Cyrtanthus epiphyticus, the latest in a very long line

Rocky protrusions interrupt the lush summer grassland where Cyrtanthus epiphyticus also lives. As long as there’s some moisture, the plant shows its flowers in season. Some of this species shun soil, performing their lifestyle tricks on trees and rocks.

The increasingly diverse adaptations of all living things multiply chances for something new to start life in a yet more unlikely spot on earth, in the earth near its surface, or in the sea. All of this collectively increases the chances of life in some form lasting longer somewhere when the chips are really down one day. For this is what the overall life force on earth seems to be doing: optimising chances for something, anything to beat the odds. The more life there is and the more diverse it becomes, the better the chance that something, anything will make it. Forever is too far to reach, for as long as possible is a meaningful challenge. 

Since all that lives can only continue on earth up to the specimen duration limit of its species, all life has to focus on reproduction for sustaining the species. An uncanny commitment to continuation into the beyond is shared by millions of different entities that mostly have low thinking capacity. And life (or nature) knows much about the probability of success in the survival field without resorting to humanity’s (latecomer) actuarial calculations. Spreading risk by investing in diversity is achieved by doing two things: Firstly, maximal seed production (redundancy is of no concern, just do it!), secondly letting the available genes in all the extant species multiply "repeats" and deviations, maximal specimens exhibiting endless individual differences. The credo is invariably to breed new generations as fast and wide-ranging as possible. And of course to stay alive long enough to do this, the half-understood Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest.

The proof of the pudding happens when all these seeds germinate, the eggs hatch, the babies are born, or whatever the appropriate words may be for starting new life in a particular species. The young are tested for coping with the earth's conditions, challenges and dangers. Bear in mind that all the living have to eat other living entities to stay alive. The struggle of life is one continual banquet of participants taking their chances with each other. Generally, sufficient offspring must be produced for feeding the neighbours and ensuring grandchildren!

Endless permutations and combinations of conditions all over the earth makes the execution of this frenzied action plan fascinating. In the process life seeks out every habitable nook and cranny over the earth for use, redefining what habitable means continually. The plans to leave earth for living on the moon and Mars are not so weird or necessarily stupid! They're merely the latest in the human species doing its brainy thing in line with all the other species: contributing as it may according to its specific endowments for sustaining life in some form somewhere.

Of course it is exciting! Every weirdo of every shape in every century gets its chance. An "experimental" opportunity next to all the tried and tested, for the moment boring species that have mastered their intervals of temperature, moisture or water levels, substances required, and importantly, what to avoid. For every participant species has its own hostile, predator species that has acquired a taste for it, making it run and hide. This holds for all the untold numbers of single cell species, as well as up to every complex John Doe organism that mates in the earth's bed and eats at its table.

The art of the possible sorts out the continual, planet-wide weeding of new genetic possibilities for viability. Over a few billions years it appears a slow process, but at least 90% of all the kinds that ever lived on earth are now extinct. So, don't expect much change in proceedings! Interested observers (or even their species) don't last too well for a significant part of the show. And don't hold your breath for every species: every dog gets its day. OK, only some do! Conditions continue to favour "brisk" emergence and disappearance of what not.

And what's a few million years in the bigger scheme of things? Enough for forensics to only cope with broad brush strokes. We can't even picture our ancestors a million generations ago.

Climate change is merely the driving force of our particular time and planet. An ice age serves as well as drought, heat or meteorite to keep things moving. Endless micro-ecologies are sustained for a time in untold earthly niches, giving or withholding newcomer offspring the chance of succeeding, i.e. breeding or not. And anything born may at any time succeed in putting a new twist in its species going forward! It's not outrageous. It's life. Celebrate while it lasts!