By Dhruv Makhija
Topic: Should people who care about the long-term future focus on reducing the risk of human extinction, or instead on trying to make the world go better in futures where humanity survives a long time?
Carl Sagan has rightfully said, “Extinction Is the rule, Survival is the exception.”
People who care about the long-term future should understand that the world could only be made better in the coming time if the world exists as it is. What those who care about the long-term future should focus on is reducing the risk of human extinction. We cannot hope to comprehend the sudden emergence of pivotal events that could make all our strategies regarding a better world in the future go up in smoke. When we focus on trying to make the world better in the future we are already assuming something that is not true, we are assuming mankind to be immortal and for its extinction to be impossible-a statement which is as far from reality as it could be. Therefore in the list of our priorities regarding the future the first one should be to survive and prevent the risk of human extinction that we are so blindly ignoring.
Social science researcher Spencer Greenberg surveyed Americans on their estimate of the chances of human extinction within 50 years. The results found that many think the chances are extremely low, with over 30% guessing they’re under 1 in 10 million(The 80,000 hours Podcast,https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/spencer-greenberg-social-science/).This is the cause for humanity to be so assured about their survival, they assume that they have all the answers however reality is just the opposite.
Steve Luby, MD, an epidemiologist and the director of research for Stanford’s Center for Innovation in Global Health says that by 2100 – a short 81 years in the future – he sees human extinction as a possible outcome believed to be the result of population growth coupled with the increasing destruction of our planet(Stanford Earth Matters Magazine,"What's likely to cause human extinction and how can we avoid it?" J. Berger, February 19,2019).The human population has increased steadily to the point where it is expected to touch the gigantic figure of 10.4 billion during the 2080s(www.un.org). If this pattern is any indication it shows that soon the world's population can reach an extent where it drowns itself out by creating a society where no one has enough to go around. We are still thinking about how to improve conditions in the future when our very survival is in question, we have no guarantees that we will live to see that future and the growing rate of human population itself, ironically is going to be the dagger to the heart of humanity itself. We need to focus on reducing the risk of our extinction by somehow putting the brakes on the accelerating figure of human population rather than think about the various possible ways to provide for this population because that is the definition of an uphill battle. If the human population continues to accelerate at the same rate of 0.9 % , no matter how small the figure might seem, our resources will run out in the blink of an eye and before we know it , we will be a civilization without any chance of survival because of no resource,whether it be food, housing or even something as basic as pure water, left and then extinction will knock at our door and all those who state that "We should plan about making life better in the future rather than think about extinction,after all we are not going to go extinct overnight",will get their unfortunate answer.
Along with overpopulation, the cliched cause of pollution and global warming, can also lead to the destruction of humanity as we know it. We are naive to think about making the life of our future generations better while the very existence of a future generation is dependent on our capability to avoid the end of our race which would be extremely tough to do if the current rate of deforestation is any indication. Deforestation, pollution and global warming are all interconnected and the one effect that all three of these phenomena can have is:human extinction. We continue to pollute our very life source, our air,water,soil. We continue to turn a blind eye to the decreasing forest cover.
The decrease in forest cover leads to vast areas of the world being more susceptible to floods and not only this, at the rate We humans are going ,we are likely to completely diminish our forest cover which would then lead us all to our graves in less than five minutes. It is so shocking that we all ever since grade one have heard about how trees give us oxygen which is necessary for our survival but still continue to chop our green saviours down without a thought.We continue to let our Earth and our environment go down the hill while we exploit it for the cause of "advancement". What good will any advancement be of when there is no one left to benefit from it? Therefore we must stop this endless exploitation and rather than thinking of ways to provide better life to our future generations we should focus on saving our race from extinction because extinction erases any advancement or any generation to come.
Some say that "Extinction cannot be prevented, after all doomsday is going to arrive and so we should not worry about it; rather we should focus on making life better for our future generations,something we can do." Imagine a scene, where Earth is set on fire, dead bodies everywhere, doomsday has finally arrived and humanity is nearing its end. At that point will any of our strategies regarding how to make life better for our future generations,truly matter?Doomsday or extinction is going to arrive but the start of such extinction will be from the human mind. We can still try and control the population, make this world a cleaner place, take effective measures to stop the blind exploitation in the name of advancement, and then we can definitely reduce the risk of extinction. It can be prevented but what it requires is our concentrated efforts. We need to stop our completely baseless belief that humanity's extinction is either out of our control or mere fiction and we need to take efforts to prevent it because it is with each and every small step that a large mountain can be scaled. To make life better for our future generations we first need to ensure that a habitable world exists for our future generations, that our very race is safe from extinction otherwise the strategies of making life better in future without finding ways to reduce the risk of extinction would be like counting the money from selling the chickens before the eggs have even hatched.
By Dhruv Makhija
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