Save Yourself
I’m a human being and, I assume, however risky that might be these days, that you are too. This article is one amongst many about climate change.
I know it’s a very hot topic (pun intended) right now and you already know all there is to know about it. I won’t try and moralize you about polar bears, or bees or even compost. This article isn’t about that, it’s about us; it’s about you.
We, as a species, emerged many millions of years ago in the dank and wild caves of Africa. From then on, it took us tens of thousands of years to arrange ourselves into some form of organized civilizations and come up with this cool new invention called writing.
With that we could literally read other people’s minds and sympathize on new and profound levels.
Thousands of more years went by and mathematics was created. This allowed for more complex commerce, calculations, and even architecture initiating us to entirely new worlds of equations, solutions, and homework.
Then science and the scientific method finally came around many hundreds of years later. With this, we went from blindly guessing about the world around us to knowing facts and theorizing about concepts previously foreign to us.
A couple of decades later, through steam power, ingenuity and visionary brilliance, mechanics and technology completely revolutionized the human way of life. This efficiency not only affected supply and demand, it changed the way we live.
Everything is faster. Within seconds you could communicate with someone in Japan or have basically anything delivered to your house. Make of it what you will, but we used to be hairy, smelly creatures roaming in caves, unable to form even a sliver of complex thought within our heads. Just look how far we’ve come!
Our growth as a species is exponential. More people, more ideas, more solutions, more growth.
In a million years we’ve created art of all forms; eliminated many previously incurable diseases; conceived the internet; flown hundred-ton, metal contraptions we call planes through the sky; built monuments unimaginably gargantuan, which can be observed from space; invented Pop-Tarts and even walked on the moon.
Our species is deeply imperfect but it’s within this imperfection that we can extract greatness. The best part is that we’re so adaptable, that these magnificent products of genius, will, and borderline insanity seem to us so mundane and normal.
With our infinite reserves of potential, there’s no telling how truly awesome we could be.
We’ll cure everything, colonize the next galaxy over, create new forms of art that move people in ways we cannot even comprehend yet, invent political systems that actually work, and create A.I. that doesn’t want to kill us.
Give us a million more years and who knows the limits of our growth and adaptability, if any at all.
The thing is though; with the way things are going our species doesn’t have a million more years, not even close to it. Even making it through the 21st century is deemed unlikely.
Planet Earth will survive climate change, it has done it before and it will do it again. Once the flames of our destruction die down everything will start anew, but we won’t be there to see it. We won’t survive, not this time.
If you won’t worry about the planet, worry about us, worry about humanity, worry about you. Do you not wish to be part of the species that expands and evolves beyond anything we can currently even fathom?
The human species is predicted to die within what is merely our infancy. What a shame and waste of potential that would be. The Universe came together, collided atoms, created and merged cells, formed bacteria, and coded DNA to eventually create these wonderfully intelligent and adaptable beings, at times capable of incredible creativity and ingenuity, but here we are, ungratefully throwing it all away.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We have an estimated and calculated nine years to reverse our fate, turn the tides and change (something we know how to do and have always been doing).
I don’t need to tell you how to improve our chances because you already know how, and you also know how much or how little you’ve actually been doing.
I for one want to be part of quite possibly the first species to rule the stars through adaptability, determination and pure genius. I truly believe in us. Do you?
Written by: Enrika Béland
