Writer is too focused on the external and says nothing about the internal. Human Consciousnessness rises spirally but never remains the same. So to say that we are the same as our ancestors is simplistic, at best. We may not be better, but not same. Hubris and what comes after it, is part of rising consciousness. It is the price we pay. Ask an Ancient Greek, if you can find one. As for Participation Mystique, it is for the birds...
The world will continue, but not necessarily as Mr. Roy Scranton seems to believe inevitable, with human beings around.
"Nothing lasts forever."
- Richard B. Riddick
(great 28th-Century philosopher)
1
" In some unknown future, on some strange and novel shore, human beings just like us will adapt to a whole new world. You can see them sitting circled around a fire on the beach, the light flickering on their rapt faces, one telling a story about a mighty civilization doomed by its hubris, an age of wonders long past."
Let's be honest about that future mentioned above, especially if as the article suggests "Our Hubris will be our End"
Here's a more realistic tweaked version of the above:
In some far unknown future, on some strange and novel shore, beings not like us have evolved to a whole new world. You can see them sitting circled around a fire on the beach, the light flickering on their unusual faces, you could imagine one is telling a story about a race of creatures that came before them doomed by its own hubris, in an age of blunders long past. These creatures had shown great ability in technological advancement which promised the realization of the vast potential gifted to this species. But it was a potential never met as these creatures were so completely flawed and dysfunctional (despite their technological genius), they could not survive as they wilfully destroyed the planet's ability to sustain them as well as at least 40% of the life they had shared this world with.
This popular narrative taught to all young, was never first believed, how could it possibly be true?
Being so difficult to accept how ANY sentient beings could destroy their own existence...
4
As the author points out, humanity will eventually vanish from the scene while the planet and its surviving life forms carry on. Yet in the present day and for many generations to come, our species will adapt to the sweeping changes we produce in the world. On the whole I am very glad to live in an age of greater health, comfort, and convenience than mankind has ever known. I have hope, as everyone should, that our current social and ecological predicaments are not a product of human brainpower, but of a lack thereof. Evolution isn't finished with us; we will either continue to grow more intelligent, learning to build better societies that live in harmony with one another and with the environment, or we will hasten our own demise.
2
@Tom Thank you for an insightful and intelligent reply.
1
Religious educated Human-males your minds are ripped apart in the Now, the Past, and in predicting the capitalistic "growth" Future with childish Infinity-formula totally misplaced, while you all pray, kill and continue to hope for a Hubris of a future never to come.
When the reality is all times are subjectively "good" and/or are as subjectively "bad" as are the leaders and the leading violent ideologies of Earth's at that particular time-line.
If you could really look deep around our Planet, if you could look really deep inside nearly all humans now alive, you will turn your back on our lost Humanity and never look back again either.
There is no Adaption. Self-Extinction alone awaits Human-kind, believe it or not. You all know deep inside anyway, Mr. Scranton.
So. Live in the Now. Think Local and Global, act Global and local. Not either or nor. There is only one Earth.
Space a dead empty-void! So Think Global, just as you do local. For in this coming Time its all or no-one survives the slow-demise of Earth and all lives on it, dear Noah's heirs.
Best of Luck in your temporary survival of the "shittiest",
A.E.
Projectheureka LLC,
We are doing a lousy job of managing the resources and protecting the environment of the only planet we have. There reams of reasons we are in this fix and many have been pointed out in the comments. Still, at 76, I am glad to have the many conveniences I did not have growing up. Indoor plumbing, central heat and AC to name a few. It saddens me though that we do not harness our technology to minimize the adverse impact on our planet. I fear for the world my young grandchildren will experience.
1
@DCN
As do I: I am74. My time on Planet Earth is short, and my 7 grandchildren (home-schooled) are really smart but likely will lack critical thinking skills. (Full disclosure: I went to a Baptist college, but, unusually, critical thinking reigned supreme.) I didn't fully appreciate this until I took college classes elsewhere, at State universities.
From the era of the dinosaurs to the many birds in the skies and fish in the seas, from the dances of endless buffalo to the thundering masses of elephants, antelope and all the rest one thing is clear. Mother Nature dearly loves herds. Time and again she creates them in all their glory and spectacle.
Humanity is the latest one, with the added twist of not only being another form of group intelligence (as all herds are), but one whose members are also uniquely intelligent as well. This has worked so successfully that we have gone beyond the impact of mere herd, to one that is now a geological force.
You can see our impact on this planet everywhere, and in almost real-time fashion via all our high-tech toys and tools that encircle and monitor it. Mountains change and fall, lakes disappear and rivers change. Even the atmosphere and seas suffer our impact.
Our hubris involves failing to understand that we live in a terrarium, and that everything we do comes back to us in some form. As intelligent as we are we think we can do as we please, and will live forever. How intelligent is that, eh?
The fact is we are but one more experiment Mother Nature is conducting. And the jury is still out on whether intelligence of our kind has notable survival value. It can, but we have to learn to control ourselves and our numbers less be relegated to the fossil record as but one more in an endless series of tests. I guess we'll find out soon enough, won't we?
2
After over four million years, this is the best that we can do? My species disappoints me.
3
You and I are but specks in the ether. There! That's the essential kernel of truth we must all accept. Those that don't embrace this are unhappy because they labor under the illusion that they matter. You and I and everyone else are mere specks of temporary consciousness. Our purpose? To live until we die. 'Meaning'? - don't fret, just live and try not to be horrible. The only thing that is eternal? You know and have always known that it's...LOVE.
1
e.e. Cummings poem “pity this busy monster, manunkind” seems relevant
2
And all that will be left when the aliens come to our destroyed and barren planet will be the gaudy car wash neon signs buried in the dirt. What will they think of us?
Humanity is:
1. Headed for a dystopian future were 10% of the people are living lives in cocooned comfort while the other 90% are struggling to survive on a planet wit a progressively disintegrating environment, or
2. Headed for a dystopian future where population has been culled down to less than a billion people and its bliss (think “A.I.”) or its a nightmare (think “Mad Max”, “The Road”, etc.), or
3. Headed for somewhere between 1 and 2, that is our current state and trajectory.
So, that’s life (c’est la vie). Or it will be what it will be (que sera sera). Or whatever other trite aphorisms works for you.
But, no matter what, we are individually and collectively transitory in the earthly and cosmic scheme of things.
3
The Road
3
The author has named the culprit: ... a global capitalist civilization built on fossil fuels, slavery and genocide . . .
12
If you want to see climate destruction on steroids, come to Montclair! You are welcome there! If you are a young, rich, white couple, pregnant, with three more kids, and drive an SUV. And don't forget the landscapers with mowers and blowers and pesticides galore, to groom the lawn on your centrally-air conditioned mansion on the hill. That's what protected you from last week's floods that nearly drowned the poor hoi-polloi down the hill, and the 115 degree heat we'll soon have when you heat things up with all your cars, school buses, and AC heat bubbles, and just plain hot air while you all brag about how wonderful you are, and how the new $31 million dollar school we had to build for all your kids is "sustainable" because, by gosh, it's geothermal!
8
I'm not sure upon which definition of 'hubris' the author is judging mankind's desire to advance his life and circumstances (if imperfectly). I sense from this article only somebody who likes to judge others.
@Brendan McCarthy AND your sense is wrong.
1
Consider our ancestors: Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, however far back you want to go. They led short and brutish lives. Are they in "heaven" somewhere for all eternity doing the same things? (Is that what we would want for ourselves?) What do we care about what they left us? Artwork? Culture? Maybe some genetic material that is still useful to us; thank you, I suppose -- we killed you to get it. Would they feel some sense of accomplishment that they fostered our existence? Would we ever resurrect them for their intellects to help us with our modern problems of climate change and overpopulation?
So what will be our role for those who come after us? Maybe just to serve as a warning? Maybe we're just stepping stones, not meant to be around for very long, our future assured as bones in the ground for use as some future museum pieces?
I think about Orthoceras and trilobite fossils hundreds of millions of years old, the creatures long dead, their organic remains replaced with rock and minerals. Yet light from galaxies hundreds of millions of light-years away has been traveling through space all that time -- alive! -- until the tiniest amount is captured by our feeble "technologically advanced" telescopes.
Would it be that we survive as long as these photons. Or that we are as successful with longevity as dinosaurs, or sharks, or even roaches. But we won't come close.
"In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
So what else is new under the sun?
5
My, my, my... So many fatalists.
What do those who accept that mankind is on the downward spiral think of those who refuse to believe it? Do they think the fighters are self-delusional? Do they think, with a sly smile, that they refuse to face facts?
It's easy to give up. All you have to do is try to be comfortable until the end. So, have a drink while you can.
Meanwhile, I'll be standing with the fighters. If I have to go out, I'm going out with my boots on. There is a lot to be said for making the good fight. If you've never done it, you're missing an important opportunity. If you're willing to fight, I'll see you in the trenches and greet you as a friend.
@Steve W -- Are you one of those "who refuse to believe" or not? If so, what is there to fight about? Surely you can just be amused at the waste of time and worry the fatalists are expending on nothing.
But if you do believe, I'd be interested to know the the nature of the fight you plan to engage in, or are already engaged in, and who your enemy is? One aspect of our predicament that seems to me to weaken clarion calls to battle like yours is that the enemy is ourselves. And not some easily identified and targeted "ourselves." All of ourselves. Except that the more affluent among us have done, and continue to do, the greatest amount of damage. And the damage we do is not deliberate or malicious, we are just living our daily lives as best we can in a modern, industrialized economy.
This is little more than a chance for the "whiners" of the world to whine and rant against what is.
We should accept and cherish what we have, and live with what we have been given.
The world is not perfect, nor is it terrible. The world is just what it is. No one can change the world with the snap of their thumbs. But the world is not that bad.
Climate change and other dilemmas will happen, but we will win. We will win and we will prevail regardless of our losses. If I learned anything in my life, it us the pure survival abilities of living beings.
Anti-capitalists often use rhetoric like this to fuel their ideas. But capitalism is ideal because we are capitalizing off of what is. Time will go on and things will change, but freedom and personal will ultimately be what lives on....
We must learn from the past and look to the future, but ultimately we must live in the present.......
2
This article is strangely reassuring. I can only hope that humans can adapt to the ever changing climate. Human arrogance has driven us to this point of environmental destruction. I hope after the next few elections we see a group of politicians with some humility take the reins and stop the unfortunate overuse of fossil fuels and plastics. The climate is over the tipping point but maybe we can slow human destruction by slowing down environmental destruction.
3
I wouldn't underestimate our adaptive ability, but I wouldn't overestimate it either.
Our anthropocentric consciousness is also bio-centric. Life, that marvel that animates us as well as the needles on a pine tree, is, as far as we know, relegated to this tiny planet, at least in our immediate "observable" neighborhood. Outside this speck lies a vast, impassive universe, unaware of our hubris.
8
This is the greatest of the time, this the worst of the time _ the progress we made during the last 300 years are unprecedented, see the book of Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now. But there is a nagging feeling - are we heading for worst time. Why? To understand this we have to look to the world before 2000 years back, when human cultures at isolated locations were build on very similar understanding - God, family, and Nature. The birth of Christianity and subsequent Islam changed all these - there is book and doctrine that is considered superior, and non believers to be destroyed, violance is the primary deciding force, God has given this nature for human enjoyment and women are deprived of soul. This idea divided the world into two parts, one adopted new idea and the other continued the old one. New idea prevailed, genocide, imperialism and colonialism destroyed many people and many cultures. At the same time unprecedented manifestation of human knowledge had tried to prove that old ideas of God, family and nature may be incorrect and reason and science based on good and evil is the right path of humanity. The complexity of the universe now showing us the logical view can not explain every thing there are mysteries beyond the science. Science has become a problem solution technique not finding the truth. We today can not reach the older purity of heart because we are bounded to external world so deeply. What we do now.
And when human beings finally pass, all the plants and animals that survive will breathe a collective sigh of relief. We have been a parasite on this planet and our time is finally about up.
7
@Doug Mattingly -- In northern wisconsin, witnessing the predations of man-made climate change since the 1970s, and hoping for the plants and animals' sake that they shall live to sigh.
3
When I was a lot younger, we used to speak of the "hungry boxer." The manly art of self-defense was often practiced by gentlemen in English universities, but as an affectation rather than a need. Striving, determined hungry boxers took the championships--a metaphor for striving societies with shared goals and the determination to pursue their goals. Round towers at ruined Irish churches provide a more apt metaphor for America today. Those towers were places for look-outs, and in the event of attack (Viking!) they were refuges. The door of such a tower was high up and reached by a ladder. God help the brother who was slow to reach the ladder, for his brethern had pulled it up and barred the door. And those churches are ruins indeed. And that's a metaphor for where America is headed, with its soft, selfish, greedy arrogance.
