There is a great deal of research information available to support the view that we are quickly reaching or may have already reached the point of no return insofar as damaging the earth’s capacity to sustain life is concerned.
Of course, there are many skeptics who claim that the threats of global warming, depletion of natural resources and overpopulation are overblown and perpetrated by scare-mongers.
For the sake of the future of humankind in the world, I sincerely hope that the skeptics are right.
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But let us assume for a moment that they are wrong.
Let us assume that we will have run out of energy to fuel our transportation systems, heat our homes, produce our food and run our factories. Or that our land, water and air is poisoned as a result of atomic radiation.
What then?
Of course, this will not have happened overnight. It will start with pockets of deprivation and starvation that will gradually spread from region to region and nation to nation. Self-preservation will lead starving people to desperation, violence and social chaos.
As oil and gas supplies dry up and prices rise, the poor will be the first to feel the pinch. Gradually it will affect the middle class. The financial elite will hold out the longest by mainlining a strong military force to preserve their status quo, and to avoid being overwhelmed by desperate masses.
A complete breakdown of law and order is bound to ensue when a world wide shortage of food develops.
It will not be pretty.
There have been suggestions in some circles that humankind should accelerate space exploration so that, by the time the earth will no longer be able to sustain life, a select few individuals would have the means to evacuate this planet and populate another.
Who would be the chosen few in
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such a scenario?
Persons with money and power, no doubt. They will be the ones that will be able to finance the construction of and provisions for a spaceship or spaceships, and afford the security they would need right up to the time of their departure.
There would be a mad scramble reminiscent of the evacuation of Saigon, except on an immensely grander scale.
And what of the humans left behind? They will be abandoned to fend for themselves as best they can. Some may survive in what will have once again become a primitive planet. Or they may become extinct along with many other species of plants and animals by that time.
What a horrid scenario.
And yet, I can see few signs that indicate humanity is taking the threats seriously. We keep covering agricultural land with concrete and pavement, spewing pollutants into the atmosphere while depleting our non-renewable natural resources, polluting and over fishing the oceans and wasting grain by diverting it into fuel to be added to fossil fuel and used in gas guzzling Hummers, luxury yachts, private jets and military hardware.
The list of unbridled environmental destruction goes on and on.
I believe that a much saner approach would be for humankind to ensure that the earth remains capable of sustaining life for millenniums to come.
But who will make the change? The masses can rally, petition,
strike and demonstrate all they like, but they lack the organization and the power to make the necessary changes.
It is the financial elite who will have to stop romanticizing about saving themselves by travelling into outer space and populating other worlds, and get serious about taking the necessary steps to preserve the earth for sustaining life.
Although the financial elite makes up a minuscule percentage of the earth’s population, they alone control the levers of power and wield the enormous economic, military and political clout that is required for the task.
Theirs is an awesome and, in my view, urgent responsibility.
