How strange that a few billion years of evolution on the planet Earth have culminated in the species at the top of the food chain being seemingly genetically predisposed to believe that the universe, or at least the planet, would be better off without it.

So we've passed from ancient religions that warned of man's inherent evil nature and imminent destruction (often with seeming relish), to an environmentalism that warned of man's imminent destruction (taking most of the rest of the planet with us), and now move on to a worship of nature--a nature that we define as: everything except us. Of course, only man could invent an environmentalism that imagines a better world if he had never existed and which suggests that he contemplate voluntary extinction. (Apparently, if humans hadn't also evolved irony, the smartest of us would have all committed suicide by now anyway.)

Seems natural selection managed consciousness only in a life form that could help the process further along--by being its eraser.

So, if we haven't managed to demonstrate that we are born into sin, we continue to prove that we are definitely born into guilt. It's OK though. Since, we can only have aquired our guilt through the process of natural selction, we obviously need it in order to survive.

Not all of us have guilt, and not all of us see ourselves as removed from nature. Climate change has happened in the past thanks to 'natural disasters'. Climate change will happen in the future, probably thanks to us. But, worst case scenario I think a few of us will survive. Best case scenario our civilization won't. Maybe our great great grandchildren will thank us for giving them a clean slate to work with.

...that as compared to fertile farmlands an inhospitable desert is 'clean'...

Environmentalism doesn't hold that Earth would be better off without us. It holds that the Earth would be better off if we weren't such a-holes. If we acted more like caretakers of the planet, than pillagers of it, the Earth would be much better off.

And we haven't passed on from religion like it is some silly superstition of ancient days. Faith is just as reasonable and valid as any other system of belief.

What I am referring to as "environmentalism" is not the reasonable belief that we should be sensible and responsible stewards of that which we have not made and on which we are dependent for our survival.

If you read the article, but more specifically, if you have read anything of the book it cites, you will find (or at least I did) reference to a much more extreme kind of environmentalism--an almost fundamentalist mentality, (or an environmental "druidism" if you will)--that does indeed contemplate the planet as being better off without us (without ever explaining to us why that should motivate us).

I also did not say that faith (or religion) is either silly or superstitious, or unreasonable. I merely pointed out that attitudes such as yours-i.e. -that we are a-holes and pillagers--are parallel in an interesting way to attitudes that have found expression in religion since ancient times. It appears that since prehistory, we have carried the idea that our actions make us somehow unworthy of the experience of existing on this planet, while at the same time we would not so regard any other species which carried out (within it's capabilities) similar actions.

Hooray! Someone is telling it as the environmental problem really is, that humans will consume and produce waste no matter what. Of course the more humans, the more consumption and waste. Not just Americans need to control population growth but every country and immigrant on the planet. We can ill afford the environmental and economical impact.