Is evolution still possible on a large scale?

[Anomalocaris]

Humans are changing the environment to suit themselves on a massive scale and in ,as far as I know, a unique way. Some animals can change one part of their environment, I'm thinking of beavers making dams here, but humans can change everthing and can even live in space.

So will evolution happen yes, but in gradual drift, until such time as there is an unusual spur to evolution, occupying another planet, a devastating virus or meteorite strike.

Human impact on the environment is not large when compared to some organisms like Cyanobacteria. Without Cyanobacteria there would be no oxygen in the atmosphere, no iron ore or fossil fuel in the ground, metabolism efficient enough to support complex life would be impossible. Earth would have an atmosphere like the saturn moon Titan, and there would no life on it's surface large enough for human eye to see.

Dying because genetic weakness that makes one unable to cope in a darwinian manner with some environmental changes is not the only selection pressure that is making humans evolve. Human society impose extremely strong selective pressures based on social economic behavior as well. For example, in many societies, the birth rate is heavily dependent on social economic circumstances. Social economic circumstances are in turn strongly correlated to ethnic background. Ethnic background in its turn is correlated to prevalence of certain genes. So if you are a member of the social economic group with higher than average birthrate for your overall society, then you outstanding fertility is adding to the prevalence in the overall society of certain genes that had been more common in your ethnic group. Over time the genetic composition of the overall society would change to reflect the difference in this aspect of behavior between your ethnic or social group and the rest of society. It doesn't matter if the particular gene in question may not have anything to do with your social economic circumstances or your fertlity. You carry it and you are more futile, so you alter the society's gene pool to more closely reflect yours. This again is evolution.

As to whether this is slow compared to normal Darwinian rates of evolution, I don't think so. Your typical species in fossil record lasts 2-3 million years before going extinct or evolving so much that it is deemed to be a new species. Anatomically modern humans have only been around less than 200,000 year, behaviorally modern humans probably less than 70,000 years. Already we can find in our genes evidence that we've been subjected to strong selective pressure, that certain very recently acquired, behaviorally linked genetic mutations have crowded out other versions of the same gene in very large percentage of human population in just a few thousand years. What is to say we can linger for another 2 million years without accumulating so many behaviorally linked genetic changes as to have effectively become a different species?