It's sad to relate that since our ancestors migrated out of Africa, somewhere between 100,000 and 80,000 years ago, we have had an increasingly catastrophic impact on the planet's biodiversity. Our fire and tool using, upright ape ancestors caused havoc, wiping out the megafauna (and much else) on five continents. In northern Eurasia, for example, it took us a while to adapt to the region's dry, frigid climate but once we had done so we wiped out the mammoths, woolly rhinos, bison, musk oxen, giant elks and horses which lived there, devastating the region's ecology in the process. Soon after, humans arrived in North America - which promptly lost 34 genera of large mammals, followed by South America which lost 50. Today we're just mopping up what's left. So much for the 'ecological wisdom' of 'primitive', pre-technological people!

Nevertheless, today we are waging this on-going war against Nature with a ferocity that our ancestors could only have dreamed of. The pace of destruction has accelerated over the past few centuries as our populations have grown ever larger and our technologies ever more sophisticated. We have drenched the land with poisons and dug up the toxic heavy metals that ancient bacteria had buried and spread them around again. Most dangerous of all we have extracted vast quantities of fossil carbon from the Earth's crust and burned it to form CO2 - resulting in increasing climate instability.

The difference between us and our distant ancestors is that SCIENCE has given us a much better and deeper understanding of our relation to the planet and what we are capable of doing to it. It is very unfortunate that up to now the genius of our species has been so lacking in wisdom that we are very close to destroying the complex web of life that evolution has created around us. There is absolutely no doubt that if we succeed in this 'grand project' we will inevitably destroy ourselves. But it won't be scientists who will be responsible for this suicidal destruction - don't shoot the messengers!