“the belief that we were searately created for a special destiny, with all other life on earth subservient to our own needs.

“This self-deception must once have carried with it a real evolutionary advantage, helping our species spread over the globe and overcome the challenge of virtually every known habitat.  But the rules are changing.  In the last few decades, our belief in the earth as ‘merely’ a resource for humanity has led us to waste and destroy whole ecosystems, even poison the biosphere itself.  The idea of a special human destiny has never been true – now it is no longer adaptive either.  Simply put, we are losing our ecological dominance.  The environments we have created are becoming uninhabitable, and we may not be able to control them any longer.”  And so on.

From “Lucy’s Child”, “The Discovery of a Human Ancestor”, by Donald Johanson and James Shreeve

Copyright 1989 by Early Man Publishing, Inc.  ISBN o-688-o6492-2  Warning – it is a book, and the quotation is in the Epilogue.  At the end.  Of the book.  Written 23 years ago.