Will the Sun set on the human race?: Can Homo sapiens survive - or is it doomed to extinction, a fate known to have overtaken up to 99 per cent of all life forms?
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On a cold autumnal day they came from around the country to 'the Dome' to talk about the approaching darkness: scientists, economists, philosophers, ethicists, botanists, ministers of religion, historians and the odd politician. Many were the elders of their professions, having known lives rich in learning and enquiry. But there were also young students present, full of energy and anticipation.
More than 150 people gathered at the Australian Academy of Science's distinctive Shine Dome in Canberra. With an average age of at least 50, this congregation of the intelligentsia had some 7,500 years of experience to draw on.
And they were gathered in this shrine of science to discuss one question: can Homo sapiens – the primate species that has evolved to dominate the planet – survive? Or is it doomed to extinction, a fate known to have overtaken up to 99 per cent of all life forms?
In earlier times and other places, it's likely that society's elders have similarly gathered to discuss such big issues. If the best information around suggests your society may be about to wither, perhaps even disappear altogether, surely it is up to the best and brightest to ask some hard questions.
Humans have been extraordinarily successful. When the British made landfall at Sydney Cove in 1788 and began colonising Australia, the world's population was about 750 million. The total today is nearly eight times as many; there is hardly a place where humans haven't been … and nowhere they don't influence.
Thanks to industrialisation, our hunger for resources and the sheer number of people, humans have an immense impact. They outstrip every other species in demand for energy and resources, to the point where their impact on the biosphere arguably threatens our own long-term viability.
The world is in the sway of a dangerous illusion. Most leaders, officials and institutions behave as if the human enterprise is somehow remote from the environment; as if human expansion can go on forever; as if the Earth's resources and energy were limitless. And yet, we know this is not the case. We know many complex civilisations, successful and advanced, have nevertheless collapsed. Ours could too.
The worldwide population is expanding by about 75 million people a year. Even given that population growth rates are declining, United Nations projections put the global population at almost 8 billion in 2025.
Humans have already used nearly a third of all available land area – some 3.8 billion hectares – in agriculture or built-up areas. Most of the remainder is too dry for agriculture. Global grain production, currently 1.84 billion tonnes annually, will need to increase by about 40 per cent to meet demand in 2020.
While demand is going up, our capacity to meet that demand is under a growing cloud. Human-induced soil degradation has been getting worse since the 1950s. About 85 per cent of agricultural land contains areas degraded by erosion, salination, compaction, and other factors.
It has been estimated that soil degradation has already reduced agricultural productivity by 15 per cent in the past 50 years. In the past 300 years, the rate of topsoil loss was 300 million tonnes per year; in the past 50 years that rate has more than doubled to 760 million tonnes per year.
On top of this, if current water consumption patterns continue, half the world's population will live in water-stressed river basins by 2025.
What it all adds up to is hotly debated, but for many people it looks a little like Easter Island (see Civilisations: why they fail, Cosmos Online): that we are driving headlong into a crisis we seem unable to see. We're getting to the end of the trees, and still we keep chopping. As if nothing was wrong. Time for the elders to meet.
The measure of human rationality
"they were either ignored … or they spoke up too late." or they were dealing with phenomena outside the current limits of their knowledge, ethics and reason. And that same process can be observed unfolding at this very moment.
Survival of the Human species
is our extinction really such a bad thing ?
we are merely the leaseholders of the Planet, and like any itinerant tenant that insists on constantly trying their hand at home improvements to the detriment of the entire building we will be duly evicted.
Once we are gone,the Earth will heal itself and another genus will be handed a new
tenancy agreement and invited to make something with the available resources, the third such tenant since the original leaseholders, the Dinosaurs, failed to make much more of it than was given them.
Homo Sapien or killer ape, which ever description you prefer, has made it this far despite himself and his baser instincts rule his heart, which are to kill and destroy, we just can't help ourselves, even our pitiful invention, the Sky Fairies, (aka religion), has in all its guises, failed to assuage us of our self destructive instincts.
Eternity beckons for our children, and yet even at the end we will pray to the sky fairies for guidance and forgiveness. "God Help us"
Time to move on....
Well i guess scifi is near Jump in our Ftl ships and pollute some other planet ....
It's an evolution our next step is it just some impossible evolution? What about already looking at the stars for new liveable planets how about some crazy projects about traveling faster then light?
Well guess what no matter what we will find a way lol trust me a chance to destroy another planet damn right .Its our instinct and im pertty sure if we see another type of species were gonna kick them out and conquer whatever is there. Yup thats us Humans .
survival of the human species.
I love this question. We humans have done what no other creature has been able to do on this planet. we have trancended evolution even though we are still a part of it. If the question is will we still look and have the same genetic makeup as today a million years from now, the answer has to be no. but barring a total cataclysmic event on the planet, humans will be around for a long time. what we need to do is ensure our survival by moving beyond our border of this blue marble and that, will definitly will ensure our survival. even if 99 percentof the population dies off that still leaves alot of people.lr vero beach florida
Human Survival...?????????????????
..."I am not sure which weapons world war III will be fought with, but world war IV, will be fought with rocks and sticks"
...Albert Einstein.
...2 more generations at most...
..."Raupauch cautioned: "We have just two more generations, at most, to fix the problem with our climate systems."...
So folks, if we are already up to gen-"Y".
Can anyone tell me what comes after "Z" ...????????
ON A COLD AUTUMNAL .......
O nosso mundo está mudando, e se os seres humanos, num futuro próximo, nao fazer nada em relação aos desmatamento, clima, efeito estufa, estaremos todos condenados num período de curto tempo... a florestas amazonas vai virar um deserto, as terras vão ficar cada vez mais estéril para a agricultura, num futuro próximo, não mais de 25 anos, o planeta terra vai ter sérias dificuldade de relacionamento com a natureza.
O homens do nosso planeta terra, não esta pensando na preservação, sim em como lucrar no desmatamento, em uso irracional da natureza, nos dias de hoje qualquer pessoas sempre comentam, o clima não esta como era a 25 anos atras. Temos que fazer algo agora, é já... para que as concequencias não chegue a todos...
boom and bust
the economic buble is good anlog to human race. Sustainable existance is a colonization of space. But that has a problem of limiting the gene pool and hence evolution. No doubt our selfish gene will kick in and we will devolve (or evolve) to dolphins and leave the planet by our own means."So long and thanks for all the fish" - ( Douglas Adams 1978).
Respect the digital watch and now ipod bla bla...
:-) Nick