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Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish
Global warming, loss of biodiversity, and toxic chemicals are undermining the ability of the planet to support complex life. Routinely overlooked in causing our current predicament is that several million years of evolution has predisposed Homo sapiens, both anatomically and behaviorally, to vanishing.
A former endangered species biologist looks at the ongoing sixth extinction through the prism of human behavior, personal experience, ecology, evolutionary biology, and contemporary conservation efforts. He provides new insights into factors triggering the current mass extinction event and examines conventional wisdom regarding human intelligence. The author suggests-as humanity edges ever closer to disappearing forever-a clear-eyed, real-world rationale for resignation but also acceptance.
A former endangered species biologist looks at the ongoing sixth extinction through the prism of human behavior, personal experience, ecology, evolutionary biology, and contemporary conservation efforts. He provides new insights into factors triggering the current mass extinction event and examines conventional wisdom regarding human intelligence. The author suggests-as humanity edges ever closer to disappearing forever-a clear-eyed, real-world rationale for resignation but also acceptance.
- GenresNonfictionEnvironment
270 pages, Paperback
Published January 16, 2024
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January 2, 2025
“We only know what we want to know.” “We are the only known self-gaslighting species.” If we were interested in saving our planet, we’d know that “there is no need to fly to the moon to experience incredible marvels. All that is necessary is to walk outside and truly appreciate the intricacies of Earth and its many and varied inhabitants.” “Most people live in a myopic bubble completely independent of the planet that supports us.” “Money is a figment of the human imagination. (And so) Humans attach no value to a habitable Earth but a high value to something that doesn’t actually exist.” “Anthropocentrism fuels a disinterested, materialistic human populace” that wrongly thinks problems will be solved by technology.
“The acquisition of fire disrupted the long-standing equilibrium (between humans and animals) that had persisted for hundreds of thousands of years” and “facilitated their (human) expansion into colder climates and effectively transformed humans into an invasive species (not unlike the US military as invasive species).” The evolutionary development of the human shoulder making it possible to throw could be the “threshold that began the sixth extinction on the planet”. “The more we share myths, the more intelligent we perceive other people (who share our myths) with whom we directly or indirectly interact.” “For the last 2,000 years, infant mortality has hovered around 27% and about 46% of youths died before reaching puberty.” That only changed for the better in the past 150 years.
Our hunter-gather ancestors knew where fish spawned, where animals congregated, and which insects were edible. “They knew more about wildlife than any modern-day biologist, more about plants than any botanist, and more about the uses of plants than herbalists.” They knew where to find basalt and flint to make flake points, needles and knife blades. Leopards then were the “ultimate adversary” because unlike lions, they could climb trees. For safety, early humans lived in caves which is why we call them “cavemen”. “People now have a much closer affinity with iPhones, Amazon, online shopping, restaurants and bars, Netflix, beauty salons, and sporting events than forests, grasslands, marshes, and oceans.” “Happy, positive people who fully understand the consequences of what humanity is doing to the planet are rare”. “The climate is now leaving the stable Holocene period and entering uncharted territory.” We are presently losing 150 species a day. “We’ve now reached the palliative care phase of our existence on Earth.”
The collective actions of humans the author calls “the worst plague that ever existed”. “Truth-telling isn’t just unpopular with the establishment, but also, too often these days, with the public.” When concerned scientists mention overshoot and approaching collapse and extinction, “few in mainstream society hear them, and even fewer care.” The response is usually indifference, disdain or ridicule. What many call civilization, the author calls “toxic, genocidal and ecocidal” and to save ourselves we must limit family size, drastically reduce personal consumption, and remove social inequality and its hierarchies because growth = ecocide.
On human intelligence, ask yourself “how intelligent is an organism that destroys what it needs for life and then dies out? Or how intelligent to “send humankind to the moon but fail to pay attention to the Earth?” Did you know that the brains of Neanderthals were “slightly larger than ours”? And that in the last 20,000 years the human brain has noticeably shrunk (p.51)? Chairs only showed up about 5,000 years ago. The average human sits for 6.5 hours a day. To counteract the problems with sitting many people join gyms where they comically can exercise while sitting. Climbing trees used to be a daily activity for men and women – that was replaced by today’s social climbing. Humans have only been peak predator for 10,000 to 20,000 years, before that it was saber-tooth cats for 30 million years and Tyrannosaurs for 20 million years.
Note that all major religions are NOT bio-centric; they put man above nature. This includes Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism. Religions of superiority and indifference to plants and animals. These religions won’t tell you that “without plants, there would be no animals and certainly no humans.” “People are the quintessential takers. Biting the hand that feeds us isn’t enough; we murder the givers.”
Fun Facts: “The ban on DDT was followed by a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides in agriculture.” Did you know that 1,700 environmental activists worldwide have been murdered in the past decade (p.239)? Humans “were just another species for 97% of our time on Earth.” We share 75% of our genes with mice. What R U? A man or a mouse? Well, science says I’m 75% of a mouse. “The ultimate form of racism is genocide (e.g. Hitler then, e.g. Israel today)”. Pigeons and salmon use the Earth’s magnetic field like a compass. In 1878 near Petoskey, Michigan 50,000 passenger pigeons were killed daily “for nearly five months.” In water, beavers can swim up to six miles per hour and “stay submerged for up to 15 minutes while traveling over half a mile.” Top Hats used to be made with mercury which created “mad hatters” like in Alice in Wonderland. If it hadn’t been for the development of the silk top hat, “beavers would have preceded the passenger pigeon into extinction.” Beavers are now 5 to 10% of their historical population. 31 million bison were slaughtered between 1868 and 1881. “By 1889, there were fewer than 1,000 of these creatures left on the continent.” “The Homestead Act of 1862 spelled the end of the tallgrass prairie.” Thanks to that Act, “Entire towns of 10,000 were created in a single day.” Hired on public rangelands, wildlife biologists learned if they “say nothing (critical), they are everyone’s friend.” If you want to be attacked, mention that you see “overgrazing.”
Trees: The most intelligent organisms on Earth are forests (p.66 is about their “vast below-ground mycorrhizal networks”). The largest organism on the planet is Pando in Utah, 40,000 Aspen trees connected by a 14,000-year-old root system. This amazing root system enables Aspens in crappo soils to get nutrients or water from those in nutrient or water rich soils. Comically it’s also the closest thing to socialism in the US. Thinning trees in a forest can lead to greater fire spread due to “greater wind penetration.” The author comically says thinking that timber harvesting makes your forest healthier is like “tearing down banks and stores to prevent robberies and shoplifters.”
Habitat Loss: Land development of course destroys natural habitat but most people think the animals can just move. Such a “just move your ass” mindset also explains Zionism. I’m chosen, you aren’t – move – and I really don’t care where. Habitat loss easily explains the crazy decline of wildlife and biodiversity in the past 50 years. Try imagine any place you travel to or thing you enjoy doing that doesn’t somehow “negatively impact the environment.” When you go to Home Depot, do you think about what part of nature died so you can buy something there? Even the paper towels used at the gym contributes to deforestation and climate change. Species like the American Pika will go extinct largely because very few care about a species if it can’t be monetized. Capitalism in action.
“The first religious effect off the Agricultural Revolution was to turn plants and animals from equal members of an ecological round table into property.” The amount of acreage presently cultivated in rice is equivalent to the entire country of India. Now picture the scope of 8 billion people eating rice. Every year, we put 8 million more tons of garbage in the oceans where 269,000 tons float to the surface. Humans now average ingesting one credit card size amount of plastic per week, soon it will be up to two or three. A nuclear power plant that could service Florence Italy would produce 27 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually. Fast Fashion: 92 metric tons of clothing end up in landfills annually. Only 21 out of 350,000 chemicals have been banned so far.
Even if today we suddenly had zero population growth, climate threats would worsen. Climate change was created by economic growth, prosperity, industrialization, and deforestation. “We are a species poised to soon disappear. Humanity is literally racing to extinction.” But “there is some consolation in knowing that we will not eradicate all life on Earth.” “Many politicians effectively spoon-feed people a tale THEY want to hear and trust.” “As long as everyone believes climate change, deforestation, desertification, and the loss of biodiversity won’t affect our lifestyle, we can continue on with our lives unaffected.” People don’t want to think about what goes on in slaughterhouses, let alone how unexamined bi-partisan capitalism (demanding infinite growth on a finite planet) will soon make our planet unlivable, and is leading us to collapse and extinction. Looking away from a profoundly uncomfortable future is the new black. Someone tell Vogue Magazine.
Liberals love to ridicule Conservatives with their snotty “Trust Science” memes, while staying clueless that most scientists work not for the people but for corporations. And “industries adversely affected by research findings routinely hire scientists to undermine the credibility and results of legitimate research.” Such scientists the author calls “biostitutes”. Child vs. Car: Each child you have generates 58 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, while each car generates only 2.5 tons. “Domestic livestock wiped out most of the native grasses over a period of approximately 75 to 90 years after the Civil War.” “The continuous expansion of one species results in the contraction of others.” Flint, Michigan is now similar to Chernobyl and you should see it as “representative of what will occur with increasing frequency across the planet.”
Pets: “Cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals each year.” US dogs and cats eat as many calories as the entire human population of France annually. And they create the same amount of carbon dioxide (64 million tons) as a year of 14 million cars driving around. And don’t forget they produce 5 million tons of feces per year – the same amount as all our politicians annually create in their corporate-approved speeches to us. Medium-sized dogs in the US require around two acres of land to keep them fed which is more than what the average citizen in Vietnam requires. Invasive plants will only become more and more the “death knell” for endangered species and ecosystems. Fun fact: It takes three mines in Wyoming just to create all the US kitty litter (4 billion pounds worth). When collapse hits, imagine feeding all your animals plus your own ass.
