Is being concerned over the extinction of certain animals an anthropocentric view of the world? I mean, could it be that we’re not alone in this hurly-burly race to an unknowable future? That there are at least a few other species benefiting from this direction in natural selection?<\/p>\n
For the last few days the crows have been coming down to the grounds around our house. They’re our neighbors all year long but we’ve never seen them eating up close \u2013\u00a0especially not the eggs and offspring of other birds. <\/p>\n
I wondered how they decide where to go<\/a>, how do they navigate our cities? <\/p>\n They’re among the animals that are learning to live with us. In other words, those animals that study us, survive.<\/p>\n These are the animals that we help create, unwittingly or accidentally.<\/p>\n To date, we humans have almost certainly been the most wasteful animals to evolve on this planet in terms of how we produce energy \u2013\u00a0despite their size, dinosaurs may have been lean and mean<\/a>. We plant and harvest food that goes to waste. We burn scarce fuel to keep an engine idling. We blow up entire mountains to excavate a thin layer of combustible material. We kill hundreds of thousands of other human beings, each one born innocent, to get control over their energy stocks.<\/p>\n But as we progress, we are engineering ways to harness biology \u2013\u00a0the very process that motivates our lust for life \u2013\u00a0to create energy. <\/p>\n