Homo Sappyins

The majority of the inhabitants of the planet Earth are scientifically ignorant and superstitious, and their lack of understanding of, or failure to believe in the crises facing our world may eventually result in us becoming just another extinct species.

A growing problem is, of course, overpopulation. There are currently 7.7 billion of us on planet Earth, more than it can reasonably accommodate, and yet it is expected that our population will increase by another two billion between now and the year 2050. Fifty percent of us live in abject poverty, with daily incomes less than $2.50 in U.S. dollars, and 80% with less than$10. This is reflected in their relative energy usages. The U.S. and Canada use 4 to 6 times more energy per person than countries such as China and Brazil, and 30 to 40 times the amount consumed in places such as Bangladesh or Eritrea. Of course the high consumers are countries that are in the temperate zone, so use more energy for heating, but this doesn’t begin to explain the differences which are mainly due to the uneven distribution of wealth.

The 36% of the Earth’s land area used to grow crops and raise food animals is degrading due to erosion, desertification, salinization caused by irrigation, urban expansion and the exhaustion of soil due to the depletion of trace elements and micro-nutrients, with the result that global cropland is shrinking by about 4% per decade. We can no longer increase the harvest by cultivating new land, since most of the potentially arable land is of marginal quality, and clearing it would further reduce forest cover.

The marine harvest peaked on a per capita basis in 1970 and now faces a precipitous decline due to overfishing, coastal habitat destruction and water pollution. Meanwhile the world’s fishing fleet continues to grow and already exceeds one million vessels. Fish farming is not the panacea it was thought to be, as it takes about three pounds of fish meal made from small species to produce one pound of salmon or other higher quality food fish. If we throw in the negative effects of global warming, whether the result of human activity or not, all the above problems are further magnified.

The Earth could produce enough food to keep everyone properly fed, but only if we switched to an almost completely vegetarian diet. This would mean that the people in the western world would have to change their typical high protein diets. This isn’t likely to happen soon enough to prevent mass starvation in the third world.

Anthropogenic global warming is, potentially, another disaster waiting to happen. Despite a significant number of unbelievers, this is a well-proven fact. Carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, such as methane, help to heat the Earth by reflecting back some of the heat being radiated into space, so it should be obvious that increasing the CO2 content, as we are now doing, will result in higher temperatures, which is what is happening. Most of this CO2 comes from the combustion of fossil hydrocarbons, mainly coal, natural gas,, and fuels derived from crude oil. But reducing consumption of these materials will be difficult to achieve in the short term. Most of the coal is used in the thousands of power plants throughout the world, which alternatives such as nuclear will be costly and slow to replace, and green technology, such as solar and wind power, is too unreliable. As for crude oil, it is largely used to make fuel for the one billion internal combustion automotive vehicles on earth, the thousands of aircraft, plus heavy machinery and off-road vehicles. Since the economy of the developed world is highly dependent on this equipment, reducing consumption of hydrocarbon-based fuels will not be accomplished soon. So global warming is a threat that we will have to adapt to for years to come, as sea levels will rise due to thermal expansion, plus water from melting glaciers and ice caps, flooding many coastal cities. Storms will become more frequent and more destructive, and some areas, particularly cities, may become to hot to live in.

Religion is another threat to our survival. Over 5 billion humans are adherents of one of them, and many believe that the rapture is coming soon, with the return of JC, and the end of the Earth as we know it, so there is no need to concern ourselves with these potential future disasters. Some would even like to do whatever they can to bring the end times on sooner. Plenty of others are convinced that their Gawd will look after us and prevent any natural disaster from upsetting our comfortable lives, and nothing will change these beliefs even when the world goes to ‘Hell in a handbasket’, as the saying goes.

And lets not forget the threat of nuclear war. One would hope that the U.S.A. and Russia are prudent enough to avoid such a catastrophe, but there plenty of other countries in the nuclear club, including China, Israel, India and Pakistan, and several aspiring members, such as North Korea and Iran. It’s very possible that some terrorist will acquire an atomic bomb and set it off in some country that he hates, quite likely the U.S., triggering a response that may be even more devastating.

Obviously the human race has to change drastically and quickly to avoid a massive reduction in the population at the very least, or possibly even total extinction. But what can we possibly do? We need to find a way to educate the world’s population about the dangers we face, and ensure that our leaders respond appropriately.

Freeing ourselves from the soporific and destructive myths of religion is a necessary step in that direction, and while it is true that the percentage of non-theists is increasing in most Western countries, particularly among better educated young people, the continuing indoctrination of children into the religion of their parents means that total conversion to atheism will be a very slow process. And the Islamic religion is another matter entirely. Whereas atheists are often discriminated against in western countries, in many Muslim nations they are frequently in danger of being slaughtered by radical extremists.

Eventually, we humans will wake up to this existential threat, but not before there is a huge change in conditions here on Earth and a subsequent major shift in our physical, economic and social well being.