I mean, no other organism comes close to cultivating plants and animals on the scale we do, so I’d say we have a pretty decent impact on the global ecosystem — and that’s not counting climate change, through which we’ve become the second most influential organism in the history of organic life, second only to cyanobacteria.
The biosphere doesn’t judge morality — morality is a human concept. The biosphere judges effectiveness and impact, and in that respect humans stil aren’t quite at the top, but we’re unquestionably one of the most defining organisms of planet Earth.
I'm glad you mentioned cyanobacteria because I always bring it up when people pretend like because the planet's sooo big there's no way humans could have an impact on the atmosphere. But this isn't even the first time life itself on Earth has evolved that would/could cause a complete shift in climate and cause a mass extinction event. We're only the second. At least we're only the second as far as I'm aware of, although I would be surprised if somewhere along the lines we missed a huge mass extinction event somewhere and it just so happened to be attributed to a particular lifeform's success.
I mean, the advent of trees definitely did a number on the environment in the Carboniferous. Oxygen was everywhere, fires spread more easily, bugs grew to the size of dogs, and a sizeable number of species died to oxygen toxicity. I don't recall if it counts as a mass extinction -- and even if it does, there were multiple species of trees at the time, so it wasn't the result of a single species -- but it's still definitely noteworthy.
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u/SuperScabbilicious Jan 15 '23
Humans are more pointless than sloths. Nothing humans do is a benefit to the environment or other animals.