Biodiversity Loss: What About People?

Another article I have read for my Intro to Environmental Studies class was about biodiversity and how human efforts to preserve biodiversity have been implemented. Two examples the author uses are otters, who eat sea urchins that eat the massive kelp forests, which are home to a vast number of species, and the global seed vault, where seeds of all kinds of grains have been stored in case they are needed some time in the future. Both of these show how changing priorities of people have been made to attempt to reduce biodiversity loss as climate change and human development marches ever forward. The author poses an interesting question: does biodiversity loss threaten human civilization?

I believe the answer to that question is yes. Not only does it threaten us from a physical perspective, but it also does so from a religious one. Without biodiversity, human culture would not be the same as it is now. Ecology is what drives people to interact with their environment in different ways, and without that ecology, in a world where everything is homogeneous, there would be no differences in culture. And when everything is the same, it becomes that much easier to wipe out everything in one fell swoop, as was seen with the banana blight. If we were to lose all biodiversity, life on earth would no longer be living, at least not in the way it is now.