In conclusion, there’s no silver bullet or technology coming to save humanity. While we wait for collapse, Americans surrounding us will only focus on their iPhones and the immediate world (sans nature) around them. The author perfectly says for these Americans such intentional myopia is deliberately, “like looking through a keyhole.” Like a simple addition problem, add these together: climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, desertification, trash, toxins and an induced culture of narcissism and entitlement. That will all lead to collapse and extinction and the author bets that will happen around 2055. As Lyle says “the probability of our demise increases with every passing year.” When it happens, you’ll have 330 million Americans all blaming (not themselves or their neoliberal leaders but) Russia, China, and maybe those damn Palestinians who didn’t like genocide. Anyway, this was a great book about a subject VERY few Americans will intentionally care about until it’s too late. I really recommend to anyone reading this important book, but at least for now I’ve given you the gist of it. Bravo, Lyle…
“The acquisition of fire disrupted the long-standing equilibrium (between humans and animals) that had persisted for hundreds of thousands of years” and “facilitated their (human) expansion into colder climates and effectively transformed humans into an invasive species (not unlike the US military as invasive species).” The evolutionary development of the human shoulder making it possible to throw could be the “threshold that began the sixth extinction on the planet”. “The more we share myths, the more intelligent we perceive other people (who share our myths) with whom we directly or indirectly interact.” “For the last 2,000 years, infant mortality has hovered around 27% and about 46% of youths died before reaching puberty.” That only changed for the better in the past 150 years.
Our hunter-gather ancestors knew where fish spawned, where animals congregated, and which insects were edible. “They knew more about wildlife than any modern-day biologist, more about plants than any botanist, and more about the uses of plants than herbalists.” They knew where to find basalt and flint to make flake points, needles and knife blades. Leopards then were the “ultimate adversary” because unlike lions, they could climb trees. For safety, early humans lived in caves which is why we call them “cavemen”. “People now have a much closer affinity with iPhones, Amazon, online shopping, restaurants and bars, Netflix, beauty salons, and sporting events than forests, grasslands, marshes, and oceans.” “Happy, positive people who fully understand the consequences of what humanity is doing to the planet are rare”. “The climate is now leaving the stable Holocene period and entering uncharted territory.” We are presently losing 150 species a day. “We’ve now reached the palliative care phase of our existence on Earth.”
The collective actions of humans the author calls “the worst plague that ever existed”. “Truth-telling isn’t just unpopular with the establishment, but also, too often these days, with the public.” When concerned scientists mention overshoot and approaching collapse and extinction, “few in mainstream society hear them, and even fewer care.” The response is usually indifference, disdain or ridicule. What many call civilization, the author calls “toxic, genocidal and ecocidal” and to save ourselves we must limit family size, drastically reduce personal consumption, and remove social inequality and its hierarchies because growth = ecocide.
On human intelligence, ask yourself “how intelligent is an organism that destroys what it needs for life and then dies out? Or how intelligent to “send humankind to the moon but fail to pay attention to the Earth?” Did you know that the brains of Neanderthals were “slightly larger than ours”? And that in the last 20,000 years the human brain has noticeably shrunk (p.51)? Chairs only showed up about 5,000 years ago. The average human sits for 6.5 hours a day. To counteract the problems with sitting many people join gyms where they comically can exercise while sitting. Climbing trees used to be a daily activity for men and women – that was replaced by today’s social climbing. Humans have only been peak predator for 10,000 to 20,000 years, before that it was saber-tooth cats for 30 million years and Tyrannosaurs for 20 million years.
Note that all major religions are NOT bio-centric; they put man above nature. This includes Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism. Religions of superiority and indifference to plants and animals. These religions won’t tell you that “without plants, there would be no animals and certainly no humans.” “People are the quintessential takers. Biting the hand that feeds us isn’t enough; we murder the givers.”
Fun Facts: “The ban on DDT was followed by a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides in agriculture.” Did you know that 1,700 environmental activists worldwide have been murdered in the past decade (p.239)? Humans “were just another species for 97% of our time on Earth.” We share 75% of our genes with mice. What R U? A man or a mouse? Well, science says I’m 75% of a mouse. “The ultimate form of racism is genocide (e.g. Hitler then, e.g. Israel today)”. Pigeons and salmon use the Earth’s magnetic field like a compass. In 1878 near Petoskey, Michigan 50,000 passenger pigeons were killed daily “for nearly five months.” In water, beavers can swim up to six miles per hour and “stay submerged for up to 15 minutes while traveling over half a mile.” Top Hats used to be made with mercury which created “mad hatters” like in Alice in Wonderland. If it hadn’t been for the development of the silk top hat, “beavers would have preceded the passenger pigeon into extinction.” Beavers are now 5 to 10% of their historical population. 31 million bison were slaughtered between 1868 and 1881. “By 1889, there were fewer than 1,000 of these creatures left on the continent.” “The Homestead Act of 1862 spelled the end of the tallgrass prairie.” Thanks to that Act, “Entire towns of 10,000 were created in a single day.” Hired on public rangelands, wildlife biologists learned if they “say nothing (critical), they are everyone’s friend.” If you want to be attacked, mention that you see “overgrazing.”