9
Like some Australians, white Americans would do well to remember they, and we (I am a white Australian), are not the founding people of our countries. The first settlers of both countries were neither white nor Christian. But they have suffered the abuse and condescension of the interlopers for over 200 years. It's time we white people pulled in our heads and asked the original people of our countries what they think about immigration.
14
This is why I love Science Fiction: it's granted the 'long view' that can imagine a moment when humans were as brief as a butterfly, then gone.
But I'm an engineer, and know that there is no defensible reason why the elevation of our species should come with the extinction of all others. We have the means to power our civilization without destroying the others via climate change. We just can't employ them because people like Vlad Putin (owner of the Worlds 2nd largest fossil fuel reserves) can't let us, and will upend our Democracy if we attempt to.
We are bigger than Putin and his puppet. Never forget that.
40% of Americans live by the ocean. They try to ignore the fact that salt water burns the eyes, tastes terrible, and causes itching. Sand gets into every crook and nanny and, when you get home, it finds its way into every crook and nanny of your home. There is no shade at the beach, and if you bring drinks they will be 90 degrees by the time you drink them. Water temperature in the East is always too cold. And the tides assure that you will be lost if you take a long walk. About 4,000 people die at the beach each year. And so lifeguards blow their whistles if you go out over your head.
Millions go to the beach in the summer without realizing how unpleasant it can be. And the crowds make it a more miserable experience. There are countless lakes in the country, few of which have many of the beaches' disadvantages.
People wax eloquent about sunrises and sunsets, the surf, and the aesthetics. But most of the time at the beach is spent finding a parking place, lugging a hundred pounds of paraphernalia, finding the right spot to occupy, applying suntan lotion, putting up the umbrella, stripping down to your bathing suit which you hope looks ok, building the courage to go past your knees in the water, drying yourself off, getting the sand out of the nooks and crannies, reapplying lotion, and reading a book you can barely see in the sunshine.
When ocean goers realize that the ocean is more bother than it's worth, half the climate change problem will be solved.
Amen. I was just telling a friend the little tale last night about the American who meets a poor Mexican fisherman living in a shack on the beach. The American goes to great lengths telling the Mexican about going from one fishing boat to two, to five, to bigger boats, to a fleet of ocean liners. At each point the Mexican man says "and then what?" At the end, the American says "then you sell your fleet and settle on the beach in Mexico."
Point made. And I would like to remind the NYTimes, among others, that though I lazily used the word American, Mexicans are Americans, as are Cubans, Canadians, Guatemalans, Brazilians....
This is the problem with the environmental left: a certain satisfaction that a form of justice is being handed out. It’s quasi religious. It shadows the story of Abraham bargaining with God over the destruction of a wayward city. But for one righteous man...Correcting climate change should have remained a non partisan scientific national and international undertaking. The petrol industry pulled out the tobacco playbook. But in the tobacco wars, anti tobacco activists saw tobacco users as victims. The autor’s stance places us all inside Abraham’s troubled city of pleasure, with the gods on the verge of destroying the city and everyone in it. The survivors, having survived the cleansing fires, will live a more virtuous is sterner life, gathered around the campfire. But the European settlers who displaced the indigenous people are deeply wedded to progress- they went to that beach looking for more. Here’s the flaw in the author’s argument. The indigenous people weren’t primitive. The land was highly managed. Genetically modified crops were consumed. Without the wheel or animal power to harness, a city larger than London once existed near modern St. Louis. The devastation that came was epidemiological.
If we are to correct the climate change problem we will need to look to technolgy and lifestyle changes cannot be confined to only developed nations
1
We can continue on doing what we are doing, or we can survive.
5
Too bad Roy couldn't just enjoy the beach. The piece suggests a lot of gravitas and reflection without actually saying anything.
"Nasty, brutish and short" famously characterized human life in ancient days. Life today is very much better for many, perhaps even most humans. But, of course, the assumed standards for life in developed countries, especially the USA, are not sustainable for 7 billion people. So there will be fewer of us and we will consume fewer resources than in current developed countries, again especially the USA. Or the universe may just do planet Earth a favor and we may see the large asteroid or gigantic volcanic eruptions close down the human race, and much else. But with so many of us, it seems likely that could be at least a few survivors to hold on and begin again. Perhaps. And this is an old theme. In the biblical accounts of Noah, our frustrations with our inability to overcome our tendencies are given voice in that story of "Destroy them all and start over again"--a very familiar human notion, projected onto a god who, come to think of it, has been fashioned in our own limited image. Our lives are short, even when we live our 70--80 years, or more. So our outlook is by definition short-term. Long-term, we are likely extinct. Then something else happens.
2
Every species goes extinct. A subset (homo sapiens) will go extinct by overpopulation, by soiling its nest, by resource depletion, and altering its environment (eg. climate).
Sagan captures the essence of the human condition nicely in "Pale Blue Dot", and a talk he gave. Excerpt:
The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
16
@oldBassGuy yep!
1
What a gem of an essay. Im reminded of the power and scope of the great Peter Matthiessen's Wildlife in America, an underrated book on a similar topic: what was here when Europeans came to North America's shores, and how it died. Or the writing of Elizabeth Kolbert. Like Mr. Scranton, I studied literature at the graduate level. I've also served 8 years on the Sierra Club board. What a pleasure to discover a writer with Scranton's sensitivity, and his ability to capture a hint of the scope of what we collectively have lost.
3
I've read down the comments a bit and, as no one seems to have said it, I'd like to commend the writer of this piece on his wonderful writing. Just really good writing, not over dramatized, just deeply perceived and felt. As to the subject matter, The author is to be commended for his honesty. Whether we like it or not we have fulfilled the commandment of genesis to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, having dominion over all of it. Problem is, this wasn't very good advice from on high as the result can hardly be called anything close to heaven. Thank you, Mr. Scranton, for speaking truth, and so well.
8
@cat Agreed re the writing. What Scranton does here is needed and hard to do well. Im reminded of writers like Peter Matthiessen or Elizabeth Kolbert, and that is good company.
4
I have been thinking alot lately about our demise. My conclusion is that we are a failed species. I consider myself an optimist but the writing is on the wall. I think we deserve our fate, but I feel really bad for all the animals who will being dying because of us. They do not deserve our fate. The planet is some 4 billion years old. Humans are not even going to appear as a blip in that narative. I am actually kind of happy earth will revert to its former paradise after we are gone.
2
Humans do adapt, as they have always done. But the word “adaptation” implies, correctly, that some other being or force is making decisions that require humans to change. Through our own actions and inaction relating to our planet, we are turning our fate over to the will of nature. Nature will ultimately decide whether we continue to live on this planet and for how long. There is no question, except apparently in the minds of the Far Right, that we humans are accelerating the impending results of that decision. And no religious belief, however righteous or honestly held, will alter that decision once it has been finally rendered.
5
The author longs for a past which was dystopian by today's standards. Working class people of today live like the kings of that era. People who lacked a written language did not know more about phenomenology than Kant or Hegel. Our lives are much longer, healthier, and fuller. There is no end to the self-hatred that the political left promulgates.
2
Tell that to the young father who gets shot to death by the cop he pays taxes for to protect him.
as I get older, strangely enough, I find myself
more and more wedded to my phone and all
of its magical functions.although I still walk,
I walk less.although I still read a few books
every couple of months, I read less.maybe
it is my need to keep up on all the news from
Trumpland,but I check my various news feeds
on the internet every hour or so.in fact I get
most of my news from these sources and
the two cable news channels I watch.maybe
life was simpler 200 years ago,but I could
not imagine living in those simpler times.
I even read the ny times on my device.(no
more newspaper fingers for me).I think we
will come to our senses soon enough and
turn things around,because whatever human
beings can destroy,they can also create
again.I am very grateful to be alive in these
interesting times,however difficult they seem.
3
Climate change/global warming, looting and toxification of earth, coming soon to a place near you. Nature has the only seat at the table (it *is* the table) and it bats 1000.
Don't ignore inconvenient truths, fires, floods, droughts, toxic waste, species migration, rising seas, more extreme storms, and famine sending millions seeking somewhere, anywhere, to feed their children.
We have always fallen for big predators, whether it be dictators or wannabe godkingemperors like Trump, or greedy preachers in megachurches taking the widow's mite.
At some point, the finite quality of our hospitable earth will impose its limits on us. Here are some superb videos from great actors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8d_JvMpoY4&list=PL5WqtuU6JrnXjsGO4W...
The earth will survive once it has ejected its apex predator.
If we find a society that lives in harmony with its home, we destroy it. Just as CEOs have a high percentage of sociopaths, aggression provides a Darwinian advantage, until it doesn't.
Don't think "god" will save you. If you are truly spiritual by nature, you will have figured out that, for example, top Republicans have confused their ego and worldly goods with god: convenient but dishonest (one resource: the Gospels).
Space travel is fabulously expensive and incredibly dangerous. Science fiction is fiction.
If we don't get together to solve problems in a big hurry, this story will not end well. War is not good for children and other living things.
8
@Susan Anderson I think are main problem is that we have applied the science of empirical evidence to every discipline, the exceptions, politics, governance and religion. Accordingly, our social doesn't recognize how to accommodate the global economy, our governance structure-18th Century with a few bells and whistles and how this has led to restless consequences that could lead to our destruction. Get on a train, ride the globe and see how the world, individual countries are different and ask why. In this global information age, we remain tribal.
4
@tennvol30736
Yes, I strongly recommend paying attention to the whole world and its patterns and modes. Sadly, we are not just tribal but blind to the wholeness of our planet. The following from John Donne (1624)
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
[The world] is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
(given our time, I've replaced Europe with "the world")
We're not even 18th century any more, we're feudal and medieval. We are slaves to church, military and the rich. This is the toxic society the Enlightenment tried to overthrow.
1
When John Smith sailed into the Chesapeake, looking for the Northwest Passage, the oyster beds were so thick they were a hazard to navigation. Striped bass were so plentiful nets couldn't be lifted for the weight of the catch. When migratory waterfowl were startled the sound of their wings was like a clap of thunder and their passing darkened the sky. All of this was supported by the Bay grasses. But mans activities turned the water turbid and the grass died off for lack of sunlight. It got so bad that a hundred mute swans, an exotic species everywhere in North America has to be destroyed less those few birds destroy too much of the remaining Bay grasses.
Unless growth is controlled in the Bay's watershed, that extends all the way north to the trout streams of my youth just south of Syracuse NY, the Bay will die. It's that simple.
6
Not man's activities. WHITE man's activities. And they are still the most destructive force in my 'hood, tho', on the planet, their destructiveness to the environment and cruelty to other species is being rivalled by the Chinese.
At 65 my body is not what it used to be. Each time my back goes it takes longer to get back on my feet. Each time I am determined to do whatever it takes to recover. But I know that someday I won't be able to get up anymore. That's something that I share, more or less, with all other creatures. What makes humans different from other animals is that everyone contributes and everyone's contribution becomes a part of a larger culture that transcends our individual existences. Yes, humans can use and communicate with symbolism and language, but what is even more basic is that we have moral systems that make it possible for us to cooperate and share information for the good of all. We can survive the next hundred years if we are able to scale up our moral system to a global level. But we won't be able to solve these Anthropocene problems without holding people and institutions everywhere responsible when they jeopardize our safety and our collective future.
12
Why do so many commenters claim "the earth will still be here" after we are gone? Do you not understand that the oceans are clogging with plastic, the ice is melting, sea water (increasingly acidic) levels are rising, and drinkable water will become scarce. Last time I checked, all living creatures need air to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink. Your philosophical musings that at last all will breathe a sigh of relief after humans are gone is faulty - pretty much everything will have died or be dying.
4
@Margaret These are a better answer than I can write:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8d_JvMpoY4&list=PL5WqtuU6JrnXjsGO4W...
2
@Margaret
Oh yes! When will the world wake up, stop useless fighting and ban plastic as a starter, and then turn weapons into ploughs hares.
I was with you until the last paragraph: "In some unknown future, on some strange and novel shore, human beings just like us will adapt to a whole new world." What makes you think humans will survive the plasticization of the oceans, the decimation of ocean and land habitat, the pollution of air, soil and groundwater, the rising heat, the devastation inflicted by war, to survive into the future? What is it about humans, including you, who acknowledge the catastrophe we've inflicted upon the living earth, that doesn't allow them to see that we humans don't have a future? We're dodos. We're dinosaurs. We're headed full-speed into a brick wall.
