Unfortunately, human activities over the last century have been dramatically disrupting these stable systems. The plastics we dump into the ocean break down into tiny little plastic particles, but never fully dissolve -- and they clog the gill and digestive systems of fish, birds, and sea mammals. The mercury we pump out of our coal plants into the air settles onto multiple biomes, which accrete in predator species, and kill them. The prescription drugs we urinate into our sewers and streams produce endocrine system disruptions in most vertebrates. The fertilizer we pump onto our fields leach into rivers and bays, which overfeeds algae, leading to anaerobic "dead zones" in the ocean of hundreds of square miles.

When it comes to the concept of invasive species, it can be argued that humans are the most invasive species of all. From our origins on the African continent, we proceeded to invade the entire planet -- in the most dramatic diaspora imaginable. No other species has spread so far, and made so many alterations in the environment. The list of those alterations is without end -- the Project can only hope to tickle the very tip that quickly melting iceberg.

Ultimately, everything humans have introduced into the environment, intentionally or unintentionally -- pollution, cane toads, rats, zebra mussels, kudzu, pathogens, estrogens, billboards, GM foods, etc. -- can be considered an introduction of non-indigenous factors. We can think of but a few breaches that can't be blamed on humans: volcanoes, tsunamis, and earthquakes. Of course, a meteor slamming into the planet is the Mother of all Biology Breaches. But we consider those of a different ilk.

This apocalypse is something of a catch-all of human intrusions into the living world. Our warming of the oceans is breaching the stability of the coral systems. Our strip-farming of the Midwest has wiped out the stability of the grasslands and the topsoil. Our sewer systems concentrate the hormones we urinate, which disrupt the endocrine systems of the fish in our rivers, and the other animals which feed on them. The acidic rain that falls on forests disrupts the balances within the soil, damaging the health of every tree within it.

Understanding this apocalypse requires requires systemic thinking, at which humans are notoriously poor. We kill the wolves, because we don't want them eating our sheep -- and then we wonder why there are so many deer munching our gardens. We cut down the hillside trees to build condos, and then wonder why we have landslides when it rains hard. We stripmine the ocean with driftnets, and then wonder why the Northern cod has disappeared.

We are projecting, over the next ten years, using mostly pessimistic predictions, the following scenario:

• Immune and reproductive systems of many animals will be compromised because of humanly-produced toxins (endocrine disrupters, heavy metals, etc.)
• Invasive species -- such as the Asian Longhorned Beetle currently chewing on the maple trees in North America -- will cause dramatic impacts on existing biome balances.
• Unexpected results from genetically engineered plants will cause dramatic disruptions in multiple biosystems.
• Overwhelmed by carbon dioxide, oceans acidify, producing massive die-offs of coral reef and other key marine life.
• Coastal areas will be breached, according to some estimates, by more than a meter by the end of the century, but with storm surges in the next decade that wash away much economically valuable coastland.
• Warming climates create shorter hibernation cycles -- or these mammals don't hibernate at all -- putting entire species at risk of starvation
• The so-called Eighth Continent, the North Pacific gyre where a massive island of trash now floats, grows beyond its current range of "twice the size of Texas"
• Environmental toxins create early onset puberty in young mammals, including human boys and girls, disrupting normal growth and development
• Giant dust clouds assist in the transcontinental dispersion of influenza, SARS, heavy metals, fungi, bacteria, and other unpleasant elements
• Desperate to sustain current lifestyles and energy needs, humans continue to exploit existing natural resources, thus accellerating all current crises
• We anticipate tremendous economic disruption because of unanticipated consequences. Surprises like giant oxygen-free areas of the ocean, because of our effluent; a dramatic rise in infertility across mammals, because we pump out fake hormones through our plastic; basic crops increasingly produce allergic reactions in many humans, because invasive artificial genes have drifted; etc.
• Politicians will blather on about a war on terrorism, and free markets, and the economy, and treat each breach instance as an isolated oddity -- because understanding complexity is almost as hard as communicating it.

Many of these breaches are not solvable within a human lifetime, because of the accumulated toxic reach of our actions over five generations. Others, like unintended consequences of genetic modification, may be impossible to repair. But clearly we need to return to living lightly on the earth, and making decisions with the seventh (or even third?) coming generation in mind.