Infinite Responsibility - Stolen Future, Broken Present: The Human Significance of Climate Change - page 122

Yet even this description does not capture the full dimensions of our
moment. We would hardly grasp the implications of this choice if we
did not extend our view further into the past. With Jared Diamond, for
example, we should trace the chronicle of civilizations that pushed their
environments beyond the breaking point and eventually collapsed—or
those that through foresight avoided that fate. 118 A decisive moment has
occurred on many previous occasions to civilizations around the world;
our version of that moment is unique only because it encompasses the
fate of the biosphere itself.
We could extend this view even further back. Contemplating the
whole sweep of human evolutionary history, we could atribute its disas-
trous effects to an inherent fault in the species. After all, the story might
go, over the millennia we have wiped out most of the large mammals,
destroyed many ecosystems, learned how to exploit nearly every living
thing for our benefit, multiplied our numbers seemingly without limit,
and now are about to torch the climate itself. If we continue with our
ways, consuming the biosphere to our heart's content, we will make sur-
vival for a good portion of living things difficult if not impossible.
Such stories could justify uter despair; if we have depleted the plan-
et's resources so systematically for millennia and have pushed the logic
of civilization beyond natural limits time and time again, there can surely
be no hope we will depart from this patern today. But such a despair
would hardly take into account how often we have acted wisely, or—
as Diamond's examples of the New Guinea highlands, Tikopia Island,
and Tokugawa-era Japan indicate—how often we have lived within our
means. 119 Nor would it recognize that we are neither simply a biological
species nor directly determined by our long history; we are also capable of
recognizing our status as animals whose actions threaten the other forms
of life on this planet and therefore are capable as well of surpassing our
selfishness for the sake of all life. Evolutionary and historical knowledge
should count for something; the awareness of that long legacy, unique to
our era, necessarily alters what it means to be human, transforming our
relationship to the conditions of our existence. It is surpassingly strange
that we as a species, arising from within the complex web of living forms,
would ultimately prove capable of damaging that web itself. But if that
is so, we have exceeded purely evolutionary determinations and become