Trees: The most intelligent organisms on Earth are forests (p.66 is about their “vast below-ground mycorrhizal networks”). The largest organism on the planet is Pando in Utah, 40,000 Aspen trees connected by a 14,000-year-old root system. This amazing root system enables Aspens in crappo soils to get nutrients or water from those in nutrient or water rich soils. Comically it’s also the closest thing to socialism in the US. Thinning trees in a forest can lead to greater fire spread due to “greater wind penetration.” The author comically says thinking that timber harvesting makes your forest healthier is like “tearing down banks and stores to prevent robberies and shoplifters.”
Habitat Loss: Land development of course destroys natural habitat but most people think the animals can just move. Such a “just move your ass” mindset also explains Zionism. I’m chosen, you aren’t – move – and I really don’t care where. Habitat loss easily explains the crazy decline of wildlife and biodiversity in the past 50 years. Try imagine any place you travel to or thing you enjoy doing that doesn’t somehow “negatively impact the environment.” When you go to Home Depot, do you think about what part of nature died so you can buy something there? Even the paper towels used at the gym contributes to deforestation and climate change. Species like the American Pika will go extinct largely because very few care about a species if it can’t be monetized. Capitalism in action.
“The first religious effect off the Agricultural Revolution was to turn plants and animals from equal members of an ecological round table into property.” The amount of acreage presently cultivated in rice is equivalent to the entire country of India. Now picture the scope of 8 billion people eating rice. Every year, we put 8 million more tons of garbage in the oceans where 269,000 tons float to the surface. Humans now average ingesting one credit card size amount of plastic per week, soon it will be up to two or three. A nuclear power plant that could service Florence Italy would produce 27 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually. Fast Fashion: 92 metric tons of clothing end up in landfills annually. Only 21 out of 350,000 chemicals have been banned so far.
Even if today we suddenly had zero population growth, climate threats would worsen. Climate change was created by economic growth, prosperity, industrialization, and deforestation. “We are a species poised to soon disappear. Humanity is literally racing to extinction.” But “there is some consolation in knowing that we will not eradicate all life on Earth.” “Many politicians effectively spoon-feed people a tale THEY want to hear and trust.” “As long as everyone believes climate change, deforestation, desertification, and the loss of biodiversity won’t affect our lifestyle, we can continue on with our lives unaffected.” People don’t want to think about what goes on in slaughterhouses, let alone how unexamined bi-partisan capitalism (demanding infinite growth on a finite planet) will soon make our planet unlivable, and is leading us to collapse and extinction. Looking away from a profoundly uncomfortable future is the new black. Someone tell Vogue Magazine.
Liberals love to ridicule Conservatives with their snotty “Trust Science” memes, while staying clueless that most scientists work not for the people but for corporations. And “industries adversely affected by research findings routinely hire scientists to undermine the credibility and results of legitimate research.” Such scientists the author calls “biostitutes”. Child vs. Car: Each child you have generates 58 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, while each car generates only 2.5 tons. “Domestic livestock wiped out most of the native grasses over a period of approximately 75 to 90 years after the Civil War.” “The continuous expansion of one species results in the contraction of others.” Flint, Michigan is now similar to Chernobyl and you should see it as “representative of what will occur with increasing frequency across the planet.”
Pets: “Cats kill between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and between 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals each year.” US dogs and cats eat as many calories as the entire human population of France annually. And they create the same amount of carbon dioxide (64 million tons) as a year of 14 million cars driving around. And don’t forget they produce 5 million tons of feces per year – the same amount as all our politicians annually create in their corporate-approved speeches to us. Medium-sized dogs in the US require around two acres of land to keep them fed which is more than what the average citizen in Vietnam requires. Invasive plants will only become more and more the “death knell” for endangered species and ecosystems. Fun fact: It takes three mines in Wyoming just to create all the US kitty litter (4 billion pounds worth). When collapse hits, imagine feeding all your animals plus your own ass.
In conclusion, there’s no silver bullet or technology coming to save humanity. While we wait for collapse, Americans surrounding us will only focus on their iPhones and the immediate world (sans nature) around them. The author perfectly says for these Americans such intentional myopia is deliberately, “like looking through a keyhole.” Like a simple addition problem, add these together: climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, desertification, trash, toxins and an induced culture of narcissism and entitlement. That will all lead to collapse and extinction and the author bets that will happen around 2055. As Lyle says “the probability of our demise increases with every passing year.” When it happens, you’ll have 330 million Americans all blaming (not themselves or their neoliberal leaders but) Russia, China, and maybe those damn Palestinians who didn’t like genocide. Anyway, this was a great book about a subject VERY few Americans will intentionally care about until it’s too late. I really recommend to anyone reading this important book, but at least for now I’ve given you the gist of it. Bravo, Lyle…
October 6, 2024
Disappointing, and a bit silly, but my displeasure is at least partially a fault of my own expectations. Based on the title I was expecting a reasoned argument to convince the reader that humanity's demise is imminent. But Lewis somehow fulfills the promise of the title in a totally different (and imo far less interesting) way. He's not here to convince us of his premise, he's here with his premise as a given, and to explain how we arrived at the premise through a review of millions of years of evolution. It's far more a work of history than of sociology or political science, and had I known it I probably would not have read it (i.e. I already know how we got here, and a lot of what Lewis relates strikes me as banal).
