Fascinating stuff. A subtle build on this that just struck me: "The delicate balance of Nature moved to a new equilibrium point that involved a lot more human deaths"
I think it's interesting because it strikes me that Nature is actually a pretty resilient system, it's just that a lot of its stable-states are hostile to human life, to varying degrees. Then again, maybe I'm painting too much of an anthropocentric picture.
1. Nature isn't an 'equilibrium' and doesn't have 'stable states'. It's a constantly changing complex system that can produce catastrophic changes without any external triggers.
2. What people view as 'nature' is often itself a situation that humans have created. For example in this post the preexisting situation was vultures feeding on livestock, but the vultures weren't doing that before humans were around.
FTFY. We humans are part of nature too.
> The whole universe, as it is the place, the source and the result of material phenomena (including man or at least man’s body)
Furthermore I think his point wasn’t about the definition of nature but instead going further on the classic argument “nature will be fine”. Of course universe will always be fine! But your descend may not be part of it. So yes, we should preserve the current equilibrium to preserve ourselves and that’s what this article is all about.
As OscarCunningham has pointed out, nature does not have a balance or an equilibrium. That's the concept of "evolution".