The Anthropocene is the period of time in which humans have had a huge impact on the Earth’s ecosystems. During this era, humans have had influence over every part of the planet’s natural systems. Both of the articles talk about and give examples as to how human actions has affected the planet, but Vitousek seems to be much more negative about what is happening, whereas Kareiva talks about how nature is strong and resilient and can adapt to changes. Vitousek talks about extinction and says that recent calculations show that the rates of species extinction is now 100 to 1000 times what is was before the dominance of humans on Earth. He mentions, “11% of the remaining birds, 15% of the mammals, 5% of the fish, and 8% of the plant species on Earth are threatened with extinction.” Kareiva on the other hand gives the example of polar bears, which may have a good chance of surviving global warming if the population and range on harbor seals and harp seals increase due to the changing environment. Polar bears evolved from brown bears 200,000 years ago, and can evolve again. Species always evolve to take advantage of new environments, showing how strong and resilient nature is.
The two articles also offer different solutions as to how to fix the problem. Vitousek believes that we should decrease the rate at which we change the Earth, increase our efforts to understand Earth’s ecosystems and their interaction with “human caused global change”, and accept responsibility for managing the planet. Kareiva’s solution is to have a new vision for conservation. Now, conservation is mostly focused on creating parks and protected areas, but it should move towards a more human-friendly type of conservations. The first step is for humans to appreciate strength and resilience of nature as well as how much humans depend on it. Conservation should support development that will use technology that will improve both human and nonhuman natures.
In my opinion, Vitousek’s solution seems that it would have good results if it actually happened, but it does not seem very likely. There is a huge human population on Earth and we are very much dependent on technology. It seems rather difficult to be able to slow down the rate at which we change the Earth. Kareiva’s solution seems more likely to be achieved. If we accept and understand that nature is much stronger then we believe, it would also be beneficial in taking conservation in a new direction that would be better able to preserve nature. He says that conservation “should seek to support and inform the right kind of development.” The development should utilize that right kinds of technology that would improve both human and non human natures. This is the direction we are going in, albeit too slowly and without enough commitment to make it the method of conservation in the future. With more commitment, the change of direction for conservation can be quicker and it can be successful.