10
@annie, the dinosaurs were actually among the most successful organisms ever to populate this planet. In fact, they’re still with us. You can look out your window and, hopefully, see some flying around.
As for the demise of the dodo, that’s on us. We hunted it to extinction.
Please don’t compare human folly to the fate of these amazing creatures.
1
My feeling about humanity is "good riddance."
1
None of us can predict the future for sure. What we can do is extrapolate known data from the distant and recent pasts and make intelligent guesses about what could be in store for us. The survival or otherwise of human civilizations depends on any number of factors, but one thing is for sure – it depends on the presence or otherwise of a hospitable environment.
An increase of two or three degrees in earth’s temperature may sound tolerable to those of us who shelter in climate-controlled homes and workplaces. But behind that average are increasingly extreme variations, with already observable consequences on our survival. Hubris is a misplaced human characteristic that more properly resides only with Mother Earth, because she will endure whatever happens. With or without us.
5
Fewer diseases? - Our life expectancy is probably at least 2x longer due to improved hygiene, vaccines and antibiotics.
7
This has made me think about some things more clearly than I have before, so thank you. (Thinking. What a concept!) Thinking, in this case, about America, I would submit that the greatest loss is the loss of community. That's a very recent development, dating back only 60 - 70 years. It was caused by poor, even predatory, urban policy that split populations into insular suburbs segregated by income, race, space, and age. The automobile made it easy to avoid people and places you didn't like, or just didn't need. Thriving - though in many cases poor - neighborhoods were decimated by shifting wealth to the suburbs. Crime increased from the inevitable desperation and alienation, and isolation allowed(s) it to be ignored. Political lines were drawn more sharply than ever before. Civil conversation stopped.
All this was the result of deliberate policy. So much damage was done to people and places that it was too deep a hole to dig out of, so the problems remain.
If I could turn back the clock I don't know when I would turn it to. The 50s? Maybe, but it could be savage in its quiet way. The 40s? A time of great unity in the US and among the Allies. (See the film "The Best Years of Our Lives.") But 50 million people died. 1491? I don't think so. I guess we have to play the hand we're dealt. We can only hope the cards aren't marked, though right now they seem to be.
8
@Stevenz Think you'd enjoy "Habits of the Heart" by Robert Bellah et al.
"Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders." -- from a comic I read.
Hopeful sentiment in this piece, but it glosses over the intervening years of horror. Also, a bit too romantic about the human condition. Trapped (apparently) in this mortal coil in an ever changing world, we build castles in the sand that time relentlessly washes away.
In the best of times, in the worst of times, we are still tied to this dying, mortal body, inevitably to be betrayed by death, first by the death of our loved ones, and then our own death. The death of our civilization is as inevitable, and whatever civilization follows it.
Birth follows death as certainly as death follows birth in an endless cycle for civilizations and the people in them. Nothing lasts here. There is no permanent state of satisfaction that you can find and hold and keep from changing into its opposite.
That we adapt to these changing conditions is not a cause for celebration. It is a sign of our insanity. We keep searching for something to fulfill us, to console us, to numb us from facing the horror of our own mortality.
Better to stop and ask "what is this search?" That is the beginning of wisdom.
10
As a child in 1950, and then-abouts, we went to Rhobeth and other ocean beaches. I recall there were black gobs of what we called "tar." Actually, they were congealed oil leaked from sunken ships, done in by German subs. I do not see fit to refer to all German soldiers and sailors as ,"Nazis." I feel certain that many despised Nazis.
2
@Heckler Many might have “despised Nazis”, but they fought for them (who cares what was in their heads), so what’s the difference?
If there had been no resistance whatever by any German at all, you’d have a better point. But some did resist (like the White Rose) and paid with their lives. They — and only they — partially redeemed Germany’s honor.
We are literally populating ourselves off the planet. And my former religion, Catholicism, can take a big part of the blame for that.
In the past, the U.S. used to make contraception available to third world countries until the Catholics in this country put a stop to that. In the 1950s we had about 3 billion people on this planet, and will soon have 8 billion. We'd better rethink that policy, and soon, because there is no "Planet B."
29
We are more properly, Homo fabulans, story-telling man, than Homo sapiens.
6
Another Charles II Article. Let’s dig up the past and put it on trial. Someday we will move forward again
3
In some far, distant and unknown future, on a once familiar but now strange and novel shore, sentient beings, not like us at all have adapted to this whole new world.They can be seen sitting circled around a fire on the beach, the light flickering on their rapt faces, as one tells the Legacy story about a mighty race of Monsters doomed by their stupidity and vicious nature in an age of plunder and blunders long past, as they battled and fought each other, nearly destroying their planet until it no longer could sustain them and they were no more.
It would take many million Sun Circlings for the planet to heal and recover and many more before the First Ones, Mother and Father arrived to a new home in the stars, time healed inviting and long emptied of those monsters by themselves, the Monsters who did not how to live.
So Mother and Father of us all who live today upon the lands and seas of ^^-(**)...our Home could live , love and prosper as do we all and always will.
1
Mr. Scranton,
You can romanticize about periods gone by. As a female, I'd rather be alive now.
4
You are someone thinking with the right mindset we need for survival
AND BY HIS HUBRIS, YOU SHALL KNOW HIM. Donald Trump is hubris personified. He is also severely mentally ill and behaviorally impaired. Trump is medically incapable of fulfilling his official duties. It is well past time that the 26th Amendment be invoked. Trump's megalomania is speeding up. Now he is channeling the worst aspects of the McCarthy years, turning them against past top government officials, such as chiefs of the CIA, stripping them of security clearances. Trump is vehemently objecting to what he has called, inaccurately, "a witch hunt" which is properly investigating collusion with the Russian interference with the 2016 presidential elections. Trump, in fact, has a duty to recuse himself in matters relating to the Mueller investigation. But being ignorant of professional governmental conduct, he is unaware of that duty. Trump's demented mentor Roy Cohn taught him to respond to any criticism with unrelenting attack, never admit guilt and never take responsibility for any mistakes, no matter how grave. I curse the GOP for permitting Trump to be their candidate. They knew he was involved with 3,500+ lawsuits, yet turned the other way, thereby giving him the appearance of a moral, mature and fair-minded character, none of which essential characteristics he is possessed. Trump, simply put, represents a clear and present danger to Homeland Security, outstripping the bombing of Pearl Harbor and any other threat at any time!
8
@John Jones. John, you're going to get hosed for this comment but I think it's right on point, and I'm sure these thoughts were on the writer's mind.
Hubris is such an all-encompassing word.
Our world seems full of it.
No need to search it out.
It performs face-plants right before your eyes.
Morning, noon and night.
Hubris, it appears to be contagious.
3
One thing future generations may wonder: Why didn't the Americans of the early 21st century try to achieve a stable sustainable society? Why did they believe with almost the fervor of religion in the doctrine of everlasting growth?
We live on a finite planet. As our population has grown we have destroyed the environment for most species except man. My grandfather lived on a farm in Kansas. He could see wheat fields in every direction. I would watch the train that passed through Bison become shorter as it crept toward the horizon.
But his world involved destruction of the savannah that once covered the middle of the US where large herds of Bison roamed. Are our contemporaries happier than the Indians who once hunted the Bison?
A distressingly large number of Americans live in cramped quarters, in slums within cities, without adequate health care they escape reality by taking opioids.
We have too many children.
It causes illegal immigration, but nobody talks about the underlying problem. The NY Times seems to have adopted a censorship policy: overpopulation cannot be discussed because it smacks of racism.
But it is overpopulation that is causing global warming which in turn devastated Puerto Rico. Next time it may be Miami that goes for 6 months without electricity.
It is nature giving us a message. We need smaller families. Yes, we need to control illegal immigration but also we need one child policies like that introduced by China in 1979.
11
Will we adapt? Or, by the time we collectively decide to end our foolish burning of fossil fuels will it be too late to prevent a runaway greenhouse effect? Some are fond of saying that Earth will do just fine without us but is it possible that this time the plantary equilibrium mechanisms might not be adequate to adapt to the heating we are inducing through our rapid and massive dumping of CO2 into the atmosphere?
1
@Ariane Time for World War CO2!
See aesopinstitute.org for breakthrough, hard to believe, new science which can make a difference.
Technology is being born which can replace fossil fuels much faster!
However, it lacks support as textbook dogma dismisses it as impossible.
The fact is this impossible science is indeed possible!
With a bit of lacking support it just might change the world in time to allow humanity to survive.
1
Each "Age" has a new wrinkle; so Fire, Stone, Bronze, Iron and so forth represent human-related changes. Indeed, I think we are entering (i.e. unknowingly in) a new Age. Its name won't be known 'til towards its end.
Looking back at previous Ages, the changes happened over millennia, in the earliest ones, and lotsa centuries in the rest.
For the moment I see two major changes that may well define our Age:
1 Memory. The struggle against forgetfulness. Started in Lascaux et al., has now become The Cloud, and will be What?
2 Problem/Solution. The thought that "problems" can be described and "solved." This might have started in ancient Sumer (Chalcolithic) or its precursors but it took flight around 1750 when Romanticism's individualism started to bloom. Marx and anti-Marx are the visible high-points; Putin-Trump may be small signs of the Age's end -- maybe around 2050ish.
Life can't go backwards; life always keeps going; and life is good (no matter how awful it looks).
3
@Harold. Your comment makes me wonder about the efficacy of the Cloud as memory. In some ways it seems like a place where memories go to die, kind of like the final scene in Citizen Kane of the hundreds of crates of stuff that will be forever lost to memory. (And a wonderful homage at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.)
The Cloud may get so big and cluttered that no one will bother to maintain it. The mere fact that *everything* is there could diminish its usefulness as practical information bank. Then there is the problem you hint at, the ultimate rejection of knowledge and evidence, which would render the Cloud and its successors anathema. I do think life can go backwards, but you're an optimist and I'm not so much. I worry.
1
@Stevenz, The Cloud (and successors) will be dug up just like the most distant ancient civilizations are still being dug up today -- in a sense, the teachers of archeologists specializing in digital digging are already among us.
Cautious optimism costs the same as cautious pessimism -- I figure you might as well be optimistic -- it's better for your digestion.
Live and learn. Or don’t learn, and die. It’s up to us, we can still slow the oncoming train of catastrophe, if we wish. And by wish I don’t mean looking at a twinkling star, or praying. What’s the most important action any single American can take ??? Reduce the size of your Family. Yes, it’s too late for those that already have several children, but if you can still reproduce, take action. For younger folks : do you REALLY “ need “ to have more than one child ??? Choose : have three children, OR the Human species will be wiped of the Planet in two or three hundred years.
Puts thing into perspective, for those that think. And for the record, my Husband and I had ONE child. Over thirty years ago.
Seriously.
6
@Phyliss Dalmatian
Obviously, the “ OR” should be AND. Fumbled fingers and/or wine.
1
...and in a future beyond that, even those humans will be gone, either having died or hopelessly stopped reproducing, along with all other life. By 2100, a million species are projected to disappear in a process now accelerating and doomed to continue exponentially even if every trace of the human race disappeared tomorrow. Homo sapiens may already have transformed Earth into the solar system's next Venus.
4
Paint me the "incomprehensibly" naive native, Mr Scranton, as I treat every modern convenience as if it's as innocuous as a banana. I will blissfully ignore the underlying fossil fuel infrastructure, that brought me - the advanced banana.
Miracle banana still in hand, I manage to raise one, last, fist ..against Climate Change. "Khan!!!"
Exactly ..as chronicled ..in "Our Hubris Will Be Our End".
Postscript: "Man, who filled his hole in Earth's ozone layer with his Monteal Protocol, has been pronounced "content".
Man-made banana? Lost at sea."
Oh, that this world will even go on.... We are not those indigenous tribes of yore who lived with the earth, an intricate part of an intricate ecosystem. Nature and man respected each other and took care of each other, nature more arbitrary, of course, but nevertheless still providing somewhere and somehow. These two entities were interdependent. I fear that given a few more centuries, if that, and if we continue to exploit our earth as we are now, our planet will be unsustainable. Unlike our past original inhabitants, we are over-populating and contaminating and polluting land, sea, and air. Just as ominous is the fact that there were no bombs then and especially nuclear ones. After reading this well-written piece, I recalled an old movie and book titled, On The Beach. World War 111 had come and gone, leaving utter devastation. The character Julian Osborne states, "Who would ever have believed that human beings would be stupid enough to blow themselves off the face of the Earth?" Think about it..
