Sapere Aude
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

I wanted to say, Joe, that I so appreciate your articles. I thoroughly enjoy reading them because they make such an effort to try and reach people with facts, and even try to give hope based on logic and reason rather than beliefs.

But I’m afraid, in this instance, my hope falls short when it comes to homo sapiens, and most other species, surviving humanity’s selfishly myopic dominance of this iteration in Earth’s evolution.

The singular reason there may not be a future (for life as it has been known) after this (global) (civilization) collapse is not just the climate change, but, and in many ways more important, the human-cause environmental change which is fundamentally rewriting the Earth’s organic (natural/inherent) coding.

The changes taking place during this climate change scenario differ entirely from any of its antecedents.

The climate/environmental historical markers our scientists are using as points of reference to gauge our current crises, did not have the synthetic components, and other human detritus, to process as does this permutation.

(I believe an argument could be made that we are well past the beginning, and quite possibly more towards the crest of the apex of the tsunami before it begins its descent, for many of the same reasons an avalanche’s speed and destructive capacity quickens after the last straw in sound verberations unleashes its devastation.)

‘IF' we have not succeeded in intrinsically changing the entire face of the planet into something more resembling Venus, the planet may yet right itself over the course of several (hundred) thousand (or millions) of years.

However during this transition most life will be extinguished, and the next ontogenesis of life forms in evolution will arise.

That homo sapiens will survive this (ELE) is not likely.

‘IF’ we have ANY chance, at all, to right our deadly wrongs, we are moving too slowly to arrest the cataclysmic changes that are happening before our very eyes.

By the time human beings, that have the power to implement the corrections required to effect prevention and/or mitigate our demise, conclude their committees, media propaganda denials, committees, requisite poo-slinging and blame-a-thons, committees, research, committees, studies, committees, peer-review, committees, Power-Point presentations, committees, power-play-balls-swinging international posturing, committees, king-of-the-hill negotiations, committees — and every other form of taking-their-time before and after T-Time, guess what….

TOO LATE.

The Earth we received from our ancestors and borrowed from our children has been all used up.

The height of our greed and hubris is that humans have wasted every opportunity to evolve beyond our original programming, believing ourselves to be ‘sentient’ and our species to be immortal.

And by doing so we’ve condemned all future generations — an entire planet, teeming with life and potential — to death.

***

“There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, “Oh it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything.” and an optimist who says, “Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyways.” Either way, nothing happens.” — Yvon Chouinard

“…sometimes holding on to hope too long is the greater threat.” - Steven Reisner

“Wait has almost always meant never.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Environmental pollution is an incurable disease. It can only be prevented.” — Barry Commoner

“We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.” — Kurt Vonnegut

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