\u201cWe will either settle down as a species or completely wreck the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
That grim prognostication from esteemed biologist and longtime Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson<\/a> kicked off his assessment of the problems and possible solutions facing humanity and the many species with which we share planet Earth.<\/p>\n Wilson described several problems that collectively result in extinction rates today that are 1,000 times the natural background rate. Overpopulation, overharvesting, habitat destruction, invasive species, and pollution are all taking their toll. With human populations continuing to climb, pressures promise to increase. At the root of those problems is our inability to master our own urges and moderate our grasping for the resources of the natural world. Wilson said humanity is ruled by Paleolithic emotions, is guided by medieval institutions, and is wielding godlike power over the natural world, which he termed a dangerous combination.<\/p>\n \u201cThe radical reduction in the world\u2019s biodiversity is a folly our descendants will never forgive us for,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n Wilson spoke Monday evening (April 5) in Sanders Theatre in the first of three John M. Prather Lectures in Biology<\/a>, \u201cBiodiversity and the Future of Biology.\u201d The lectures are sponsored by the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology<\/a> and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology<\/a>. Delivered on consecutive days, they are the most distinguished lectures at Harvard in the biological sciences. The final two are at 4 p.m. in the Science Center and will address \u201cThe Superorganism\u201d and \u201cConsilience.\u201d<\/p>\n With climate change pointing so much scientific attention toward the planet\u2019s physical world, Wilson cautioned it\u2019s important that the biological world and biodiversity not be forgotten.<\/p>\n It\u2019s striking, he said, just how little is actually known about life on Earth. He directed students in the audience toward mycology, the study of fungi, as a field in which they\u2019d be able to make great progress, since so little is known. The world\u2019s roughly 60,000 known fungal species are just a fraction of the estimated 1.5 million. Similarly, he described the study of microscopic life as a veritable \u201cblack hole\u201d because so little is known.<\/p>\n Life exists from the deepest oceanic depths to the highest mountains, in superheated water from undersea vents and in corrosive runoff from abandoned mines. Life is possible wherever there is water, he said, and so could exist in the buried frosts of Mars, in the suspected oceans of Jupiter\u2019s moon Europa, and on Saturn\u2019s moon Enceladus.<\/p>\n