One of the most striking images I’ve taken from class is the graph that indicates the ways that humanity is most heavily impacting the global ecosphere. Our destruction of biodiversity is striking. What does it mean to be less biodiverse? Have their been periods of time where the world was more or less biodiverse? What does a larger or smaller preponderance of species do to the planet? A less diverse ecosystem makes for a simpler system, and perhaps even a less aesthetically pleasing one, but why is it inherently bad? It seems like there are plenty of more or less biodiverse systems that we value equally. Perhaps some of it could be for posterity; the spread on invasive species erases the borders of unique natural environments that we have known for most of our time on the planet. With the destruction of unique cultures to globalization, so go unique species.
One the most important themes I’ve noticed in class, and in the assigned readings, is the difference between large-scale action and our own responsibility in the anthropocene. Discussions about culpability frequently reflect this divide, as we discuss the blame that can be assigned to large emitting countries like the United States and China against the states that will be disproportionally affected, such as Bangladesh or the Maldives. We also seem to be approaching a discussion on our own power as individuals to affect climate change and human-caused detrimental affects to the environment, as some of the readings focused on the futility or even counter productiveness of emphasizing the individuals ability to make lasting change against the need for state scale legislative or systematic action.