Despite having a much less compelling scope than I wanted, and despite being haphazardly organized and/or argued (if you can even call it an argument), there were some interesting passages and takeaways. E.g. he puts an interesting spin on human intelligence, pointing out that our technology, contrary to being a sign of our superior intelligence, was virtually inevitable given the vast number of humans that have existed in history. He also points out that our brains have been diminishing in size and our intelligence likely compares unfavorably to our hunter/gatherer ancestors, who were both more ambulatory and more manipulative with respect to their immediate environment. The book also has interest as a memoir, with him relating his experience in various U.S. governmental departments relating to the environment, and how all of those offices end up complicit in the ongoing degradation of our planet. His experience with the Pando aspen grove in Idaho was especially memorable.
That about ends the positives. As the book goes on you realize he has a probably unhealthy level of romanticization of the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, e.g. on p. 153 by explicitly blaming our current state of affairs on the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. What he never addresses at all is the resulting implication that we should therefore seek to return to hunter/gatherer behavior. He doesn't really seem to believe that, instead just ignoring it, so it becomes harder to take him seriously as the book goes on. His perspective is not wholly coherent. Another, admittedly more petty piece of incoherence is that after spending a lot of time preaching how animals are just as intelligent and soulful as humans, he admits that one of his favorite pastimes is the torture of animals (i.e. fly-fishing).
There are a couple more major problems that end up being the undoing of the book, even had I been interested in the less-interesting scope. One is his treatment of "overpopulation," which again he presents as a given without actually trying to justify his assertion or grapple with any of its implications. He has a 5-page section on it, but not to prove it's true (which I've read many different perspectives on and find to be a pretty controversial debate), but rather to cite it as just one more reason humanity has screwed up. Nowhere does he acknowledge that such an argument can often lead to eugenicist fascism. His treatment of this highly controversial topic in the most superficial manner is probably the strongest evidence that this book is not really a serious political treatise, it is more a manifesto. And he is not a serious political thinker (i.e. not in any way Marxist), he is a liberal activist. This was already evident, fwiw, by his earlier, ridiculous equation of Mao and Stalin with Attila the Hun and Hitler.
Most damning though is the very end when he presents his actual timeline for human extinction, which is embarrassingly soon. With no supporting evidence or data whatsoever, he literally sets the over/under at 2055, meaning he thinks there's a 50% chance we're all extinct by then. In 30 years.
In doing so, in another sign of incoherence, he seems to completely discard the things he himself has earlier told us about the incredibly long timeline of extinction events, pointing out that the dinosaurs went extinct over thousands of years, and that this current "6th Extinction" event has been going on for tens of thousands of years. But yep, it'll all apparently be wrapped up in the next generation. What timing for all of us!
But seriously, if he had made any effort to support this assertion with anything approaching scientific rigor I would not be mocking him. I don't even need graphs or too many numbers, just present even a short, reasoned argument. What he has given us instead (he even partially admits) is a personal screed against the profession and the bureaucracy that has scorned him. He might be right, but unfortunately he has not presented anything that should convince any rational person of it. In that sense this is a somewhat pathetic effort, and I do feel bad for him. I also appreciate his work as a contrarian in the U.S. government agencies that are ostensibly responsible for stewarding the environment.
FWIW, I agree that we are in biological and civilizational collapse. I do not think it's a given that humanity will go extinct, but I think a mass die-off is likely. Humanity didn't go extinct during the last ice age and it would take a lot for them to go extinct during this. Where I differ most drastically with Lewis is in this uncertainty of total v. partial extinction. I was hoping he would present some compelling evidence for his position on it, but he absolutely did not. Where I also differ with him is in my understanding on the timeline for collapse. The Roman Empire took hundreds of years to collapse. Our collapse started about 20 years ago (I have it pegged to 9/11/01). We are very much in the middle of collapse right now, but it is not a sudden thing, it takes decades or even centuries. Based on this understanding, I find it laughable when someone tells me, completely unsupported by any data, that we will be literally extinct in 30 years. It's preposterous, and I wish Lewis had workshopped this idea with a couple of more rigorous scientists before his final draft.
