[thejohnconway]

Billions of people have died in the past, but it would obviously be a catastrophic tragedy if billions of people died this year.

Species usually go extinct at a rate at which new diversity can take their place. The current rate of extinction is hundreds of times higher than that, and leads to ecosystem collapse.

[roenxi]

> Species usually go extinct at a rate at which new diversity can take their place.

That is just a mathematical truism. If all species died tomorrow and only humans were left we'd still hit an equilibrium where species were going extinct at the same rate new ones were appearing. The system moves quickly to an equilibrium where usually extinctions = new species.

In practice ecosystems collapse fairly regularly. This stuff isn't planned and nature is messy. Every time something changes ecosystems might collapse.

> Billions of people have died in the past, but it would obviously be a catastrophic tragedy if billions of people died this year.

Sure. Most people would make a show of moral objection to that. But if we look at what the humans actually do - they typically kill everything in sight that is larger than dog, concrete over what is left and poison any insects that made it through the slaughter. I dunno if anyone is tracking how many species we've wiped out on the road to apex predator, but there are going to be quite a few already. Cities are great for humans and not much else. In fact, we purposefully cause ecosystem collapses because it suits us.

That argument is only going to get pushback from very argumentative people but it is actually unpersuasive in practice. A billion human deaths is a tragedy but extinct species seems like it would be acceptable for bettering the material comfort of humans. Humans have generally accepted that trade in the past and we're still purposefully trying to ... I dunno, specie-cide a few that we don't like.

[thejohnconway]

> That is just a mathematical truism.

No it isn’t. Diversity rates have risen and fallen over the history of life, and it can take many millions of years for life to re-diversify after a mass extinction event (like the one we are causing now). Evolution by natural selection is not rapid when it comes to larger organisms.

[xboxnolifes]

If all species besides humans went extinct tomorrow, humans would also quickly go extinct. The equilibrium would be 0 extinctions and 0 new species.

Maybe millions or billions of years years later that would increase to >0, but i think its fair to call that a total collapse of all life on Earth for those interim years.