Throughout history, big extinctions have left winners and losers…the winners aren’t necessarily the species that survived the extinction, but the species that adapted best to the altered environment. Mankind has kicked off the 6th great extinction, which will warp our air, water, biochemical systems. We may need to adapt (e.g. grow gills) to survive:

The history of life on Earth is punctuated by several mass extinction events (2), during which global biological diversity was sharply reduced. These events were followed by novel changes in the evolution of surviving species and the structure and function of their ecosystems. Our planet is presently in the early to middle stages of a sixth mass extinction (3), which, like those before it,will separate evolutionary winners from losers. However, this event differs from those that preceded it in two fundamental ways: (i) Modern extinctions are largely being caused by a single species, Homo sapiens, and (ii) from its onset in the late Pleistocene, the sixth mass extinction has been characterized by the loss of larger-bodied animals in general and of apex consumers in particular (4, 5).

The loss of apex consumers is arguably humankind’s most pervasive influence on the natural world. This is true in part because it has occurred globally and in part because extinctions are by their very nature perpetual, whereas most other environmental impacts are potentially reversible on decadal to millenial time scales. Recent research suggests that the disappearance of these animals reverberates further than previously anticipated (6–8), with far-reaching effects on processes as diverse as the dynamics of disease; fire; carbon sequestration; invasive species; and biogeochemical exchanges among Earth’s soil, water, and atmosphere.

Never mind Fitch, Moodys and S&P and the sovereign debt crisis…planet Earth is getting downgraded.

Source: Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth