The Blessing of Extinction

Nik Money • June 16, 2022




Humans are on the fast track to extinction and the mess that we have made will take most of the larger animals with us. In our unenviable position as witnesses of the collapse of the biosphere, grace can be sought in the certainty of the peaceful afterlife of the planet. The death of the last human will mean the end of human anguish. Picking gorillas as an example of the nonhuman casualties, the death of the last one is also hopeful, because after two centuries of gorilla hunting and trapping, there will be no more of these beautiful creatures to be shot. Pick any species of animal and its extinction will end the misery of its members. When humans and other animals with brains are gone, Earth will orbit our star without fear and loathing for the first time in 500 million years. To explore this idea, we need to accept what is happening, seek absolution from our sins in the inevitability of the apocalypse, and be assured that the nightmarish character of zoology is almost over.

 

Acceptance

 

Since 1850, the human population has increased from one billion to eight billion and the level of carbon dioxide in the air has risen by 50%. Carbon dioxide traps heat on Earth and more of it makes us warmer. We pour billions of tons of this gas into the atmosphere every year by burning hundreds of tons oil, coal, and natural gas every second. What could possibly happen to change this picture? The pandemic shutdown reduced carbon dioxide emissions by a few percent, but they rebounded and are increasing in its wake. By 2100, the global average temperature will be 4 degrees Celsius higher than the end of the last century. This is the likeliest projection.

 

Climate optimists will counter this scenario with examples of technological solutions. The effect of these remedies on extinction can be dismissed with a thought experiment. Imagine that we found a way to meet our energy needs without coal, oil, and gas. Once the burning stopped, the future would feel a little cooler, especially if methods for burying the existing carbon dioxide were perfected. But with the climate stabilized, the behavior that caused us to burn so much fuel would intensify, resulting in more humans, less forest and grasslands, and greater pollution of rivers and oceans. With or without climate change, our war with nature will proceed. Decades ago, Gerald Durrell, the famous conservationist, recognized, that “the human race is in the position of a man sawing off the tree branch he is sitting on.” Thirty years after Durrell’s death, the human population has increased by 2 billion and the damage has intensified. The branch will snap now whether we keep sawing or not.

 

The timeline for extinctions is not known, but, sooner or later, the disappearing mammals will be joined by the other groups of animals. Almost everything will be leaving the metaphorical ark, creeping down the gangplank into oblivion. Millions of other species, seen and unseen, including plants, seaweeds, and fungi will be leaving too. The tiniest of organisms will inherit the planet, but great gulps of the microbial world will also disappear in the depths of this planetary holocaust.

 

Absolution

 

Look in the mirror and you will see a member of a species of African ape that has devastated the biosphere. You, personally, have caused a great deal of damage and are responsible for the suffering of many intelligent and sensitive creatures. Adults have left a trail of wreckage in their lives and children will participate in decades of future brutality toward nature. Vegetarians are not responsible for the suffering of farm animals, but they are culpable for the molestation of wildlife through the great net of international commerce. Throughout history, we have helped ourselves to huge helpings of hubris about the brilliance of humans and have avoided the truth of our nature—namely, that Homo sapiens is a uniquely destructive animal that has been active in the business of extinction since it dispersed from Africa 100,000 years ago.

 

In addition to killing animals for food, or to make space for more of us, we have bred and imprisoned animals for entertainment and for medical experimentation. To obviate our unpleasantness, we have decided that other species lack the capacity for terror. In this century, all but the cruelest of philosophers have moved on from the Cartesian fantasy that the absence of conversation implies the absence of emotion, but we cling to the fantasy of the heightened sensitivity of humans. While a chicken lacks a great repertoire of expressions of grief, it feels panic and experiences pain to the full extent of its avian brain, and we heighten the horror by keeping birds in factory farms in conditions of exquisite unpleasantness.

 

There is no excuse for the way that we ruin the lives of animals on farms and in labs, but we are pardoned from killing them in nature and destroying the biosphere. We are guiltless because animals are powered by the transfer of energy from one organism to another. The nightmare of zoology began when this fundamental rule of life was coupled with the evolution of brains and the necessity of suffering. This happened long before we arrived. Sentient life is designed for suffering because the avoidance of it is what keeps an animal alive for long enough to propel its genes into the future. When brains evolved, avoidance became conscious and with consciousness came fear. Our absolution for ruining the planet comes from the same evolutionary source: we need to eat and we seek to reproduce, and by being good at both things we have extracted too much energy from the planet. Nature was designed in this way.

 

Assurance

 

Animal sensitivity is the foundation of the great tragedy of the biosphere, the overarching sadness of earth, which will end when the species with brains are gone. Human extinction will mean no more animals in laboratories to dread the sound of the opening door and the sight of the approaching white coat, and, over a longer time span, injuries, illnesses, and starvation in nature will disappear, species by species as the planet gets hotter. This is not much to go on, but the end of suffering is the best news about the end times. Happiness will end too, of course, but contentment is fleeting and an animal that is never born will not miss the moments of satisfaction and joy. 

 

Humans have always caused the suffering of other animals; we have destroyed most of the pristine ecosystems, and the rapid change in climate is our fault too. Most of these actions were hard baked into human nature. The apocalypse was inevitable because the cost of being human has always been extracted from the rest of nature. What do we do with this clarity of vision? I suggest that part of the answer lies in recognizing the fact that these are the last decades of pain. As terminal illness encourages many people to embrace the relief that they know will come with their departure, so we may feel some grace in these end times.

 

The way we spend our lives in the absence of hope for the future of humanity is a matter for the individual. The best that any of us can do until the sky falls, is to be kinder to each other and humane towards the rest of nature as it suffers with us on this watery globe. The sooner the biosphere collapses, the sooner that the brainy animals will be liberated from suffering. When we are gone, the biosphere is likely to repopulate with new species with brains, and the suffering will resume in millions of years. But at least things will be quiet for a while, and nothing will be horrified by existence as Earth spins on her soft axle.

We are Mycozoans

By Nik Money • August 10, 2025
The evolutionary kinship of the fungi and animals is indicated by their combination into a single supergroup of organisms called the opisthokonts . This uninspiring term refers to the arrangement of shared cell structures called cilia. I suggest that we adopt a more evocative name: mycozoans .

What is the Brain-Eating Amoeba and (How) Can We Avoid It?

By Nik Money • August 9, 2025
[Image of amoeba adapted from A. Cassiopeia Russell, et al., Frontiers in Microbiology 14 (2023):1264348.] A brain-eating amoeba called Naegleria has received a lot of recent media coverage, including the tragic deaths of a 12-year-old boy in South Carolina who swam in a local reservoir, and a 71-year-old Texas woman who had flushed her sinuses with a neti pot. Using anything other than sterilized water in a neti pot is a proven hazard, but should we be concerned about splashing around in lakes and rivers? This post describes the infection process, explains why cases of this terrible illness may be increasing, and considers the risks of summer recreational activities in our rivers. There have been fewer than 200 cases of this infection in America in the last 50 years and all of these deaths resulted from the nasal inhalation of warm water contaminated with the microbe. There are thousands of species of microbes that we call amoebas because they crawl in a similar fashion to the iconic “classroom” amoeba, Amoeba proteus , which is recognized from the simplest drawing of a wavy outline with a dot in the middle. Naegleria is as distantly related to Amoeba as a rhinoceros is to a rhododendron, but it moves in the same shape-shifting fashion. Unlike the schoolroom amoeba, however, Naegleria can also swim by sprouting a pair of flagella. At one time it was thought that the frisky swimming stage was the one that infected humans, but the crawling cells that gather at the surface of the water are actually more dangerous because they are positioned perfectly for snorting high into the nasal cavities of swimmers. The migration of the amoebas from the nose to the brain is circuitous because the head jelly is enclosed in the skull, wrapped in membranes called meninges, and protected by a formidable tissue layer called the blood-brain barrier that separates the bloodstream from the central nervous system. Trauma to the head that damages these shields can lead to infections, but even an uninjured nose is an anatomical liability for anyone who encounters a pathogenic amoeba. This does not mean that everyone who inhales water carrying the amoebas will become infected—far from it. Mucus that lines the nasal sinuses works as a sticky trap and antibodies bind to the amoebas interfering with their attempts to attach to the tissues underneath. The amoebas are also attacked by white blood cells called neutrophils as they try to get a good foothold on the sinus tissues. As the neutrophils close in, like bloodhounds set loose on fugitives, the amoebas reshape their membranes into suction cups and tear into the fleshy tissues of the sinuses to escape. The odds are stacked against the amoebas, but any that follow the nerves that snake through perforations in the bony roof of the nose have the chance of reaching the brain. The escapees leave the neutrophils howling in the sinuses and the prognosis for the swimmer is grim. Headaches, fever, neck stiffness, nausea, and vomiting occur within as little as a day after exposure, and the symptoms proceed to light sensitivity, seizures, hallucinations, coma, and death. Physicians call this brain infection primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, or PAM. Treatments are very limited. A drug called miltefosine that has been used to treat a tropical disease called leishmaniasis for more than 20 years is showing promise as a new medicine for PAM patients. This makes sense because the parasite that causes leishmaniasis belongs to the same supergroup of microorganisms as Naegleria . The importance of finding treatments for PAM is increasing with the concern expressed by epidemiologists that these infections are likely to become more common as the planet gets warmer and the geographical range of the microbe widens. Warming lakes and rivers will certainly advantage this amoeba, which is happiest in water with temperatures between 30 and 42 degrees Celsius, or 86 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Naegleria fatalities have already been reported in India, China, and Southeast Asia. Countries with cooler climates may not escape from this public health threat. Water used to cool nuclear and conventional power plants can support high levels of the amoeba, which represents a source of potential infections when the heated water is discharged into rivers and lakes. The Centers for Disease Control recommends holding your nose shut or using a nose clip if you jump or dive into a river. This provides little comfort. We know that the amoeba finds its way into the brain from the nasal passages, but the rarity of the infection suggests that there may be more to this than inhaling the microbe through the nostrils. Neti pot users increase the pressure within their nasal passages as they rinse and expel water, which may have the effect of forcing the microbe into these sensitive tissues. This leads me to wonder whether swimmers could be safer without nose clips, because closure of the nostrils prevents the reflexive expulsion of water pushed into the back of the throat. Knowledge of the amoeba leaves us with a feeling of unease. The development of primary amoebic meningoencephalitis after playing in a river or lake is less likely than drowning, but this fact is of little comfort to anyone who contracts the brain disease. So, what do we do? Shrug our shoulders, hope for the best, fear the worst, and jump from a rope swing into the river. After all, amoebas and other microbes are everywhere and will outlive us by an eternity.

The Mycologist: The Movie

By Nik Money • August 6, 2025
A screenplay by Matthew R. Riffle and Zackary D. Hill based on my 2017 novel, The Mycologist: The Diary of Bartholomew Leach, Professor of Natural History , is an official selection at the 2025 Cindependent Film Festival: https://www.cindependentfilmfest.org/ Wanda Sykes must be cast to play Phoebe Smith, Queen of Claysburgh. Excerpt: When Cates and I rode across the field, Phoebe Smith knocked out her pipe to prepare for battle: "Dare you is you damned whale; Cates haul you in again from offshore? You bin lying there sunnin your fat belly in Christ’s Sun I spose, hopin for a reeel high tide to pull you back to your damned porpuss-whore of a mother." I looked at Cates in utter amazement. He shrugged his shoulders and dismounted.

Mycobiome Art

By Nik Money • July 23, 2025
Dr. Gemma Anderson-Tempini is an artist working on a project about the mycobiome for a museum commission in Exeter in England. She asked several mycologists to “draw the mycobiome,” to help stimulate her thinking. This is my first draft in which I concentrated on the problems caused by fungi that live on the body. I could draw an alternative view to show that many of the same fungi are also part of the healthy microbiome. Interactions between fungi and bacteria is part of this story. Another approach would be to draw a mother nursing a baby and highlight the fungi in breast milk and the developing mycobiome of the infant.

What is a mushroom?

By Nik Money • February 13, 2025
With head-scratching among consumers about the sources of medicinal mushroom products, a reliable definition of a mushroom seems useful. Clarity is important because many of these “medicinals” come from mycelia instead of mushrooms and their chemical composition can be quite different. Here is my two-part definition. Mushrooms are the fungal equivalent of the fruits produced by plants. They release microscopic spores rather than seeds. We often refer to mushrooms as fruit bodies. Mushrooms are the reproductive organs of fungi. Their spores germinate to form feeding colonies called mycelia that grow as networks of branching filaments called hyphae. Mushrooms develop from mature mycelia to complete the fungal life cycle.

Clay Tablet

By Nik Money • October 5, 2024
Money's Laws

In Memoriam: Frank Harold

By Nik Money • September 18, 2024
“What I have done . . . is to make a constructive contribution to the global conversation of science and to gain some measure of insight into that great mystery, the origin of life . . . The way of science is for the best of our achievements to endure in substance but lose their individuality, like raindrops falling into a pond. So let it be.” Frank Harold (2016) Click here for the tribute in full

Screenplay

By Nik Money • August 22, 2024
A screenplay by Matthew R. Riffle and Zackary D. Hill based on my 2017 novel, The Mycologist: The Diary of Bartholomew Leach, Professor of Natural History , was an official selection at the 2024 Ink & Cinema Adapted Story Showcase. Click here for brief excerpt from the novel

The Jellyfish Who Lost Hope

By Nik Money • May 23, 2024
Hydras and the Roots of Depression

R.F.K. Junior's Worm

By Nik Money • May 10, 2024
With news of R.F.K. Junior’s encounter with a parasitic worm, I invite you to sing along with me to the tune of “My Favorite Things”: Roundworms in most guts and hookworms in plenty Segmented tapeworms that make you feel empty Many amoebas and pinworms like strings These were a few of our nightmarish things. (From “Molds, Mushrooms, and Medicines,” page 111)
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