Overall I don't think I'd strongly recommend this to anyone. It's not boring, especially if you haven't done a lot of thinking/reading on the subject, but neither is there much novel here. Even the people who don't know a lot of the stuff he says should probably start elsewhere in their education, with someone who can provide a more coherent and well-reasoned argument. Here are some places I'd recommend starting before this:
Climate Leviathan
The Solutions Are Already Here
Green Illusions
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Small Is Beautiful
The Dawn of Everything
Endgame, Vol. 1 (& Vol. 2)
A Sand County Almanac
The Monkey Wrench Gang
The Overstory
Not Bad Reviews
Despite having a much less compelling scope than I wanted, and despite being haphazardly organized and/or argued (if you can even call it an argument), there were some interesting passages and takeaways. E.g. he puts an interesting spin on human intelligence, pointing out that our technology, contrary to being a sign of our superior intelligence, was virtually inevitable given the vast number of humans that have existed in history. He also points out that our brains have been diminishing in size and our intelligence likely compares unfavorably to our hunter/gatherer ancestors, who were both more ambulatory and more manipulative with respect to their immediate environment. The book also has interest as a memoir, with him relating his experience in various U.S. governmental departments relating to the environment, and how all of those offices end up complicit in the ongoing degradation of our planet. His experience with the Pando aspen grove in Idaho was especially memorable.
That about ends the positives. As the book goes on you realize he has a probably unhealthy level of romanticization of the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, e.g. on p. 153 by explicitly blaming our current state of affairs on the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. What he never addresses at all is the resulting implication that we should therefore seek to return to hunter/gatherer behavior. He doesn't really seem to believe that, instead just ignoring it, so it becomes harder to take him seriously as the book goes on. His perspective is not wholly coherent. Another, admittedly more petty piece of incoherence is that after spending a lot of time preaching how animals are just as intelligent and soulful as humans, he admits that one of his favorite pastimes is the torture of animals (i.e. fly-fishing).
There are a couple more major problems that end up being the undoing of the book, even had I been interested in the less-interesting scope. One is his treatment of "overpopulation," which again he presents as a given without actually trying to justify his assertion or grapple with any of its implications. He has a 5-page section on it, but not to prove it's true (which I've read many different perspectives on and find to be a pretty controversial debate), but rather to cite it as just one more reason humanity has screwed up. Nowhere does he acknowledge that such an argument can often lead to eugenicist fascism. His treatment of this highly controversial topic in the most superficial manner is probably the strongest evidence that this book is not really a serious political treatise, it is more a manifesto. And he is not a serious political thinker (i.e. not in any way Marxist), he is a liberal activist. This was already evident, fwiw, by his earlier, ridiculous equation of Mao and Stalin with Attila the Hun and Hitler.
Most damning though is the very end when he presents his actual timeline for human extinction, which is embarrassingly soon. With no supporting evidence or data whatsoever, he literally sets the over/under at 2055, meaning he thinks there's a 50% chance we're all extinct by then. In 30 years.
In doing so, in another sign of incoherence, he seems to completely discard the things he himself has earlier told us about the incredibly long timeline of extinction events, pointing out that the dinosaurs went extinct over thousands of years, and that this current "6th Extinction" event has been going on for tens of thousands of years. But yep, it'll all apparently be wrapped up in the next generation. What timing for all of us!
But seriously, if he had made any effort to support this assertion with anything approaching scientific rigor I would not be mocking him. I don't even need graphs or too many numbers, just present even a short, reasoned argument. What he has given us instead (he even partially admits) is a personal screed against the profession and the bureaucracy that has scorned him. He might be right, but unfortunately he has not presented anything that should convince any rational person of it. In that sense this is a somewhat pathetic effort, and I do feel bad for him. I also appreciate his work as a contrarian in the U.S. government agencies that are ostensibly responsible for stewarding the environment.
FWIW, I agree that we are in biological and civilizational collapse. I do not think it's a given that humanity will go extinct, but I think a mass die-off is likely. Humanity didn't go extinct during the last ice age and it would take a lot for them to go extinct during this. Where I differ most drastically with Lewis is in this uncertainty of total v. partial extinction. I was hoping he would present some compelling evidence for his position on it, but he absolutely did not. Where I also differ with him is in my understanding on the timeline for collapse. The Roman Empire took hundreds of years to collapse. Our collapse started about 20 years ago (I have it pegged to 9/11/01). We are very much in the middle of collapse right now, but it is not a sudden thing, it takes decades or even centuries. Based on this understanding, I find it laughable when someone tells me, completely unsupported by any data, that we will be literally extinct in 30 years. It's preposterous, and I wish Lewis had workshopped this idea with a couple of more rigorous scientists before his final draft.
Overall I don't think I'd strongly recommend this to anyone. It's not boring, especially if you haven't done a lot of thinking/reading on the subject, but neither is there much novel here. Even the people who don't know a lot of the stuff he says should probably start elsewhere in their education, with someone who can provide a more coherent and well-reasoned argument. Here are some places I'd recommend starting before this:
Climate Leviathan
The Solutions Are Already Here
Green Illusions
Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Small Is Beautiful
The Dawn of Everything
Endgame, Vol. 1 (& Vol. 2)
A Sand County Almanac
The Monkey Wrench Gang
The Overstory
Not Bad Reviews
December 21, 2025
Astoundingly good foreword, excellent prologue.
