In a few hundred years, people will look back on these events and laugh at our ignorance, just as we laugh at the assumed ignorance of the dark age peasant. * * Sure, the other species change the environment, its called "living". But what we are unique in is changing the environment both on an unprecedented scale and in an unsustainable manner, so that instead of just taking ourselves out if we screw up too much, like previous species that changed their environment too much for it to be comfortable anymore, we will drag pretty much every other macroscopic organism down with us. Plants may change the soil chemistry around them, but that doesn't prevent them from being able to live there for a hundred years, nor does it sicken things continent away. Furthermore, I don't understand why