Human Extinction

We had our chance and we are blowing it.  If I step back and look at our planet and think about what the future might hold I feel anger and depression.  What is the matter with us?

Humans appeared on the scene just 200,000 years ago.  That is nothing compared to the 4.5 billion years earth has been orbiting our star.  Dinosaurs were on the planet for 65 million years.  We are rookie life forms here.  It took us about 150,000 years to figure out how to make a fire.  It took us 195,000 years to figure out how to read and write.  It has taken us less than 200 years to destroy the planet.  Clearly, we no longer deserve to be the dominant life form on planet earth.

What have we done?  We are creative and innovative.  We figured out how to harness steam then petroleum.  We built large factories.  We became very mobile on land, on sea and in the air.  We have even ventured into space, but only in the last 60 years or so.  We made some people very rich but left many very poor.  While we pursued greater creature comforts we quickly changed the climate of the only home we have.  Our selfish short-term goals have doomed us.  And we continue on with the same goals.

Worse, we do not get along with each other.  We are smart enough to cooperate, but we choose not to because our belief systems continue to override our logic systems.  Our logic ability has elevated us to our current standard of living.  Our belief systems are killing us all.  Low pigment people hate high pigment people.  People who speak one language hate people who speak another language.  Christians hate non-Christians, and non-heterosexuals, and woman who abort fetuses.  Christians hate Muslims.  Many Muslims hate Christians.  Catholics have hated Protestants, and vice-versa.  And they all hate atheists.  Our religious beliefs have not brought us closer together, they have separated us even more.  Historically our wars have been about economics and belief.  Both greed and creed are killing us.

There are now 7 billion humans on this planet, the planet we are slowly killing.  Extinction is wide-spread now in the animal kingdom and we have not had an asteroid strike.  We have had human dominance.  We are suspicious of each other and are more likely to build walls than bridges.  We cannot seem to control our fear and hatred of others, especially others who may want to take resources from those that have them.  Our short term ignorance and competition will mean planet earth loses, not just us.  We will kill many life forms before we become extinct.

So, we had a mere 50,000 years of dominance.  If anyone outside earth is taking notes it will be obvious that we had a lot of potential but had the shortest run of dominance in the history of the planet.  If we continue the way we are going we will not last another 50,000 years.  Maybe not another 200 years.  Earth has seen 5 major extinctions and it appears we are in the 6^th.  We are likely to become endangered as well.  If we cannot breath, cannot drink, cannot eat we will become extinct.  Our biggest threat is not nuclear war or epidemics.  It is the death of our current climate.  But the threat of extinction may trigger war and epidemic.

Questions that keep me up at night include, are we moving toward a more tolerant, open, accepting culture or are we moving toward a more hostile, bigoted, alienated culture?  Are we moving toward a sharing of resources to save humans worldwide or are we moving to consolidate and protect the wealth of the few?  Are we taking major steps to reduce the international birth rate or are we allowing human reproduction to continue to run rampant?  Are we taking steps to abandon the burning of all fossil fuels or are we continuing, even accelerating, such burning?  Do we believe that life as we currently know it is somehow guaranteed to continue?  Do we believe that our beliefs somehow protect us when it is clear they divide us?  Do we believe we should not have to curtail our appetites to save ourselves?  Are we so smart we will be dumb enough to cause our own extinction?

If life on this planet survives humans another life form will become dominant.  Will the cetaceans do a better job than we did?  I think so.  They are better adapted to this planet than we are, they cooperate with each other, and their brain capacity is bigger.  I wish them the best of luck as we continue the death march toward self-destruction and extinction.