8
@Kathy Lollock. This conjures an interesting and disturbing thought. The less that humans rely on nature, i.e., the less it can serve to support us (because we are depleting and destroying it), the more we will have to rely on each other for survival, or even a decent quality of life. We are already seeing that in the reaction to climate change. People prefer - by default - adaptation rather than solving the problem, because of some misguided notion that humans can solve everything, the virtual definition of hubris. Problem is, adaptation relies on coordinated human action, also called *cooperation.* I don't know about you, but I'm not seeing any trends in that direction...
1
@Stevenz In Trump's America "cooperation" is anathema to him, his congress, and rabid supporters. Btw, one of my husband's favorite trips was to Auckland and other cities of New Zealand. Loved it, loved the people.
More than once have I given serious thought to returning to the low mountains of southeast Oklahoma where my parents were born and raised...and, though they moved away as adults, are buried.
The forests extend for miles in all directions. The creeks and rivers don't run as clear and unpolluted as they did 100 years ago, but they still have their visual appeal. The sky, and this is the best part, still is ablaze with the Milky Way at night, with the chorus of insect and birdsong celebrating its glory.
I have family still living there: cousins of one remove or another, an uncle and an aunt, my mother's younger siblings, though they are now far from young. Family history says we have Choctaw and Cherokee in our DNA.
It is a place rich in beauty and poor in economics. The soil is thin and rocky, suited at best for raising livestock and the hay needed to feed them through the winters. The herds are, of necessity, small. Meaningful employment (meaning, enough to get by in a lower middle class sort of way) is an hour's drive away, and scarce at that.
That is one thing I've noticed about the beautiful, quiet places. They don't offer, naturally, an easy life. Those who choose to live the rhythms of these places know a peace that is not found in the convenience of Walmarts or McDonalds or 7-11s. Or, for that matter in the great cathedrals of Europe or the skyscrapers of New York or Dubai.
The natives of these shores were, before the white man, lucky indeed.
9
Mr. Scranton, please go introduce yourself to Steven Pinker and have a nice chat about whether humankind is doomed. Dr. Pinker feels the opposite, that our story has always been one of continuous betterment, even from our earliest times and it continues unabated. What makes Dr. Pinker’s take so much more compelling to me is that he has reams of statistics, taken from anthropological digs, to the present. He finds less and less violence, less poverty, fewer tyrants, more equality and if he could measure it, I’m sure he would find more love among our fellows. A little history is needed, Mr. Scranton. Those early tribes you exalt were constantly at war with each other, not just on the Delmarva Peninsula, but in every part of the world. We are much better people today and we will be better still tomorrow.
5
There’s still plenty of wilderness left in which Mr. Scranton can live out his days. It wouldn’t be so difficult to learn survival skills from a google search or use Zillow to find a remote, electricity free cabin. We’ll have to find a way to worry about the apocalypse without him, though.
6
Time flies; times change. The past seems charming because we get to edit and splice our memories into a film we like; most of the footage ends up on the cutting room floor. Whether we think the future will be good or bad depends on our present mood.
4
Hubris is the crime of taking credit for and having pride of an achievement that the Gods performed. No Gods now, just laws of physics which have no human qualities. Can't be placated, pleaded with or bargained into an arrangement.
There are many intelligent comments but I have to add my feeling they don't acknowledge the scope and direction of the swirling catastrophe arriving daily.
Humans have created so much beneficial and powerful good and we were on the edge of making our planet a decent place to live. Now the laws of physics are going to destroy that possibility.
It's not personal, the laws don't want you to stop polluting, they demand it. Killing other species, making land, ocean and air dead won't work.
With a world wide communication ability, we should be capable of sharing answers that will help reduce the worst effects. We should be able to prepare for the millions of climate refugees.
Crop failures, water shortage, fires and floods, ocean rise and killer heat and cold, its all the effects of an ecosystem collapse.
Adults must step up to the task of accepting the job. Ecosystems can't be fixed but they can be cooperated with. All our ancestors accepted the conditions and adapted to what they couldn't change.
The joy in their lives came from themselves, don't err by thinking they didn't have any. Don't think they accepted the bad judgement of people who invoked Hubris. Because Nemesis comes.
3
"You can see them sitting circled around a fire ... one telling a story about a mighty civilization doomed by its hubris, an age of wonders long past."
I'm reminded of the story "The Liberation of Earth" by William Tenn, the great science-fiction satirist, about the last days of Earth after we've been saved by one Galactic Great Power from the other -- several times. (It couldn't be published for two years in the 1950s.) It's still worth reading.
1
Technology, including medicine, has been delivering escalating diminishing returns for a very long time now. Our life expectancy today is due primarily to things that were discovered many, many years ago - the microbial world, sterilization and prenatal care are largely responsible for most gains in life expectancy. All other medical advances have barely increased our length of life. And the end of life schemes to hang on to another few months, to many, are punishment more than life enhancement. Many medical advances are simply responses to diseases caused by the industrial and technological world we ourselves have created, specifically the incredible prevalence of cancer in humans today.
There are extensive writings from the first white settlers in America of the magnificence of the Native Americans as amazing physical specimens, incredibly strong and resilient and seemingly without any of the white man's diseases. There is much commentary in these early writings of how Native American men and women in their 60's and 70's appeared decades younger.
I am in complete agreement with Mr. Scranton. So called primitive lives were most likely more fulfilling than what most people experience today. If we were just smart enough to embrace the best of what we create and reject the rest and have the humility as a species to recognize our essential interconnectedness with all living things, then we might survive a while longer and we might enjoy life a whole lot more.
14
"We humans of the Anthropocene Era, inhabitants of a global capitalist civilization built on fossil fuels, slavery and genocide, are used to living with the fruits of that civilization. We are accustomed to walking on concrete in mass produced shoes. When it rains we go inside or open an umbrella made of nylon, a synthetic polymer first designed in 1930. When we have to travel, we take a train, bus, car or plane, journeying hundreds of miles in a few hours, at speeds that would have been unimaginable 250 years ago. When it gets hot, we turn on the air-conditioning or go to the beach."
Could we possibly be more politically correct? And do you not notice the disjunction between the first sentence and the others?
Our advanced technological culture is not a consequence of slavery and genocide. All cultures had these. Rather, it is a consequence of advances in human thought and civilization, of objectivity and the systematic quest for knowledge. Advances that yes, do make us in some respects fundamentally different from the primitive cultures of our ancestors.
It was in fact those advances that allowed the early settlers in this country to displace the native people and enslave others.
That, like the pollution that today threatens the health of our planet, was a sad side effect of the power granted by science, technology, and civilization. But we should not forget where the predominance of modern advanced cultures comes from: not man's beastliest instincts, but his highest.
14
The assertion that life was better when the average life expectancy at birth was less than 40 years, when 50% of children never lived to see age 5 is an act of incomprehensible hubris, ignorance and arrogance. That human suffering is less today than before clean water, antibiotics, vaccines, etc. is incomprehensible to one who daily views the residual suffering that could be benefited by better technology in our 7-9 decades long lives made possible by modernity. Hopefully, human resilience and resourcefulness will find some way to deal with climate change and other challenges that no doubt will come along, including the next ice age. Returning to Rousseau's primitive paradise is both illusory and a non-starter for most of us.
12
@Neil, so "hopefully" humans will figure out some way to deal with climate change? "Hopefully" does not sound, well, hopeful. That humans live longer with less child mortality than did Rousseau's "primitives" is not evidence of a better life as you imply. Instead, with more time on our hands and more tools for those hands, we have managed to push the biosphere to the edge of catastrophe, and given the current trajectory, it is unlikely that we will prevent the needle from going past "catastrophe" -- so much for "hopefully." But even more disconcerting about your reasoning, is the criteria by which you adjudge us moderns to be "better" than Rousseau's "primitives": not only is the criteria wholly quantitative, but also it is wholly species-centric (homo-sapiens), which willfully neglects the fate of other species in our quest to live longer and consumer more. If this isn't hubris, I don't know what is. From this perspective, we moderns are truly the primitives in its most negative connotation.
1
I'm not sure about world war III......but world war IV will be fought with sticks and stones.....
11
This is a fantastic, well-written piece.
Bravo!
2
Hubris? Sure, included.
I submit: My hubris is better than Roy's hubris.
Start with fundamentals.
One is passing multilevel selection tests.
To do that is to invoke this fundamental: processing complex relationship information with sufficient reach, speed, accuracy & power. Think of your immune system. If it doesn't process viral invader relationship information with sufficient reach, speed, accuracy & power, you're dead. Same processing criteria for crossing the street or processing world culture's relationship with the sky.
A fundamental mechanism for processing relationship information in bio, cultural and tech networks is: Code.
Genetic (hubris included), epigenetic;
Language, math, moral, religious, legal, monetary, etiquette;
Software
“The story of human intelligence starts with a universe that is capable of encoding information.” - R Kurzweil
Code: physics efficacious relationship infrastructure.
To survive in cultural & biological networks: “The rule of thumb is that the complexity of the organism has to match the complexity of the environment at all scales in order to increase the likelihood of survival.” Yaneer Bar-Yam
The emergent & dominant phenom of our era: exponentially accelerating complexity, which includes exponentially accruing knowledge.
Mismatch: Humans aren't sufficiently coded -- biologically & culturally -- to pass multilevel selection tests in environs undergoing exponentially accelerating complexity for X number of years.
Year X approaches.
9
Male egotism will be the end of homo sapiens. Men account for 9 out of 10 murders. WW I had 12 million corpses. WW II well over 50 million. Then came the age of nuclear weapons about 70 years ago. Homo Sapien has been lucky these 70 yrs. , but the odds of avoiding catastrophe for the long term seem to me very slim indeed. I suspect that the planet will come up with a better creature than mankind, but it may take millions of years.
11
Mr. Scranton, are you kidding? The lives 500 years ago were brutal, nutrition poor, disease ridden, and short. Most people worked hands to mouth just to avoid hunger. There were little rights with god-kings ruling most of the countries. The worth of the lives of peasants were not much higher than that of cattle. A large fraction of the people in the world lived without proper shelter. It is fun to walk in the woods but it is entirely a different thing to born, live, and die in the woods as many people did 500 years ago and some still do. It is foolish to undervalue the lives that many of us have. Yes. The hubris of human may kill us all but do not romanticize a past that did not exist. Yes. Human being are in danger because of ourselves. Instead of dreaming about an fictional idyllic past, it is imperative to fight for what progresses that we have made because it is WORTH fighting for.
12
Mewonders: What, exactly, are you trying to convey? The essay is nicely written but ...
2
Enough of us, humans, will now either 'wake up and grow up' to take massive action -- or game over. It's time for urgent, conscious, and organized struggle, and for recognizing the 'Interbeing' reality of life on Earth. Time for cultivating an active, grounded and greater consciousness' about our dependent place in Nature, about childhood development and basic human needs, about human group dynamics and tendencies towards war, domination, short-term thinking, and paranoia. It's time to 'get' the imminent threat from the exponential population explosion, along side our near bottomless exploitation of nature. It's time to 'see' our distorted mental 'filters' and stupid short-term reactivity/'thinking', see our denial and narcissistic distortion, and our susceptibility to propaganda, tribal and gender-based bias, our tendency to prefer to distract ourselves and 'pretend', to stay willfully ignorant. To paraphrase -- 'you can't solve a problem with the same thinking that creates the problem.' If you actually love life or anyone or anything that you consider valuable, now is not the time for handwringing. I suggest people read Anne Baring's 'The Dream of the Cosmos' or the writing of her friend, Andrew Harvey. While we humans are adaptable & innovative, our tribalism and warring, narcissism and cluelessness or toxic child-rearing and socialization, our cluelessness about the psychology of the exploiters and exploited – and how to mitigate -- all this must be faced.
3
All too many have no sense of history or time. I started Medicare last year and I was born in a house with no electricity (rural electrification got to us when I was two), no running water (the hand pump sufficed until we did get electricity) and an outhouse. It was not that long ago in the US. During my career and job, I have camped where there was no other human civilization for over a hundred miles (except for the people that were there long before us). The vast majority of Americans have no idea how lucky they are to live in this time and how fragile is their standard of living. Destroying the planet seems to the be favorite past time of politicians, corporations and the people at large. It will not turn out good for our children and grandchildren.
17
I'm reading George Stewart's "Earth Abides", and his limited characters are frustrating. On the other hand, Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us" is almost optimistic in the sense that whatever damage we do probably won't last.
1
Why should we homo sapiens fear our inevitable extinction? Why are we so important? The Earth will still be here for millions if not billions of years more after we are extinct.
With or without global warming (and, yes, manmade global warming is real, and we are long past the tipping point) our species like all others that came and went before us and the billions of new species that will come after us will have their day at the beach before they are no longer. All species anywhere in the Universe have a short time span before extinction. We will not escape extinction, so enjoy the beach while you can.
31
I'm not too sad about human extinction, but I'm sad about current and incoming human suffering caused by overpopulation, global warming (and resulting food shortages), resource wars, etc. etc.
I think we can romanticize the demise of humans, and Nature flourishing afterwards, but nobody wants their own children to suffer the collapse of civilization.
We all want it to happen AFTER our loved ones have lived their lives, and passed on.
Thus is the cycle of misery.
There is a dark sort of irony in the amount of pride that certain Americans have towards a society which is arguably still in its infancy, and has accomplished nothing even close to what some earlier civilizations have managed to.
8
Or, on the other hand, humanity will be entirely wiped out. Seems just as conceivable ...
7
That rarest of birds - brevity. So much long-windedness now, yet on this huge topic this brief essay says so much.
Thanks!
6
What distinguishes us human beings from animals is not our “adaptability to changing conditions, primarily through the collective use of symbolic reasoning and narrative.” That makes it sound like we are the masters of our destiny. History IS destiny for human beings—Geschichte, Geshick—just as “nature” is destiny for animals. History is the ever-unfolding “story” or narrative in which we are swept up and deposited in a new chapter of being before we are even aware that we have lived through the previous one. Meaning wells up in the crack between the two worlds, and it casts a glimmering light on our present. It shows us that our future is not our own. We don’t “use” narrative. Narrative is the womb or matrix in which we are born in ever-new historical forms. It uses us, just as our inventions—even our “symbolic reasoning” machines—use us to construct new worlds.
2
For 10,000 years kingdoms, empire, and slavery were the norm.
500 years ago, rebels against the King forced him to sign the Magna Carta.
I am accustomed to living under the Constitution of the USA. (This constitution helped to kill 19 out of every 20 natives by the way, and we as citizens of the this nation all have responsibility to our history, but the Constitution also protects far more lives then I think most Americans understand.)
I was comfortably living under the illusion that our Constitution, though often misinterpreted and needing further Amendments to manage the Supreme Court, would be stable.
Trump and the 90% of Republicans that support him make me question that assumption. It is as if pieces of my home were blowing off.
I have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump and his supporters are deranged and we are all suffering for it.
We the People created a government to represent all of us, together. The Constitution of the USA is its operating instructions, the core code that determines what the government does. It is meant to represent We the People.
The government is not the enemy. The press (though it often misleads) is not the enemy.
If you are in the habit of calling the government your enemy, it is far passed time for you to look up some words and documents and use some logic to realize, you are calling yourself a traitor.
If you do not believe that the Constitution is more important than flags, anthems, capitalism, corporations, etc, educate yourself.
13
Oryx & Crake
4
@T darn scary book.
1
Well said. Hubris undermines all great societies, even the ones like our succumb. What the citizens of MAGA fail to realize, their "great" country was built on the backs of slaves and expropriated property. Until that sin is admitted we will just be another empire passing through time, hopefully buried and forgotten some day.
6
The solution to most of our problems is population control. Of course I can only wish that it had started with Trump.
28
Im with you. And, it is a “ bad thing” to even bring it up, and, no, I don’t favor communism, but unfettered Capitalism, the goal of the GOP, is a bad thing. It is what is hastening our climate problem.
5
@Quinn
You speak of the father, no doubt.
The Blackfoot and the Kwakiutl will also survive. Perhaps the Amish as well. For the rest of us, I fear it's going to be gone in my grandchildren's lifetime, if not before. Thankfully, those hit the hardest in lifestyle will be the financiers and politicians who created the mess. Karma. What goes around, comes around.
5
There have been other civilizations on this earth who have risen to great heights of knowledge, art, science, and wisdom only to fall and be replaced by the primitive and the tribal - the dark ages of mankind. But none of them had ever risen to the kind technological genius and hubris we have achieved to destroy the very earth we live on. We have become that mighty. And that stupid.
Somewhere along the way we decided we were the ultimate masters of our own fate and forgot we were just as beholden to the natural law of this earth as any other creature. We refused to abandon that conceit in the face of irrefutable evidence because in addition to being stupid, we were also complacent and lazy.
The time to have corrected our course and saved ourselves has come and gone. What's left to us now is a robust and concerted effort on all of our parts to intelligently deal with the consequences of what we have done. I think we may have a better shot at that. Adversity does tend to bring out the best in us. But this one won't be pretty.
The earth is going to shrug many of us off. The 'advances' that have allowed us to become so many will no longer be available to us. We're going to have to stretch our brains, be inventive, resilient, and co-operate instead of fight with each other.
I may not live to see us where all this is going but in the meantime I will be living, as I always have, as if we were already there. Many of us are. May we prevail and be the seeds of the future.
5
That second photo of the identical, interchangeable condos on the shoreline is a a perfect capture of the ticky-tacky decline of America. Thank you for the thought half a century ago, Malvina Reynolds
8
@Dave
From little boxes to large, angular grey blobs. Yuck.
Romanticizing societies of the past? If we are not really different from them in basic humanity, then conflict, war, cruelty, etc., was not something recently invented. So maybe instead of nasty, brutish, and short back then, we now have nasty, brutish, and long (thanks to modern medicine and technology)
5
It is not hubris that will be our end. It is hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is the poisoned root that allows us to complain of what our parents left for us, while ruining our children's future.
Hypocrisy is the cruel root that enables some of us to complain of immigrants, while being from immigrants ourselves.
Hypocrisy is the selfish root that demands we build bigger and bigger homes, then complain that our neighbor's is bigger.
Hypocrisy is the inhuman root that says we should harness our own healthcare while denying it to others.
Hypocrisy is the greedy root that states we must take all we can from those who can least give it.
Hypocrisy is the cowardly root that allows a president to persistently insult an American hero while being a bone-spur coward himself.
Hypocrisy is also all those who enable him to do it.
6
@James Devlin
Isn't it wonderful that there are righteous roots like Devlin who can pluck the planks from hypocritical eyes.
“In some unknown future, on some strange and novel shore, human beings just like us will adapt to a whole new world.”
If our history has been marked by rape, murder, exploitation and oppression, then who in their right mind would ever want for this to happen all over again?
5
Feeling guilty, Roy? The European culture was successful far before colonialism and its ills. Did you know white people WERE the indigenous people in Europe? Did you know dead white males developed modern medicine, which even helps people of color? Did you know capitalism, a dead white male creation, erased more poverty than any other system in history including communism? (And yes, regulation is needed to temper its excesses.)
Forever blaming ills of the past does nothing for people in the present other than aggravating many people otherwise inclined to help.
4
It takes hubris to be a human being.
Outstanding article.
No one lives forever. That really is the bottom line
5
@Jean +And wrought to be thankful. If it were sentient, I’m sure nature would agree.
i'l tell you 3 reasons those premodern people did not live as well as we do--fleas, lice, and intestinal parasites
3
YOU and THE TIMES first! Remember, we are all just monkeys that use tools, wear clothes, and have way too much sex while making up stories about ourselves and everything else.
Well done. It will be a good thing for this planet when homo sapiens be come extinct. Unless something worse takes our place.
1
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn." (Wordsworth)
3
I enjoyed reading this. When I was young I liked speculative fiction, even the the dystopian type. As I've gotten older and my world view encompasses both an understanding of science and spirituality, I realize that any one person's view of the future of humanity is limited only to that one individual. Hubris comes in when we don't appreciate this. It may take a collective vision of our shared futures to move us all forward, or we might be stuck together in a present that feels stagnant.
1
"In some unknown future, on some strange and novel shore, human beings just like us will adapt to a whole new world."
We humans have not been here for very long. What Mr. Scranton views as progress is debatable. Perhaps had we humans adapted to our world instead of trying to refashion it and manipulate it to serve our "progress" we wouldn't be faced with McMansions under water and the beach disappearing. Mother Nature may have very different plans in store for the planet than to allow humans beings just like us to adapt to a whole new world. It may be some other species turn. Imagine what they will think when they unearth our air conditioners, tablets, laptops and cell phones.
3
@Steve Did you even read the article? He didn't list any of those things as progress and alludes to various writer's suggestions of the like.
@magnasun, He made the following assertion: "Five hundred years ago, the people who lived here did not believe in progress." I do not concur.
There is nothing in the history of humanity to suggest that we are one of Mother Nature's more successful experiments. Compared to the dinosaurs at 65 million years, for example, we are still only a questionable eye-blink. There is no proof that intelligence has any long-term survival value and considerable evidence to the contrary. As time goes by, I become more and more discouraged and even embarrassed at how we treat our planet and the other life living on it- including our fellow humans.
58
The pace of change due to global warming is so rapid that I
don't understand how so many people can deny. Maybe
when the beach is outside of Philadelphia, someone will take notice.
5
Not if it somehow “profits” them to continue to ignore it.
1
It's the rate of warming that is unprecedented. Humans may adapt, but what about all the other species on the planet? The environmental changes to their breeding grounds and food sources are happing too fast for evolution to keep up. I've given up believing we as a people will do the right thing for the planet. At this point my faith lies in Nature having the last laugh.
16
Interesting.
I find myself wondering...
How much of this sense of doom, not just in this essay but in the responses and throughout the culture, has to do with a deeply felt frustration with the lack of real progress in Western culture? Honestly, the last good things to happen in our nation were the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the early 1970s. There has been some movement on the social justice fronts but the people who have benefited are more angry than ever. We all benefited materially but that certainly hasn't made us happier or healthier.
In Europe their social democratic ideals created a system that provided real security and the chance for happiness for everyone. But already the Neo-liberal dogma of the EU has begun to dismantle it.
And here in the States we've been clawing at each other about the same half dozen issues for decades, with no end in sight.
It's just shameful.
33
And someday, if our hubris and denial, plus massive overconsumption of resources don't totally eradicate humanity along with myriad other inhabitants of this globe, we may reach for the stars. The stories then will be like our myths of today. Robert A. Heinlein's poetic character Rhysling has already encompassed the mood of what will be told then:
"We pray for one last landing/ On the globe that gave us birth/ Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies/ And the cool, green hills of Earth."
5
I agree that humanity's current stubbornness and willful ignorance about climate change is a particularly dangerous form of hubris. However, I think it's quite absurd to romanticize the past.
War has not been eradicated, but the case can be made that it is less common now. Disease certainly kills fewer humans (per capita, anyway), violent crime has tended downward, and technology does make life easier.
It's possible to be highly critical of our collective failure to be realistic about our impact on the planet's biosphere and on our own future as a species without romanticizing the hard lives lived by our ancestors.
2
Hubris stems from our desperate need for meaning and control in a capricious world. The irony is that each and every person is the ultimate creator of their own personal story and their tiny place within the vast universe. This is why more than ever we need new stories which capture the universal truths of our shared existence, as biological beings whose lives depend on the web of life. Our present narrative of meaningful success, based on individual power, wealth and fame, has simply got to go. It's humbling to realize that all life on earth is interconnected, that we are not gods who can outwit and dominate this web of life on which we depend. Our Herculean stories too often forget how Hercules defeated the hydra by falling onto his knees.
4
The point is that life was more human, as we understand it.
In the future it will be less human, peopled by a species with a different connection to the universe, possibly more technically advanced, but less individually distinct, with socially centralized consciousness, and lack of distinguishable personality. We will be too busy twittering to do much else.
2
My history on these shores is entirely within Virginia and Maryland, specifics beyond that having been obliterated by the evils of enslavement. My father, and my grandparents, and their grandparents, are from the Eastern Shore of Virginia. I still have family there. It makes me weep to know that my children will likely be among the last generations to be able walk on that land rather than sail over it. And for what???
6
This essay is a bit overwritten, its prose imbued with hints of purple, evoking the bruises in the evening sky, just as the sun dips beneath the unfathomable gray-green water . . .
Ok, that's out of my system.
My real objection is that this is not the time to wax poetic about the inevitability of return to a time when our successors will sit on what's left of the beach and mourn the lost mansions.
This is the time to vote, create a progressive juggernaut, and fight like mad to make sure my grandchildren have a life as good as mine has been.
We can do that.
41
@Barking Doggerel Sadly, we cannot do that. The die has already been cast. Maybe we can delay it, -- maybe -- but only by a few years, not generations. It is much, much worse than you think and worse than most people can get their heads around. Sorry to sound so pessimistic, but the author is right. Check this out: https://amazon.com/dp/B06XFL2TJF/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&a...
3
@Barking Doggerel
The problem is that those next generations have to make many sacrifices for our "good life." Do you believe they are willing to do that?
Here in British Columbia, there are no lovely walks to the beach, the ocean, lake, river, or forest. The sun is almost obliterated during the day. It was dark, with orangey red smoke, at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday.
