evolution

"humans will go down in history as the only species that caused their own extinction"

This is a dubious statement. Interesting, because there are many things that human beings do that are proof that we're not smart. But its really rather foolish. What we find when we examine the situation is that there are two aspects to evolution. One is biological change. This is something that happens, and if it does, and it does poorly, well, that's just a bad cookie. Throw that poor fella away; humans don't evolve this way much, at least at a noticeable pace (other than cancer and genetic malformity).

The other is behavior. Behavioral change is an adaptation, a response to change in the environment, either from biology, climate, or simply the behavior of other species. What behavioral change does however is any species which modifies its behavior is essentially at risk. Doing nothing also places it at risk. Either way, the behavior change occurred as a result of something else.

Human beings generally change behavior as a result of changes in our own environment, an environment which we think is distinct from the rest of the world. But the reality is twofold. One, humans aren't the only species that does this. PLANTS change behavior people. Those green things that we assume are pretty background, yeah. They adapt too. Humans have a more complex behavior, but its the same flavor. Two, our environment is merely a modification of the real world. We can't replace the reality, but we can alter it to fit our needs. Cold outside, no problem, we'll make heat. Windy, again, we'll make a shelter. And so forth. This sort of change makes us more adaptive to minor changes in our environment than many other species, and less reactive to major changes. Major changes by themselves don't kill off species like us, but they can put us on the warning list. Think of a pendelum. Here we are as a species, and we manage to dodge the first go-round. But the pendelum swings both ways. Sooner or later, the planet itself makes a correction, an adaptation. And we get caught in the middle. I don't see that kind of major change happening anytime soon (even global warming is a hiccup for the planet). And I don't think we'd be the first to suffer if it did. The planet has been around a long time. We're probably not the first species with hyper adaptive qualities. I'm more worried about a sort of boredom factor. A species that thrives on change is apt to change and radically alter its behavior without warning or purpose. If its not a good change, then we could be in for a wild ride.