Most of the rest of the book is excellent and infinitely poignant, except for some of the history lessons, which are much longer than they need to be (but that’s totally subjective), as well as his over/under line for when humanity goes extinct (2055), which I mostly quibble with on literal terms: if a thousand people live sustainably on a remote island somewhere, we’re not extinct. (I’m reminded of Olaf Stapledon’s as-yet-unmatched sci-fi magnum opus Last and First Men (1932), where (SPOILER ALERT) humanity was at pne point down to 3 individuals, but eventually, eighteen species iterations and two billion years later, populated first Neptune, and then, even more impossibly, Venus for a few tens of millions of years until their last desperate attempt to go on involved beaming information into space that might somehow land and affect organic matter in some advanced technological way indistinguishable from magic. Another must-read book for collapsologists and sci-fi aficionados alike. (But skim-read the first three chapters, lol (you’ll understand)).
Barring nuclear armageddon with full-scale nuclear winter, I think humanity is likely to make it thru the bottlenecks of our imminent collapse of civilisation. Just not billions of us. I think it’s very fair to assume many, many millions of humans will survive for a long time to come.
Not that that’s much of a comfort to all of us who will die.
I’d also point out that collapse will be extremely unevenly distributed, with some nations going under long before others.
Our main challenge will be staying sane in the coming nightmare.
Wherever you are, enjoy your life. It’s all downhill from here.
Most of the rest of the book is excellent and infinitely poignant, except for some of the history lessons, which are much longer than they need to be (but that’s totally subjective), as well as his over/under line for when humanity goes extinct (2055), which I mostly quibble with on literal terms: if a thousand people live sustainably on a remote island somewhere, we’re not extinct. (I’m reminded of Olaf Stapledon’s as-yet-unmatched sci-fi magnum opus Last and First Men (1932), where (SPOILER ALERT) humanity was at pne point down to 3 individuals, but eventually, eighteen species iterations and two billion years later, populated first Neptune, and then, even more impossibly, Venus for a few tens of millions of years until their last desperate attempt to go on involved beaming information into space that might somehow land and affect organic matter in some advanced technological way indistinguishable from magic. Another must-read book for collapsologists and sci-fi aficionados alike. (But skim-read the first three chapters, lol (you’ll understand)).
Barring nuclear armageddon with full-scale nuclear winter, I think humanity is likely to make it thru the bottlenecks of our imminent collapse of civilisation. Just not billions of us. I think it’s very fair to assume many, many millions of humans will survive for a long time to come.
Not that that’s much of a comfort to all of us who will die.
I’d also point out that collapse will be extremely unevenly distributed, with some nations going under long before others.
Our main challenge will be staying sane in the coming nightmare.
Wherever you are, enjoy your life. It’s all downhill from here.
December 22, 2024
2055 is the estimate that Lyle Lewis gives us until human extinction. He says that humans are the end of an evolutionary branch, our intelligence with our evolutionary programming has lead us to this conclusion, ending much biodiversity. How has the Self lead us here? The archetypal of Order/ ordering, it supposed to be the completeness of being… but it’s lead to this. Jung said that in the 60s and early, people have been seeing UFOs, and the psychological aspect was that they were myth of the self, completeness, mandlas in the sky. This ordering principal has been with us since the dawn of civilisation, “economies”… our myths of the divine right of kings, the noble king is archetypal image of the Self. But the function of a king is that so nobles can have someone to call onto to sort out who gets what, the operator of law… Order. Maybe Jung is right about the psychological aspect of UFOs, the myth of completeness is upon us… the US government has been showing us videos of UFOs to (trying to, the 24hr news cycle makes it hard)distract us (but with the cycle, we become distracted with the next) from the shit shows that’s their operating of things… the completeness myth, the end of us of a species. This archetype has been with us since the beginning, it’s because of it, it makes us who we are. But yet it’s guided us to our extinction.
April 15, 2024
I wish I could give this book 10 stars out of 5.
The author has written a book about the topic no one wants to talk about--humanity's imminent extinction--and made it a compelling, fascinating read; compassionate yet realistic; and he doesn't shy away from the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Racing to Extinction is a short history of humanity, and how we set in motion the sixth mass extinction when we evolved a shoulder to throw with, and the tools to throw. We quickly began extincting species, and we've been doing so at an accelerating pace ever since.
The sixth mass extinction will end shortly after our demise, a demise ensured not just by the biodiversity and species we are annihilating, but also global pervasive toxic pollution, arable topsoil loss, deforestation, climate change, and more. The problem is, however, that we're leaving behind a toxic stew of vastly degraded land, polluted oceans and fresh water, and an atmosphere no species still alive today is adapted to. Which species will make it? Cockroaches and microbes might be some of the only ones.