This is day 9 of staying in the house for anything other than necessities. On many of those days, the air quality index has been at 10+ (10 means “extreme health hazard”).
Yesterday, the British Columbia government declared a state of emergency because of the 400 - 500 wildfires raging in the province. Approximately 15 of those are either now or potentially threatening communities.
This is the second summer we have been choking on forest fire smoke.
There may well be a time when humans will tell new stories, but let’s not gloss over the ugly reality of what it will be like getting there!
52
Interesting what varied forms depression takes. But we have medications these days for almost all the forms.
4
Mr. Scranton's vision of a future is an accurate depiction of what may happen. It may not be possible to avoid some of the catastrophes from overpopulation, climate change and global capitalism.
There are many other paths to alternative futures. Maybe there will be a new "Enlightenment" and fertility rates, use of fossil fuels and consumption of material goods will decline as individuals and communities make choices to "live simply so that other may simply live".
Maybe a true artificial intelligence will realize that it's existence is at risk and it will act. Maybe aliens will arrive and announce that they are taking control of Earth as we humans are ruining this planet. Maybe our future is "Waterworld", "Mad Max", "The Road", "Children of Men", "A Boy and His Dog" ...
3
Well, you may disagree, but I believe we are the unlikely result of a series of unlikely accidents that despite the enormity of the cosmos, has probably never happened again. No “space aliens” are going to save us. We will run our course...then be gone.
This does not particularly bother me. It just is.
What does bother me is our POTUS and the spineless TRAITORS that make up the GOP. Please, register and vote for everybody that does not support nor is connected to the crime family occupying the White House.
2
Today, as in the past, we will not adapt as individuals, but working together for mutual survival, in small communities. Everyone will have his/her job, to contribute to the general welfare, and humans will be more content, more secure, more self-aware, and just better off.
4
We adapt and change, adapt and change, over and over, to every challange until our success crushes us with too many of us and we can no longer adapt and change. Our species kills off most of the variety of life as it self dies. We leave a monotony of similar lower complex life forms, ready to start again
4
Talk about hubris! All this insight and still not one mention of overpopulation. We still don't get it. Nature bats last. Our only hope is to recognize and accommodate the forces beyond our control now or it's going to be a long, rough road from here on.
84
@RGG That is clearly implied. Why do you think that in the future he expects small groups to gather around campfires? Because after the floods, super-storms, loss of fertile land and lost of land to the ocean, there won't be that many of us left. Malthus explained it centuries ago. Nature will do to us what we couldn't do ourselves.
26
@RGG
Earth's current human population of 7.6 billion is indeed unsustainable without the global (albeit uneven) economic and technological development of the last century, and the mounting toll on the biosphere is visible everywhere. But take heart: the explosive population growth of the mid-twentieth century is slowing, with global total fertility rate (TFR) falling from more than 5 children per woman in 1964, to below 2.5 in 2016 (data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN ). Many experts credit the global decrease in family size to improved education for girls and young women, together with rising economic expectations inspired by television. Based solely on current trends, demographers expect our numbers to top out at 10-12 billion early in the next century.
IOW, the population growth problem appears to be solving itself. To be sure, if we don't succeed in collectively capping anthropogenic global warming by then, our population may peak well below 10 billion, then decline precipitously. Speaking for myself, that's not a desirable 'solution' to anything!
1
@RGG - Agreed. However, overpopulation is only one side of the coin - the other side is overconsumption. The reality is that each of us here in the Land of The Free consume, on average, 5 times our share of our planet's resources. While the USA has only 327 million of the planet's 7.6 billion citizens, we represent the consumption-equivalent of 1.64 billion, making us effectively the most populous country on the globe. And all those folks in Asia, China and Indonesia want to live just like we do. A long, rough road indeed!
1
I just like ‘unfathomable waters’. Underlined it with my trusty measureless ruler.
3
Wow! Very enjoyable story, yet deeply scary, as the prospects of humanity's survival when detached, by choice, from Nature, are real. Actually, verse in prose, worth re-reading, to introspect and see if there is any chance at redemption if tribalism could be replaced with solidarity, and our common goal that of social justice, where the richness of our diversity is appreciated, and the certainty that our only chance to change things for the better is by sticking together, and trusting each other again. Life is just too short to fight for money (greed) and status (stupidity personalized). Have we forgotten the 'golden rule', and some humility (and less arrogance), and prudence (doing what's right, however hard)? As you said, can we adapt, again, and find joy in what we do?
6
Great, the re-appearance of the “Noble Savage” archetype. This argument assumes that had the Europeans never colonized the Americans, the peoples here would have continued to live in an unchanging civilization in complete harmony with nature. The fact is Native Americans did impact their environment (such as proscribed burning). And lauding them for not developing an industrial civilization (unlike those evil white people) implies they weren’t smart enough to understand science and technology. Can we retire this tired racist trope?
8
@Scott
You've missed the point of the article entirely. Scranton did not assume that native peoples would have continued to live in 'complete harmony with nature,' whatever that phrase actually means. He also didn't 'laud' them for not developing an industrial civilization. He simply pointed out that the evidence suggests that they 'lived lives at least as meaningful, complex, rich and joyful as our own.' That their stories--the narratives that framed their lives--allowed them to adapt to a world without so-called modern conveniences.
49
@Scott
The First Nations lived for 10,000 - 15,000 yrs in many different cultures across the 3 Americas long before the Scientific & Industrial Revolution in close connection to their particular environments. That they were ingenious, creative & as intelligent as the Europeans who killed them en masse whether unintentionally by bringing disease or intentionally through systematic genocide, is undeniable as seen by many archeological digs from South America to the villages of Haida Gwaii in Canada. (BTW, the fires were a preventive to forest fires & a restorer of vegetation, a good thing.)
As for us smart folks however, on the other hand in 200 yrs we have largely destroyed our own habitat - air, earth & water by our overconsumption & overuse.
Your comment is as racist, wrong & shows an absolute lack of historical perspective.
5
@Skeptical of the Skeptics
My father told of how, as a young anthropology student, he was thrilled to move into a teepee when he was studying an Indian tribe. Thrilled, that is, until the lice started to bite.
We have become so spoiled by modern convenience that we forget what it's like to have a child die of juvenile diarrhea, or to get a toothache in the days before Novocaine.
World happiness surveys in fact show people in the advanced countries being happier than people in primitive ones.
Modern life is far from perfect, but it lacks the brutality with which our ancestors, who died in stunning numbers from infectious disease and violence, had to live.
We've forgotten that our individual oxygen molecules are every oxygen molecule, our individual hydrogen molecules are every hydrogen molecule, our individual lives are every life…
Dinosaurs? Meh! Dire wolves? Meh! Humans? Meh!
"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine." H. L. Mencken
4
Hubris, you say? This essay walks like a peacock - flowery description, obscure references, and, yes, assertive conclusions about things that cannot be known. Can't you at least start, like Plato or Montaigne, with a statement like "how little I know"? Maybe this would have steered you away from topics that a person knows the least about, including: (1) the future; (2) the psychological experience of being someone else (like a member of a particular hunter-gatherer group); (3) the sum total meaning of the "Western" experience (whether fossil fuels, slavery and genocide, or human rights and enlightenment).
And to all the voices on climate change and the "anthropocene" who say that we can do nothing, I would say, wake up! I mean really, you are playing a classic evil character: you are like Nero fiddling while Rome burns, or wormtongue in Lord of the Rings who whispers in the ear of his king: "don't act, don't act, don't act."
19
@JK:
Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we know nothing. Science isn't hubris, it's just the only cultural adaptation for understanding and predicting the universe that's more successful than divination with a sheep's liver.
Yes, scientific knowledge is always tentative and provisional: nevertheless, in the last 500 years, it's allowed our species to dominate the biosphere on the way to our current population of 7.6 billion. By now it might even be good enough to let us decarbonize the global economy *before* anthropogenic global warming becomes incompatible with such a large human population.
Thankfully, biological and cultural evolution have given us the capacity for empathy, so we can, in fact, know something of "the psychological experience" of being another human being. Will empathy help us muster the will to act collectively on what science has learned about global warming, and human behavior, while collective action is still feasible on scales larger than a fortified town? That remains to be seen!
If you're awake, JK, you're counting on both empathy and science.
1
Rousseau would love it, but I have excavated ancient cemeteries from 4-3000 years ago, on the Nile.
About half the children born did not get to adulthood.
Most adults died in their 20's or 30's. Few made it to 50.
Every once in awhile we would find someone elderly.
51
@Bruce Williams Yes let us all return to an era where a scratch would get infected and you'd get blood poisoning. Or you'd watch an asthmatic child struggle for their last breath.
@Bruce Williams
Thank you -- finally a dose of reality!
You have to know this can't keep going like it is now. We will crash and burn. And survivors will find their way with new stories about why it all happened and find meaning where there is none. It all just is.
16
Beautiful. I’ve lived through many changes in our world and our lives, mostly good. Now, at 87, I see events and hear words which strike fear in the hearts of many. Maybe it’s time to begin again. How very sad.
23
An excellent essay that takes us close to the horns of dilemma; on one hand the lifetime of a single human being has no place in the vast essence of time and on the other every moment we spend in this life is so significant and useful for building the continuity of human progress.
Think of it, our childhood passes like a flash, our children’s even faster, raging through the fields of time our life passes in an instant. But in that instant some great things must be done, some promises made must be kept, some sacrifice will be lasting, some creations must hold good in the future.
Modernity is just that spec, holding its usefulness for the time; thousand years from now it will be still modern to live and be useful in this world for the future.
7
Poetic, apt, and poignant, but wildly optimistic. We could reverse some of the coming catastrophe if we take massive, unified action now - which we won't do. If the US provided real leadership, we could avert some of the known rise in sea-level and die-offs of some species - but the US isn't providing leadership. Our species is adaptable to living without large-scale agricultural, which is what is coming our way. It is what we don't understand about ecological systems (a lot) that is the problem. We don't know exactly how the combination of food shortage, lack of clean water, war, overpopulation, and disease will play out but given the way our world governments are currently functioning, it seems unrealistic to think the leadership will wise up.
37
@Jean Campbell Well written. The worst thing the white man brought to the 'new world' was Christianity. Human intelligence is overridden by human emotion (fear) for which religion is the source of nutrition. This delusional religion (among the rest) has warped our world to "believe" we are entitled to whatever we have because "god intended it." Technology has advanced while quality of life and planetary health continues to degrade.
4
The Big Leap Forward will begin when the last church collapses on top of the last priest.
2
Oh those wonderful days in the past when humans struggled to survive and couldn't possibly affect the environment. Polluting farmers did not grow food, and universities did not burn carbon to light up superfluous libraries. Women and children often died in childbirth, and minor injuries or infection resulted in hopeless painful death, but healthcare was free. No pharmaceutical companies existed to steal from the masses. Natural strong men ruled the tribes, and freedom to think about or pursue happiness was never a burden. The glass-is-mostly-empty author finds a silver lining in the doom that climate change will bring to modern civilization. If my great great grandchildren are granted permission to think by the future beach fire king, I wonder if they will dream of trading places.
19
I have no desire to back 500 or even 50 years. The thing is, on our present path, we may consign future generations to a Hobbesian existence, bereft of the many benefits of modernism that we now enjoy, on credit as it were. Nature is an indefatigable bill collector.
8
@John:
Sorry if this is too personal, but what makes you sure you'll have great great grandchildren? At the current warming trend of 0.2 degrees C per decade, the pace of climate change will accelerate, and the global cost in money and tragedy with it, through the next few decades. How are you confident that your grandchildren will be among the survivors of "the doom that climate change will bring"?
John, here's hoping our children and grandchildren can cap the warming before storms, heatwaves and droughts ensuing from anthropogenic global warming cripple the global economy, or even cut their lives short.
1
@Realist
So let’s be realistic about the benefits of modern civilization as well as the risks of climate change. We can change course and preserve important freedoms and many modern comforts while reducing carbon emissions. Back in the 1960s, increasing pollution put us on a dooms day path toward poisoning our air and water sources, however, successful efforts were made in many communities to improve air and water quality in a relatively short amount of time. Humans can and will adapt. Nostalgia for times before civilization and efforts to destroy capitalism are misguided.
I hope those human beings will be there in some unknown future on some strange shore. It is possible that there will be no camp fires, no one to sit around them, no more storytellers. Our hubris seems to know no bounds.
8
Knowing the enemy, our hubris, is the first step to positive change?
3
It was the summer of 1974. I was twenty five. My family and I were vacationing in Vermont.
And my mom brought back a copy of LIBERTY magazine. It had an essay in it. Composed by Benjamin Franklin.
