We humans like to label other living creatures “pests” — ticks, mosquitoes, rats, mice. We never include ourselves, although a cruel segment of our population likes to call other human beings of a different skin tone cockroaches. Those nonhuman “pests” are just doing what they are genetically wired to do. We, on the other hand, are throttling life out of gluttony and wrath.

The thing is, though, we are essentially a foreign body in this planetary ecosystem of life. Remove us, and life thrives — until an asteroid hits. Remove our subjective list of “pests,” and we suffer, perhaps die.

Mother Nature knows this. We are the cancerous tumor she wants to remove, even if the cure, which we patented, makes her sick.

An extensive synthesis of 2,000 global studies — one of the largest syntheses of human impacts on biodiversity ever conducted — done earlier this year left no doubt about the scale of species extinction and the role humans are playing in this mass die-off. We are driving biodiversity loss among all species across the globe, according to the March analysis.

The study, done by researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and the University of Zurich, accounted for nearly 100,000 sites across the seven continents. Their research found human activities had resulted in “unprecedented effects on biodiversity.”

The analysis covered five drivers of decline: habitat change; direct exploitation of resources, such as hunting and fishing; climate change; invasive species; and pollution.

Particularly severe losses were found among amphibians, mammals, and reptiles. The populations of these creatures are often smaller than invertebrates, which increases their probability of extermination.

Habitat degradation and fragmentation, combined with pollution, have had a particularly negative impact on biodiversity. Monoculture/industrial agriculture, which relies on huge amounts of pesticides, fertilizers, and fossil fuels, is a leading driver of biodiversity loss.

The study’s authors noted that it’s not just the number of species that is declining, but that human pressures are changing the composition of species communities. In mountainous areas, for example, they noted specialized plants are being replaced by those that typically grow at lower altitudes — a process called the “elevator to extinction” as high-altitude plants have nowhere else to go. The number of species might remain the same, but diversity is reduced. Life is squeezed into fewer and fewer species.

Lynn Dicks, a professor of ecology, told The Guardian the study is a “useful and important analysis,” but the findings revealed “no great surprises.”

“We know that humans are hugely changing biodiversity across the planet, causing new and different communities of plants, animals, and microbes to form, which can cope with the sometimes very harsh conditions we create,” Dicks said. “A big concern for me is how to ensure that those species that can live alongside us, many of which provide key ecological functions like pollination, decomposition, and seed dispersal, have large enough populations and enough genetic diversity to continue evolving.”

While I don’t disagree with Dicks’ assessment about what our selfish species needs to survive, it is bothersome that collectively we are really only concerned about the species that can live with us and those we can eat. It should be the other way around: How do we live in peace and harmony with our natural surroundings?

Our sin, in the 21st century, is that we know what we have to do to protect the natural world, but we, especially us in the Global North, refuse to cut shareholder profits and CEO compensation. Golden parachutes over yellowface parakeets.

Instead of actually protecting the growing list of threatened and endangered species now clinging to life on this human-abused planet, we’re actually conducting de-extinction research to possibly bring back passenger pigeons, woolly mammoths, and the dodo. Why? So we can kill them all over again? To put them on display, so Bezos and his ilk can pad their cartoon fortunes?

Besides, whatever habitat is required for their return we have probably already destroyed. We are exceptional at making things disappear, or at the very least ruining them.

A new study found 75 streams in Alaska’s Brooks Range have turned orange due to thawing permafrost, which releases metals such as aluminum, cadmium, and iron in amounts that exceed safety thresholds for aquatic life. This contamination threatens fish populations, with aluminum concentrations at one location reaching nearly five times the safe limit for human consumption.

Scientists warn that this climate change impact is irreversible and spreading across the Arctic. We’re more concerned about gasoline prices.

While the climate change hoax melts permafrost, another vital habitat is also rapidly disappearing.

A report published this summer found that since 1970 more than one-fifth of global wetlands have been lost, meaning they have shrunk so much they are no longer viable or have disappeared. Of those that remain, a quarter of these vital waterbodies are in ecological distress.

Besides being lousy for the plants and animals dependent on wetlands, their loss also spells trouble for human food security and climate stability.

Wetlands help feed billions of people worldwide, play a crucial role in protecting and replenishing drinking water supplies, mitigate the climate crisis, and shield us from flooding, storm surge, and severe weather.

The free ecological services wetlands provide are priceless, but we bulldoze them over and fill them in to make way for oversized coastal homes; to grow fields of corn to make ethanol to help power our internal combustion engines, high-fructose corn syrup to expand our waistlines, and to feed cows, even though as livestock numbers grow, wild animal populations plummet; and to install carpets of overfertilized lawns.

Meanwhile, the ocean recently failed a key planetary health check for the first time, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels. The latest annual assessment, released last month, by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said ocean acidity has crossed a critical threshold for marine life. The report comes at a time of record‑breaking ocean heat and mass coral bleaching.

Arctic marine life, cold-water corals, and tropical coral reefs are especially at risk, according to the assessment. It also noted acidification directly affects species such as oysters, clams, and mollusks. It harms salmon, whales, and other marine life that eat smaller organisms. It puts human food security and coastal economies at risk.

Ocean acidification is now the seventh of nine planetary boundaries to be transgressed, prompting calls for a renewed global effort to curb fossil fuel use, deforestation, and other human-driven activities that are tilting the planet out of its habitable equilibrium.

“Human activities have pushed Earth beyond its Safe Operating Space. The planet’s natural resilience is weakening: global warming is accelerating, ecosystems are showing clear signs of degradation, and early warning signs of tipping points are emerging in key systems,” according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We have entered the Anthropocene — an era where human activity dominates the Earth system.”

Since we can’t stop burning fossil fuels, overconsuming electronics, eating too much meat, manufacturing cheap plastics, mining cryptocurrency, fawning over artificial intelligence, and catering to the superwealthy, Mother Nature is acidifying the ocean, raising air and water temperatures, flooding parts of the globe while burning others, and unleashing powerful storms on a more frequent basis.

She is doing all of this to rid herself of us. Shouldn’t we actually do something?

Note: The nine planetary boundaries are atmospheric aerosol loading, biodiversity loss, chemical pollution, climate change, freshwater use, land-system change, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, ocean acidification, and stratospheric ozone depletion.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.