted to other species. In the book, descriptions of the rapid decline of biodiversity are echoed by the ways in which the discovery of the usefulness of wild species for humans can happen just as the species is going extinct; so it happened with the Calophyllum tree, which was found to be an HIV inhibitor but almost disappeared before it could be studied fully. In a similar way, biodiverse ecosystems provide a variety of ecosystem services—materials and information from the natural environment—that are little understood and are likely beyond human capacity to replicate. Humans are therefore ignorant both of how much the natural world provides and how they could duplicate it, even as we forge ahead with the eradication of these ecosystem services.
Yet there is a positive side to Wilson’s discussion of the rapid pace of biodiversity loss. Humans have historically been ignorant of their impact on the natural world, but as scientists gather more information, that ignorance is decreasing. Now that we know about the extent of our influence, Wilson writes, we have the possibility of changing course.
Human Beings’ Heedless Tendency Towards Environmental Destruction
While the 20th century was a destructive one for human beings, it was also a time of unprecedented economic growth and rising living standards. For the natural environment, however, the 20th century was unequivocally devastating. By the end of the century, the demand placed upon the planet’s resources by humans had exceeded the planet’s capacity to meet that demand, making both natural environments and humans themselves highly vulnerable. Throughout the book, Wilson imagines dialogues between interlocutors with opposing viewpoints to underscore how the human tendency to focus on the short term is putting the future of both humans and other forms of life in jeopardy—even when that short-term future is ostensibly focused on promoting human well-being.
While population and economic growth in the 20th century exacerbated the consequences of humans’ short-term thinking, Wilson traces this tendency back to the earliest days of Homo sapiens to show how it’s an innate feature of how people relate to their environments. Other than Africa and tropical Asia, all continents, apart from Antarctica, lost their megafauna soon after the arrival of Homo sapiens. The hypothesis for these areas having been spared is that because Homo sapiens evolved alongside the flora and fauna in these areas, other species were able to adapt to humans and to keep human populations in check. On other continents, where human beings were invaders, megafauna were defenseless against the onslaught. In the 20th and 21st centuries, those effects have been magnified, since human beings can now alter not only their immediate environment but also the planet writ large. This shift is evident in Wilson’s discussion of the factors that make up the HIPPO acronym; in the early days of Homo sapiens, the final letter, standing for overharvesting, was the most destructive to biodiversity. Now that humans have spread across every continent save Antarctica, the H, for habitat loss, is the factor contributing most to biodiversity decline. Either way, this acronym highlights Wilson’s point that humans have always adversely affected biodiversity.
While the rate of extinctions has increased exponentially and could result in the extinction of a fifth of all animal and plant species by 2030, Wilson’s discussion of the long history of this tendency among human beings shows that human-caused extinctions are as much a consequence of humanity’s shortsightedness when it comes to the natural world as they are a result of the specific technological and economic advancements of the last 100 years. Wilson thus underscores how the preservation of biodiversity depends on recognition of the damage we’ve done and an acceptance of the moral responsibility to change course, rather than the development of any technical capacity.
Despite the deep-rooted nature of this destructive relationship, Wilson holds out hope that it can be mitigated. Just as the shortsighted exploitation of the natural world is an intrinsic part of how humans relate to their environment, so, too, is the love of life; Wilson cites research that suggests that humans have an innate love of other life forms, which he calls biophilia. Drawing on his own experience, he points to the wonder and mystery that human beings find in nature. In highlighting these tendencies, Wilson offers a possible route to taming our more destructive impulses.
The Judgment of Future Generations
In Chapter 3, Wilson imagines the world in 2100, with humans having done little to restrain their consumption of the planet’s resources. As a result, “the natural world is suffering terribly” (77). Many of the environments that sustained biodiversity have disappeared, and as a result, biodiversity has dropped dramatically. The people living in this environment understand what they’ve lost, Wilson writes, even if it’s too late to reverse course. In this passage, and throughout the book, Wilson underscores how the loss of biodiversity, though a consequence of present-day activity, is primarily going to affect future generations.
In discussing the destructive history of Homo sapiens, Wilson is providing an analogous example of how present-day humans would appear in light of the judgment of future generations. Just as we look at the early colonists of New Zealand and wonder how they could have continued to hunt moa, even as it became clear the flightless birds were disappearing, so, too, will future generations wonder at the inability of 21st-century humans to change course.
Underscoring this destruction is the moral culpability of human beings in driving so many other life forms to extinction. While there may be practical consequences to the loss of biodiversity, the future—as Wilson imagines it in 2100—will still be livable. What will be harder to bear is the loss of the mystery, wonder, and well-being that come from sharing the planet with a vast variety of other forms of life. To lose this variety is to lose a part of the genetic heritage of life itself, which goes back millions of years. In this understanding, this genetic heritage belongs neither to those humans who are currently alive, nor to humans exclusively, and it is not ours to squander. Therefore, the perspective of future generations serves throughout the book not only as a way of thinking of the rights of those not yet born, but also as a stepping stone to considering other forms of life: “a change of heart occurs when people look beyond themselves to others, and then to a rest of life” (155).
In considering the perspective of future generations, we also see that the root of the solution is not technological or scientific, but moral—specifically, how we understand our responsibility to those who are to come. As Wilson notes, whether present generations leave space on the planet for other species, both now and in the future, is not a question of capacity, but of whether we choose to do so. As he imagines people a hundred years into the future assessing the present, he implies the choice not to change current behavior will be judged harshly.
Unlock every key theme and why it matters
Get in-depth breakdowns of the book’s main ideas and how they connect and evolve.
- Explore how themes develop throughout the text
- Connect themes to characters, events, and symbols
- Support essays and discussions with thematic evidence