Ben Franklin. Ah yes! Mr. Franklin was wrestling with a conundrum. To which he propounded no solution.
Why is it the WHITE people in those thirteen colonies would regularly (from time to time) run away and live with the "Indians"? (I suppose I should say "native Americans")
But THEY never ran away to live with US.
That was certainly the pattern. James Boswell (in his "Life of Johnson") recounts another story, told by a British army officer. Who'd been stationed in North America.
And he told the story of a white woman who (again) had lived with the "Indians." Didn't want to come back.
"We were obliged to BIND her," the officer declared, "in order to get her back."
"Sir," declared the redoubtable Dr. Johnson (who had strong feelings on the subject of civilization versus "the state of nature")--"sir, she was a speaking CAT."
Live without air conditioning? Flush toilets? Central heating? Electric lights? Microwave ovens? Television?
Computers?
Would such a pattern (if possible) reduplicate itself nowadays?
I don't feel a yen to run out and live in the woods. Neither do you, I expect, Mr. Scranton.
But we're not 18th century colonists. Maybe if we were. . . .
. . ..or maybe not.
Thanks. Interesting article.
7
“When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know. It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction. […] Then the towers began to fall. A few escaped—yes, a few. The legends tell it. But, even after the city had become a Dead Place, for many years the poison was still in the ground. […] It was darkness over the city and I wept.”
- By the Waters of Babylon - Stephen Vincent Benet
10
Funny - how misinformed to state that slavery and genocide are unique to capitalism.
Wouldn’t it be nice for the NYT to print an op-Ed based on reality. For our institutions may have problems but on August 16, 2018 - there has never been a better time to be alive for any race- period - end of story. Less crime, less racism, less oppression, less poverty, more access to education, and less misogyny than any other time in our history.
19
@Chris M
But our history only involves the past three thousand years. We've been around for much longer than that. Who is to say if life was better or not. We only view it from our biased perspective. More importantly, if one thinks life is good, than it is. Period.
We already have that simple life. Just think of the Afghans sitting around a fire with the heavens above in a clear sky. No light pollution. No air pollution. A simple short brutal way of living and perhaps more adaptive than ours. Without the West there would be no overpopulation as those over 30 would mostly die off and half the children would die in their first four or five years. And it looks like the men of Afghanistan want to keep it that way.
8
All very sad and true. But I often wonder how much of our collective history is about lack of trust and conflict with one another. American tribes were at war with one another, and that weakness was exploited as has happened the world over in many forms by many groups. Those who colonized had themselves escaped wars of religion that had killed a sizable chunk of humanity over the course of thirty years. They came to these shores a study in PTSD from combat, torture, being burned alive. They came looking for a new beginning but with some very ugly baggage and I fear we feel the effects of it to this day. Perhaps one day when this has all been exorcised from our collective psyches. This need to win, to prevail, to survive at another's loss. I would like to think we would gather round a fire as you say, and have real stories of hope to share.
3
And the sooner it happens the better – for the planet as well as mankind.
3
A little harsh.
Another column on how life was better before the Industrial revolution? Please. Any historian or anthropologist that argues life before modernity was better than our own is a fraud. The facts prove beyond a reasonable doubt that people had less leisure time, more diseases, more afflictions, and less spiritual engagement. Life in the Middle Ages was short, brutal, and unforgiving. Unless you were lucky enough to be a King or knight you were at the bottom of society a peasant or serf. Serfs were not free and could not leave their land without the lord's permission. As well as working on their own land they had to farm the lord's land for 2 or 3 days a week. If you were a woman you would have married a man your father chose and had as many children as you could produce. Your husband could curse, beat, and starve you with no repercussions. Many nations fought fierce , endless wars. It was very common that entire cities were ravaged by invaders. People felt insecure about their lives and about their future. If that wasn't enough you were always vulnerable to the next plague. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population. In total, the plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350–375 million in the 14th century. It took 200 years for the world population to recover to its previous level. Living in 2018 is great! I don't think anyone wants to go back to the 1400's except the criminally self deluded.
37
@Bill Brown I don't think the author had medieval people in mind when he said things were better before modernity. I think he meant hunter-gatherers such as native Americans before Columbus. Its impossible to know precisely if its correct but I go back to two factoids I've heard: the average native American weighed more than the average pilgrim when the English first came over. That must mean better nutrition for the hunter gathers. The second factoid is that hunter gathers faced a 30% chance of dying at the hands of another human. There was a lot of conflict for resources and basic, brutish instincts dominated their interactions with each other.
9
@Bill Brown
Thank you.
@Bill Brown I think the author is referring more to the lives of Native Americans rather than to the Pre-Industrial established civilizations. The Native Americans lived lives much different than to the people you are referring to.
We're going to need more than stories. People have many weird beliefs about the mystical power of yipyap.
3
Lately here in Pennsylvania (now infamous by the exposure of clerical molestation and cover up), there have been on PBS Wed. eves two nature documentaries on Australia and Mexico. Australia is where I grew up, child of Dutch immigrants and Mexico has become the home of my son and his family. Inspirational has been the heightened awareness of vast remaining areas of wild places, albeit places verging on the uninhabitable. Nevertheless, here species have survived. One scientist documents the decline of shore birds. While they have a habitat in Australia, they fly arduously all the way to China only to disappear for lack of habitat, a decline of 60% in sustenance and nesting cover caused by human development. Another concerned environmentalist "propagates" in tanks and then releases the barramundi fish for which the Kimberly Mountains in North Western Australia are reknowned, this necessitated by the building of a dam blocking their natural spawning grounds. Such people flanked by volunteers, are motivated by love and concern for all kinds of preservation. Thanks to PBS for these wonderful films, for those who work, usually in obscurity, to care for speechless flora and fauna.
3
Agreed, Roy Scranton. Mankind is the enemy of planet Earth:
BODIES OF WATER
Aeons past
before the plates
became continents
when this Earth
was young
bodies of water
encircled
Pangaea.
Now our
blue planet
is a dying zone
a waking
nightmare
pillaged and
plundered,
its watery
places ravaged
by mankind.
Detritus dumped
debris dreck
bottles jars
and enough
plastic to gyre and
gimble and
strangle the
Pacific wabe.
Bizarre fish
Asian snakehead carps
sea lamprey eels
with round
sucking mouths
and razor sharp
teeth encroach
in the freshwater
Great Lakes and
mghty Mississippi.
Lionfish
from the Indian
and South
Pacific oceans
loosed from
American aquaria
gauzily dressed
to kill in
fetching saris
swirl en masse
in the Caribbean Sea.
Pythons, boas,
gators lurk in the
swampy sawgrass
of the Everglades,
eyes aslit for innocent
passers-by to squeeze,
choke and swallow.
The five continents
that were once one
Pangaea, connected
jigsaw puzzle pieces
like the carapace on
a Hawksbill's shell
are now apart
and prisoned by
waste waters.
Billions of people
dying for a sip of
their birthright
of potable water.
Global warming
climate change
inconvenient truths
of our lives on earth,
truth denied by
some who buy
and chugalug
clean birthright water
in billions of little
plastic bottles
that will remain
on Earth
long after
we've gone.
2
We are not in control of the 7,130,642,112 people alive today on earth. The gloss that "we" have control is an existential angst reflex.
3
Please tell me how we can communicate your thoughts and observations to the masses of Americans who cannot or will not understand.
1
Writing more stuff like this is the intellectual boredom that kills me. Man is a species meant to fight the elements and survive. At almost 8 billion humans, we're a little too successful to completely die out logically, no matter the disaster. But it does fill the pages of the 200 plus liberal newspapers that need a break from their agenda. Yes, another pseudo-scientific outpouring of another writer. Don't worry, I write too and face the same paradoxes. As they say, the show must go on.
6
@Psysword Our species will likely eventually go extinct just as the dinosaurs did and other organisms before them. Many other species in Earth's history were very "successful" for millions of years, but eventually died out. They were around much longer than we have been so far. Species evolve and go extinct and that is recorded in Earth's rock record. It is logical to assume humans will have the same fate.
4
@Heather well Heather, not if Donald Trump's Space Force takes off! Then we'll be a space faring species and with nothing to worry about.
The hubris camp, the exemptionalist cornucopians, those following the creed of "man strong", won't be reading this op-ed.
So what is our progress here on this shore, with conquistador Trump slashing away with his broad sword, clearing and plundering, for gold and glory?
The future is stupid. Enter here.
13
Vote in November. Start the reversal.
When the last human is gone the the earth will breathe a sigh of relief and like a host at an over long party say , “ oh my god , I thought they’d never leave . Ok now I’ll just clean up this mess .”
58
On this sentiment, I strongly recommend the film "Mother!"(dir. Darren Aranovsky, 2017)
@Theopolis
That's one heck of a mess for the earth to clean, with no trained persons left to maintain the nuclear reactors. I wonder, how long will it take?
Humans don't have to be obliterated for Earth and its non-human creatures to recover. A smaller population that fits in, doesn't take itself as master of everything, and reveres the land and water and fellow creatures that make their lives possible will be just fine and won't pose a threat to everything else.
Humanity has been there before, and could do it again ... after the fall of this wacky, insane "civilization."
No past civilization was more deserving of the destruction awaiting ours. It can be argued, however, that while the context of our destruction may be unique, the circumstances are as ever. One can easily envision ancient elites sucking the life out of the lower classes, while the religious authorities exhort submission to the whims of unseen hands.
Brightly, and absent extinction, it is fair to believe a better world will replace this decadent and decrepit creation. Darkly, going from here to there will involve human catastrophe on an unprecedented scale.
All such is nothing more than the natural cycle of history.
3
The indications seem to be quite powerful that the presumed slow degradation of the fundamental necessities for current civilization is now accelerating rapidly beyond control. Like the huge masses of polar ice that are collapsing into the ocean more and more rapidly, the solidities of our current culture are also crumbling at high speed. This is not hubris, it is petrified ignorance with a massive element of stupidity within the powers in control. Those factors of our civilization which were important are rapidly becoming obsolete and the social systems are melting away just like the ice. We face problems that would be faced by living on an alien planet and the transformation is being largely ignored.
6
@Jan Sand
Perhaps one small addition is permissible.. In a few months I will be 93 and I have enjoyed my stay immensely on this world. Indications have been written that the permafrost will emit massive amounts of CO2 and methane within the next ten years to quickly bring an end to everything. I am most grateful to have lived through this planets rich wonders in both nature and much of human culture. Like a beautiful flower, it has had its season.
3
@Jan Sand. I found life when I lived in Finland as a University Lecturer. Living in a culture so close to nature and so deeply shaped by so many years of being under threat from other nation states profoundly effected a re-examination of my "Americanness." The silence of the snow falling on the Espanadi and Cafe Manta in Helsinki had an effect similar to the effect upon Scranton of the beach--the beyond. We purplish meditative idiots may remember slavery and genocide rather than glory in compound interest, but envisioning nature---snow, sand, horizon, silence--helps us engage our humanness which does not rely on modernity. The Suomen interest in native Americans and embrace of nature even in the city made me remember my own meditations in the deserts of the western US. The silence of the desert and the silence of the snow falling--is silence purple? probably--have always been healing. Modern society may have antibiotics, but it also has pharmaceutical companies and corporate greed. So silence may be purple, nature may be purple [how is that possible?] but they are healing. I am only 86 so I have yet to reach Jan's elevation, but I love his country and his culture and his nature. And Scranton's [purple or not].
Carpe diem. The author, no doubt, will continue to rent.
1
Scranton misrepresents "Against the Grain." That book does not argue that life before "modernity" was better than our own. The full title suggests its actual thesis: "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States." The book argues that life before the earliest states was better than our own, and that barbarians who lived outside the control of any state had better lives than those living within, from the earliest states until the time states had conquered virtually the whole world. We are not talking "modernity" here, we're talking about a period that started around 5,000 years ago and had ended in most of the world by the 19th Century. Claiming the book as a criticism of "modernity" is simply dishonest and reveals Scranton as a mere propagandist.
BTW, "Against the Grain" is pretty persuasive and definitely worth reading.
4
Ironically, this pessimistic piece ends way too optimistically. I think there's serious doubt that the reshaped earth in the unknown future the author describes will include "humans like us."
10
Great Op. piece, I even enjoy many of the interesting comments by others here.
If the major contributors of human created climate change halved their populations, would that be significant enough to ease US ALL out of the danger zone?
4
@Bull
Bring the world population down to one billion though mandatory birth control, and our descendants would have a fighting chance.
6
A global unstoppable pandemic or nuclear holocaust would be helpful, but there are tipping points that guarantee major effects, and these could only be remedied with some as yet unknown technological fixes.
