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Archive for May 7, 2019
Human Extinction
May 7th
Human Extinction
Risk ‘misunderestimated’: War, sleeping pills, and the Extinction Rebellion
By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights
May 5, 2019
Just when we need wise leadership and global cooperation, what we are seeing is internal fighting over rigid local opinions. It is like people on a train that has jumped the tracks and is headed down the mountain fighting over who gets access to the dining car first.
“The ultimate question that the Extinction Rebellion poses is this: Why should we care about human extinction? The geologic record suggests that humans will one day go extinct no matter what they do. So, what if that happens sooner rather than later?
The answer to those questions hinges on whether a person defines his or her community strictly in spacial terms and does not include temporal terms. In other words, are we a community of people only by space (and then only weakly at that) or are we a community that extends through both space AND time?
In other words, does it matter whether human culture continues?
Those who deny climate change are answering the last two questions “no.” If those who accept that climate change is largely human-caused do not see it as an existential question, they may as well be deniers.”
“The hardest minds to change are those who accept climate change as a reality, but cannot embrace the necessary steps implied by that belief. Will the Extinction Rebellion change that? I’d like to think the answer is yes. But I think a more thoroughgoing change in human hearts and perceptions will likely only come from actual catastrophic consequences hitting much larger groups of people and only if they understand that those consequences are the result of climate change.”
Risk misunderestimated War
May 7th
Risk ‘misunderestimated’ War, sleeping pills, and the Extinction Rebellion
By Kurt Cobb, originally published by Resource Insights
May 5, 2019
“How is it that the awareness of risk has become so blunted among so much of the world’s population?”
Exactly, we are like a frog in a pot of water that has gone sleepy whilst the water is steadily headed toward the boil. Will we jump out in time or not? That is the critical question we must answer.
“It also seems plausible that the infrastructure we have built—dams, reservoirs, roads, electric grids, seawalls, water systems, and other industrial and agricultural systems—will not withstand intact the heat, drought, floods, sea level rise, severe weather and other problems that unchecked climate change will bring with it. At the very least, we are unlikely to be able to reliably grow enough food to feed all of us.
How is it that the awareness of risk has become so blunted among so much of the world’s population? Of course, for the poorest among us—those who barely make it from one day to the next—risk is immediate, personal and abundantly clear. Lack of food, shelter, medical care and protection from violence are existential questions that command attention.”