TWO AND A HALF YEARS, you wait to respond to the critiques. Where have you been, suspended animation?
I think you're absolutely right in principle. Traits that allow a species to effectively utilize the resources on which it depends are often the same traits that result in over-exploitation of those resources, overpopulation, and catastrophic die-off. This principle can be seen in things as simple as a bacterial population inside a sealed bottle or on an island grazed by non-native livestock. It would also seem to apply to humankind. Many believe we have passed a sustainable population yet we continue to grow by exploiting nonrenewable resources. At some point, things will get a lot less happy on this planet.
Even if we were to utterly destroy ourselves, how is this a problem for biological evolution? Most of the species that have existed are now extinct because their environments changed and they could not adapt. The cause of the change - be it climate, invaders, or the species itself - is not really a factor. Dead is dead.
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