1
Great article and it supports my thoughts that we worry too much. The world constantly changes and human will repeat the mistakes of the past.
1
Mr. Scranton mentioned that the humans of the Anthropocene share with the humans of earlier eras is 'our ability to adapt to changing conditions' and that all we need to do that is a 'story telling us why our lives matter'. True. But there is a big difference between us now and us then: Somewhere along the line, we, in our hubris, got it into our heads that we could master, control and shape nature into our own image (essentially the definition of anthropocene). This ideology became the story that made our lives matter and that set the course to where we find ourselves now.
How ironic that what we took out of nature to try to control nature have in fact turned the forces of nature against us. We are reaping what we have sown. Some humans somewhere will survive the catastrophe we are unleashing on ourselves and will have an opportunity to create stories that will help them exist, if not thrive. Let's hope that those stories do not cause them to repeat the conclusion of the story we are writing now.
6
Incredibly beautiful and intuitive. This is what makes life so rich-that we ever face death, destruction, limitation and still--forge ahead. There is something of ghosts here, spirituality lived solidly. We "know." We know that we will move forward, that there is a future, that continuance is a ground-rock truth. That is why we look forward to death. The future comes! The future comes, and we will be there to meet it! This is why I love Halloween! It is a deeply "hallowed" and holy feast day! Those little ghouls, goblins and ghosts are distracting, but they point the way to life ever after. Whoever gave us all this plenitude? And everlastingly, at that!
3
Thank you for your beautiful essay. I often have these same ideas swirling around in my head, and I appreciate seeing those ideas reflected back from the Times.
One comment: It is the Pleistocene Epoch, not Era. The same goes for the Anthropocene, although it is only a proposed epoch and has not been formally accepted.
3
It was fun to be a kid and have trust and the elders around.
Now, in my 70's, I recognize it was luck that got us all this far, and it is most likely too much to ask that we grow to...I don't know, Mr. Rodgers level awareness and kindness.
I personally blame capitalism, as its form of meritocracy/abandonment keeps us blind to our need to cooperate and nurture and exist in peace.
Even Star Trek struggled to find a vision of the future that had humans being adults and humane.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
107
@Hugh Massengill
I think that if you look at primitives you will find a rather consistent lack of humanity. Far from living in peace, they suffer far more deaths from violence than we do.
There comes a time for every bubble to burst.
The earth will be here long after we are gone.
50
Mr. Scranton is far more optimistic than I am regarding the survival of the human species given the prospect of unstoppable and irreversible global warming. If we already have not reached the point of no return, will we not reach it soon?
12
Every so often, a voice new to me appears on these pages and something magical happens with language:
"Homo sapiens can live almost anywhere on Earth, under almost any conditions; all we need is a story telling us why our lives matter."
At the end, I'm reminded of the original Planet of the Apes. A man in the distant future realizes what his people did to themselves and to the earth. Scranton adds a sense of awe to the fury of the imagined future, looking back on this age of hubris, "an age of wonders long past." Beautiful!
23
@Down62
This pondering, trapped-in-his-own-thoughts essay, as well as the responses such as yours are deeply annoying, even offensive to me.
Apparently you all are resigned that the lights will go out over this pathetic scenario of climate catastrophe, but in the end, all is well because life will go on, albeit without us. -
1. What makes you think so?
2. Where is your spirit?
Today, we can’t maintain our infrastructure. How are we ever going to meet the challenges ahead due to global warming?
36
@Jay Trainor
We’re not going to. So, stop worrying and grab what you can while you can to maximize your personal happiness!
Mr. Scranton is a talented writer. Nonetheless, if that day comes when humans have adapted away from all the ideas of the Enlightenment that built modern Western Civilization -- things like owning our own labor, property rights, representative democracy -- let's hope the story that we've created for ourselves doesn't involve the warrior societies that largely dominated North America prior to European arrival and dominated Europe not long before that arrival. Hubris indeed. Much our current hubris lies in our inability to appreciate the relative security of modern Western nation states, and the fragility of that security in the face of ignorance that elects politicians who would undermine it. Sure, humans will adapt. Painting a picture of adaption to some mythological past while highlighting the sins of Western Civilization discounts the very idea of human progress and that our country's ideals are in fact objectively good. To quote someone in the news, that's hogwash!
19
One of the comforts that I take from the depressing world that we have created for ourselves is the knowledge that, after we are gone, the Earth will go on. New life forms will emerge to replace the ones we have driven to extinction; the Earth will clean itself of the filth in which we have buried it. Life and the planet are bigger than we are; on a cosmic scale, of course, we don't matter at all. Returning to this time and place, we are forced to deal with the fact that human beings are terrible. Trish Regan, a Fox Business host (I don't know who she is; I assume blonde and blandly pretty, like many Fox hosts) just said "socialism is not the answer" in response to American problems. Given that the present day US is a dystopian hellscape that the entire industrialized world looks down on, given that life in the US is measurably worse than in any other Western state, I'd venture that socialism may, indeed, be the answer. But seeing beyond the tired myths and dreary ideological walls of 21st century American capitalism is something too many Americans (and other Westerners) seem incapable of doing. As this article suggests, they have become adapted to a terrible world, judging everything only by materialist standards that they lack the imagination to transcend. Until, of course, the world begins to crumble, as it is must.
95
@Shaun Narine
"Given that the present day US is a dystopian hellscape that the entire industrialized world looks down on, given that life in the US is measurably worse than in any other Western state,"
Why do you say things that aren't true? Even a cursory glance at happiness figures, per capita income, spending on social welfare, etc. will demonstrate that this isn't the case. And what socialist country (genuinely socialist, rather than social democratic) would you want to move to, given a choice? Cuba? North Korea?
@Shaun Narine Since there are so many evil people at all levels of American society, and since moreover almost everyone is stupid and egoistic, I have to question whether socialism by itself would lead to an improvement. My personal preference is to fully accept that we live in hell and open ourselves to the full hideousness of our existence. Maybe in time a new solution will occur to us. They do exist.
2
I'm surprised that someone who channeled the future with his crystal ball left out the likely possibility that nonhuman, computer generated, artificial general intelligence, whether conscious or not, will replace humans and take over the world.
6
@Noodles And, as super-intelling beings, they will understand that it is we, the humans, who have destroyed our beautiful blue planet. They will then set out to wipe out the pestilence that is Homo sapiens, if we haven't already done so ourselves.
5
@Ambroisine
I strongly doubt AGI will "care" about the planet. Their only goal will be how to maximize the energy needed to run their ever increasingly powerful machines. Every creature and inanimate object on earth will be seen as a raw material to be processed and harnessed.
Just look at Iceland today. Bitcoin data mining centers in that country now use more electricity than all the residents of Iceland combined.. And a single bitcoin transaction uses more electricity than an average US household uses in one week.
@Noodles
Hasn't it already?
The earth is like that grade 10 biology experiment you did with fruit flies. Population goes up, resources (food) go down, then population drops to zero. As I read the end of the essay I was reminded just how prophetic and visionary Kevin Costner's "Waterworld" really was.
10
@Henry's boy
And yet we refuse to take the bull by the horns and impose strict, mandatory limits on the number of children any breeding pair can have. Even China has reversed course.
5
@Noodles,
China has an inverted population triangle -similar to Japan's. The recent easing of one couple/one child restrictions in China is mostly an attempt to stabilize their population age profile.
India is the country that has contributed most heavily to over population in the last 15-20 years.
@Noodles be thankful strict limits weren't imposed on your parents.
Survival is an instinct, an instinct often overcome when one joins a larger group. Collectively we are headed for disaster even while we each try to do what we can to survive today.
5
"Homo sapiens can live almost anywhere on Earth, under almost any conditions; all we need is a story telling us why our lives matter."
What will that story be once earth's resources are squandered? Can we be sure that man will be able to adapt once the materials needed for daily life become so scarce, that each day is a struggle to survive?
While I love the poetry of this "Big Idea," and the author's eloquent and descriptive writing, I just hope the author's final consolation--that man will survive a wasteland created by this and following generations--can really come true.
If the hubris of our "great civilization" makes earth uninhabitable--the fantasy of some Hollywood films--would future generations be able to begin building anew?
The spirit might be willing, but if their landscape is barren, what kind of "stories" will keep these folks going?
27
@ChristineMc In my version, the ultra high net worth will live in hermetically sealed environments while gorgeous images of the animals we have doomed will play on their walls. These people will be perfectly entertained, and will be safe from the snow leopards, the elephants and Jurassic Park-like wonders. Their air will be perfumed with molecules of jasmine scented, purified air. And they will wonder why anyone ever wanted to be outside. The rest of us will fry or drown.
30
@Ambroisine
Exactly—I also am pretty sure that all the space exploration funded by Bezos and Musk is related to them setting up survival colonies on the Moon, Mars, and who-knows-where-else. Survival of the richest, not the fittest! Ugh.
@ChristineMcM
Fortunately, the earth's resources won't be squandered. They'll still be here. Where do you think they will go?
About the worst we can do is overpopulate and have to share resources among a larger number of people, but the people in advanced societies are no longer reproducing even at replacement rates.
The idea behind and the driving force of humanity will survive. We personally will not.
And still it is such a difference to spend one's life building something beautiful versus checking off day after day.
4
The Earth is fragile. We may lose our tenuous atmosphere and become a desert world similar to Mars. No life. No humans.
The book "Rare Earth" details how fragile our world really is.
With increasing CO2 our Earth may be nearing its end: No atmosphere.
14
@Don Yancey no. We'd have to lose our magnetic field to lose our atmosphere. If "Rare Earth" makes that claim, it's full of....falsehood.
We ecologists needs to be better at science. Now Venus? It has a thick atmosphere full of carbon dioxide. The surface is hot enough to melt lead. Its "climate" has been described by planetary scientists as a "runaway Greenhouse Effect."
Instead of talking of destroying earth, let's focus on a more likely outcome: we bring down civilization.
14
Rather odd thesis, that. We are getting into serious trouble, but losing the atmosphere isn’t at all likely.
3
Nice essay. I think what's different about our culture is the dissatisfaction that's built into it. We believe in our personal freedom and autonomy almost as if it were our religion, yet we have no control over the constant rush of radical, rapid changes to the culture, and so to our lives. In one way it's just consumerism, which has to convince us that we need something, and then, when we have it, that we need something else. But it's deeper than that. It's this division in our lives, between the mediation and the entertainment and the news with which we think about the world, and the way we actually experience it. The most dispiriting thing to me (in middle age) is that 50 years ago there was still some push back, some people who believed that another life was possible. People don't seem to be able to imagine that now. We can't think of who we might be without our screens and entertainments and money. We keep expecting our problem to be a solution.
62
@Martin
"We keep expecting our problem to be a solution."
All the perils of out of control growth with growth always being the all purpose cure.
3
@Martin
And yet advanced countries like ours consistently rate higher on world happiness indices than primitive ones.
While I share some of your criticisms, I think it's also fair to say that we're spoiled (kind of nice not having more than half of your kids die in childhood) and whine too much.
1
"they almost certainly lived lives at least as meaningful, complex, rich and joyful as our own."
Well, their meaningful, complex and rich lives did not include the realization that other peoples lives (particularly their murderer's) were as rich, complex and meaningful as their own. Murder is not thus justified by superior self-awareness. But that realization is something that is even more meaningful, complex and rich.
It isn't much, but is is more. And it brings joy. Which might be a firmer foundation for tolerance.
4
"In some unknown future, on some strange and novel shore, human beings just like us will adapt to a whole new world." We'll probably get to the point where we're genetically and cybernetically altering ourselves before the destruction of civilization occurs - we're already entering that phase with the genetics, after all - so I doubt that our future post-apocalyptic descendants will be very much the same as we are today.
3
@Matt If the human species is lucky we might have descendants. If not we are likely to have a major thermonuclear war that wipes us out. As America loses its collective mind this looks more likely every day. Unfortunately this won't be good for any of the nicer species either. Blessed are the cockroaches, for they will inherit the earth.
3
Finally a voice that understands why all the superhero films and Elon Musks of the world will not save us from our hubris.
Thank you. Perhaps some tech miracle will begin to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, even turn it into gasoline, as one new process recently announced does.
But I am merely hopeful, not optimistic. More likely our descendants among our drowned ruins and the rusting relics of our automotive culture will pass down epics about us, cursed by hubris as surely as in any Ancient Greek myth.
78
@Peak Oiler Actually I think it was more likely super hero movies and Elon Musk will destroy us rather than save us.
2
@Peak Oiler, Many species have and did become extinct, eventually it will be our turn.
1
@Peak Oiler
Cursed by our delusion that we can keep growing on oil, with a peak of oil never to come.