GONE

GONE

During the last week’s revelation of the world human population reaching 8 billion, I discovered amongst my daughter’s prolific reading Michael Blencowe’s book GONE, covering “A search for what remains of the World’s extinct creatures raising the question of who would write such a book were humans to eventually become one of them.

The author with the book only published in 2021 echoes an often-shared sentiment questioning where he might align himself with another species not hellbent on destroying the world. His repeated references extend to the Doomsday clock set at three minutes to midnight. Otherwise the text focuses on the Booth museum of its namesake born in 1840 at a time where under Victorian society he lived up to the tradition of “if they could get their hands on it, they’d kill it, stuff it, press it and pin it”. The museum testified to his era's naturalists where "if they caught sight of some elusive warbler, it required shooting, stuffing and displaying".

When reminiscing on extinction possibilities this was only 226 years ago in 1796 that naturalist Cuvier announced and punctuated extinction of the mastodon of North America although even that concept of extinction was challenged by President Thomas Jefferson. Cuvier did not stop there and proceeded to add to his extinction list until now it is fairly recognized how more than 99% of the four billion species that have evolved on earth are now gone. Gone.

Well, one could argue that unlike other species humans can talk and express themselves not just counting on the survival of the fittest or the more numerous. That may be true but with the brilliance seen to place us above animals, this has provided the means by which extinction can come at the touch of a button even though one would hope that is not up to a demented president or those who elected him. But with the world clogged up now heading for 9 billion, evolution demonstrates how when that happens among a species the dominant amongst them pushes out the weaker. Lemmings do not suicide in jumping off cliff a la Disney, they fall off when there are too many of them. Watching the ongoing clips of military parades in China might suggest where homogeneity might be aiming amongst the stream of people flooding into Europe and America. While it has become almost sacrilege to be a climate change denier, although of course climate has always been changing, it enforces this homogeneity theory leading to self-destruction when one side drives their people into economic disaster while the other side continues with business as usual, aided by spending which does not recognize how CO2 emissions per person are related to population numbers.

So no use complaining unless one is able to offer a concrete solution which here would be calling for the need for not yet another talk fest next year at COP 28 as politicians seek popularity in pledging taxpayer’s money but a serious global conference which comes up with realistic target on how the global population will handle living conditions under continued expansion. Unless some sanity in this begins to prevail one day people might find the clock has finally struck midnight but they won’t be around to hear it.

Now all of this doom and gloom is easier to shut out and it's possible to pretend it couldn’t happen but when considering total lunatics such as the North Korean President even an outlandish President like Trump would be unlikely to dissuade an attack. What also makes this all the more dangerous is how we have progressed having to introduce automated response systems since once an attack has been launched, there is no longer time to get Biden out of bed and find his slippers. Onto this we have just seen how rockets flying into Poland were originally blamed as an attack on the Ukraine by Russia. If this had prompted an automatic rebuttal by NATO against Russia starting a global war in error, saying “Oops, sorry” would not cut it.

All of which is horrible to contemplate and easier to brush off as an impossibility and that after all it wouldn’t happen in our lifetime yet hardly good enough on the compassion for future generations. Do we all want to go out believing we have lived in an extended delusion? Is this the way of the universe given how this week scientists announced how aliens probably had not contacted earth because they had all been made extinct?

Which is why Elon Musk‘s call for establishment of a two planet presence is essential just in case humans are not as smart as they collectively think they are, that there is no God up there who will save them and how a few thousand year hence humans will join all those other former life forms, and be GONE…