The author spent his career studying ecology, ecosystems, and natural communities. He itemizes the many ways we are racing to extinction ourselves as a species, along with the many other species we are taking out with us. He catalogs the devastating ways we are destroying the foundations of life on Earth, and makes clear our species' unwillingness to stop growing, and thus our inevitable demise.
I've known humanity is racing to extinction for a while now; what I hadn't realized before is just how long this has been in motion.
More than anything else, the book demonstrates how critical it is for us to work to protect every square inch of land, every species still here, every drop of fresh water that we can so there is something rather than nothing once humanity is done, and the sixth mass extinction is finally over.
The author has written a book about the topic no one wants to talk about--humanity's imminent extinction--and made it a compelling, fascinating read; compassionate yet realistic; and he doesn't shy away from the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Racing to Extinction is a short history of humanity, and how we set in motion the sixth mass extinction when we evolved a shoulder to throw with, and the tools to throw. We quickly began extincting species, and we've been doing so at an accelerating pace ever since.
The sixth mass extinction will end shortly after our demise, a demise ensured not just by the biodiversity and species we are annihilating, but also global pervasive toxic pollution, arable topsoil loss, deforestation, climate change, and more. The problem is, however, that we're leaving behind a toxic stew of vastly degraded land, polluted oceans and fresh water, and an atmosphere no species still alive today is adapted to. Which species will make it? Cockroaches and microbes might be some of the only ones.
The author spent his career studying ecology, ecosystems, and natural communities. He itemizes the many ways we are racing to extinction ourselves as a species, along with the many other species we are taking out with us. He catalogs the devastating ways we are destroying the foundations of life on Earth, and makes clear our species' unwillingness to stop growing, and thus our inevitable demise.
I've known humanity is racing to extinction for a while now; what I hadn't realized before is just how long this has been in motion.
More than anything else, the book demonstrates how critical it is for us to work to protect every square inch of land, every species still here, every drop of fresh water that we can so there is something rather than nothing once humanity is done, and the sixth mass extinction is finally over.
November 17, 2024
This book won't tell you anything about the mess we are in that you don't already know. He just tells us we're likely finished by the 2050s. The exact mechanism of extinction he doesn't explain so your guess is as good as his.
April 6, 2025
3.5 stars
December 31, 2025
Claiming humanity vanishes by 2055 in 'Racing to Extinction' without a shred of peer-reviewed backing? That's not biologist expertise—that's arrogant pseudoscience. Serious extinction claims need verification.
An assertion as serious as a "humanity will go extinct by 2055" requires peer review and verification to certify it scientifically sound. Peer-reviewed verification of science related info is critical for maintaining the integrity of science, ensuring that self-published books are scientifically credible, not just opinion.
Though humanity is on track for grave environmental fallout, there is no peer-reviewed, verified study, to date, that scientifically corroborates humanity will vanish by 2055. Human extinction involves countless interconnected variables—climate change, technological advancements, geopolitical stability, pandemics, economic systems, and more. These systems are highly dynamic, nonlinear, and subject to unpredictable feedback loops, making precise long-term predictions impossible.
While it's important to detail the gravity of Anthropogenic Global Warming, Climate Change & Biodiversity Extinction, which this book does; it's equally important to balance such with motivating affirmative climate action, which this book does not. Fatalist books like "Racing to Extinction" illuminate humanity's environmental trespasses but contributes zero to helping humanity redeem them.
Real biologists fight extinction... True rigor accepts the Anthropogenic Global Warming Science consensus range of outcomes and works "relentlessly" within it.
CHANGE doesn't come from what we know we can do; it comes from having the resolute will to overcome things others, like Lyle; say, "Can't be done."
An assertion as serious as a "humanity will go extinct by 2055" requires peer review and verification to certify it scientifically sound. Peer-reviewed verification of science related info is critical for maintaining the integrity of science, ensuring that self-published books are scientifically credible, not just opinion.
Though humanity is on track for grave environmental fallout, there is no peer-reviewed, verified study, to date, that scientifically corroborates humanity will vanish by 2055. Human extinction involves countless interconnected variables—climate change, technological advancements, geopolitical stability, pandemics, economic systems, and more. These systems are highly dynamic, nonlinear, and subject to unpredictable feedback loops, making precise long-term predictions impossible.
While it's important to detail the gravity of Anthropogenic Global Warming, Climate Change & Biodiversity Extinction, which this book does; it's equally important to balance such with motivating affirmative climate action, which this book does not. Fatalist books like "Racing to Extinction" illuminate humanity's environmental trespasses but contributes zero to helping humanity redeem them.
Real biologists fight extinction... True rigor accepts the Anthropogenic Global Warming Science consensus range of outcomes and works "relentlessly" within it.
CHANGE doesn't come from what we know we can do; it comes from having the resolute will to overcome things others, like Lyle; say, "Can't be done."
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