I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’m not even 40 and I seem to recall more bugs, more rabbits, more birds, more everything around. But now it’s all roads and lawns and warehouses and parking lots. It reminds me of a character from C.S. Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength” who wanted to replace all trees with artificial trees, with clockwork birds in their limbs.
I like to remember though that while biodiversity is shrinking something will survive. Scientists think that this planet has hosted life for over 3 billion years. There is no indicator that we have fucked things up enough to destroy all life. Something will live on and reproduce and it’s children’s children will inherit this planet for another time.
The thing about all the doom and gloom is that I don’t think anyone is seriously expecting the end of humanity. We’re not talking extinction, at least not yet and probably not for a very long time. We’re talking really hard times for people, though. Some previously habitable areas becoming uninhabitable, reduction in how much food we can produce and therefore how many people can be fed, things like that.
There’s this idea that we’re making Earth unlivable but, short of large-scale nuclear war, I don’t think we’re really capable of that. And humans are smart, when they have to be, and very adaptable. As a species, we’ll survive. But how many of us, and in what conditions, is very much up in the air.
We’re talking really hard times for people, though.
millions will die. millions more will flee the worst places, putting more pressure on the enormous populations already migrating due to conflicts in Africa, the middle east and now eastern Europe.
The misery will compound, and the rich will continue to stick their heads in the sands and act like nothing is wrong.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’m not even 40 and I seem to recall more bugs, more rabbits, more birds, more everything around. But now it’s all roads and lawns and warehouses and parking lots. It reminds me of a character from C.S. Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength” who wanted to replace all trees with artificial trees, with clockwork birds in their limbs.
I like to remember though that while biodiversity is shrinking something will survive. Scientists think that this planet has hosted life for over 3 billion years. There is no indicator that we have fucked things up enough to destroy all life. Something will live on and reproduce and it’s children’s children will inherit this planet for another time.
Love you all, and thanks for all the fish!
The thing about all the doom and gloom is that I don’t think anyone is seriously expecting the end of humanity. We’re not talking extinction, at least not yet and probably not for a very long time. We’re talking really hard times for people, though. Some previously habitable areas becoming uninhabitable, reduction in how much food we can produce and therefore how many people can be fed, things like that.
There’s this idea that we’re making Earth unlivable but, short of large-scale nuclear war, I don’t think we’re really capable of that. And humans are smart, when they have to be, and very adaptable. As a species, we’ll survive. But how many of us, and in what conditions, is very much up in the air.
millions will die. millions more will flee the worst places, putting more pressure on the enormous populations already migrating due to conflicts in Africa, the middle east and now eastern Europe.
The misery will compound, and the rich will continue to stick their heads in the sands and act like nothing is wrong.