One could take from this piece the clear message that this is all self-correcting. Which it is. This planet has gone through minor as well as massive changes over billions of years. Multiple ice ages, giant meteor strikes, and so on, and on. Life as we identify it — biological life — has persisted through it all, ever since it first appeared. Seems likely it will continue to do so, with or without our species.

Human “civilization” (so-called) is less than a blip on the time scale of the planet. All of human existence as a species is barely a blip. The recent period of rapid human overpopulation and industrial destruction of our life support systems is a tiny fraction of a blip.

In short, we’re not that important, at all, in bigger pictures. But we can generate a lot of hand-wringing and drama and guilt and stress from thinking we are.

A big irony here is that thinking we are far more important than we are is what leads us to behave so self- and other-destructively.