Look Up, Stupid!
Well, we had a good run. Thanks to our leaders’ inaction on climate change at Copenhagen last year, the human race is doomed. You get what you vote for, I guess.
All right, maybe I’m being too pessimistic. Our species probably isn’t going extinct anytime soon. We’ve proven ourselves to be, like rats, very good at adapting to a variety of environments. But there aren’t going to be nearly as many of us, and I guess us rich nations who caused this problem (and taught the poor nations how to make it worse) will have to live with the guilt of killing several billion people (mostly in the aforementioned poor nations).
It was going to happen eventually. Nothing is forever, after all. Everything changes if you give it enough time. Manitoba used to be a tropical paradise near the equator; now we all just wish it was. The dinosaurs had it good for 150 million years, then POOF, bye-bye Birdesaur. In five billion years, the sun will bloat in its death throes and fry our lovely little blue rock like an egg. Hopefully whatever life is around then is smart enough to haul ass to save ass.
In timescales totally insignificant to the larger universe, our own little human universe has undergone incredible change. Going from the first scribblings of Sumer to Twittering about Twilight only took about five thousand years, which seems unthinkably long to us, but is but a mere attosecond on geologic or cosmologic timescales. Of course, human history extends several hundred thousand years before writing, but since many other species such as sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years, it’s clear that we’re precocious little scamps.
One thing that hasn’t changed much over our history, though, is human nature; and you have to keep in mind that what we call “human nature” was laid down in a world very different from the one we live in today. Our brain evolved in a world of short lifespans, quick and easy deaths from a thousand different things, and competition from fellow humans for scant resources. Early man didn’t need to think about his 401K or who was on Letterman that night; he needed to catch an antelope for supper, because the tribe next door probably wasn’t sharing theirs and he’d most likely be clubbed for asking. Long term thinking and planning beyond the satisfaction of one’s immediate physical needs didn’t factor into the equation until the advent of agriculture, when humans really got to settle down for a bit and think things through. What they created was civilization, and civilization has changed much faster than the brains that created it are able to, on a really deep level. The need for that antelope as mutated into the lust for more money than the tribe next door. Our civilization has out-evolved us.
When you’re playing with the incredible amount of energy and power our modern civilization has access to, the ability to foresee the effects of actions over a period of time is essential, but our ability to do that is woefully limited. Just like every other human civilization ever, we see ourselves as the last chapter. Every empire thinks it will last forever, that nothing will change except for the better, and that what’s here today will still be here tomorrow. History tells us that this is a mistaken. No culture can seriously envision a world without itself, especially one like ours, which expertly distracts itself with TV and porn and Michael Bay movies. We will not see the effects of our Empire of Oil on the planet until they are right on top of us. It’s just how we were wired so long ago in the chaos of pre-history.
I said earlier that everything ends. So will humans, eventually, unless we can escape the dying sun and, countless eons from now, the dying universe. But is our story over in the near future, within the vision of our grandchildren? I don’t think so. We had the tools to live just about anywhere long before we latched onto oil’s teat. No, I think we’re going to keep on writing our chapter in the story of Earth for a long time, yet. After all, there’s only one part of human nature older and stronger than greed.
The will to survive.
