But all of this reasoning begins with at least one fundamental flaw: it rests upon forgetting that human beings are, in fact, a part and product of the Natural world, every bit as much as pond scum and chipmunks and coral reefs and combustible fossils. We aren’t, in fact, in any way separate in our source, creation, maintenance, or ultimate trajectory from the rest of Nature. We may think ourselves a particularly clever species, but we are still subject to the same laws, limitations, potentialities, and mysteries as everything else.

Our species, alone, is responsible for changes that reach so deeply into the networked processes of our Earth system that they are already resulting in a system-wide rewrite of environmental conditions. We are blithely and repeatedly tapping the Delete button across the biosphere. And oopsthere’s no Undo!