Are Humans Fit for Life? Do They Have What it Takes to Enter the Next Phase of the Future?
To Be or NOT to Be?
Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself. There is, indeed, another and a better path: that of becoming a member of human community, and, with the help of a technique guided by science, going over to attack against nature and subjecting her to human will. —Freud
A Prolonged and Dirty War Against Nature
Phase I
Up to recent times, the fate of human species have mostly been determined by nature. By and large, humans had little if any say in whether they lived or died. Nature, graciously, delivered!
Phase II
Since the industrial revolution, humans have increasingly played an enhanced role in determining their own fate: Medicine, more food, improved shelter, electricity, turbine, electrical motor, combustion engine, gasoline, fertilizers, plastics, computer, Internet … . Or have they?
In the process to counter the “dreaded external world” to “defend oneself” and to “subject nature to human will,” humans, “with the help of a technique guided by science,” are “going over to attack against nature”. Humans have waged global wars, created large arsenals of nuclear bombs, employed atomic bombs and weapons of mass destruction and have murdered hundreds of millions of their kind. The “attack against nature” has proved a costly, dirty and prolonged war. A war in which human have committed a multiplicity of war crimes against their enemy—nature.
Each year they
- Consume more than 530EJ of energy (67.6 percent lost as heat)
- Shoot 7.73 billion tons of carbon (28.35 billion tons of CO2) into the atmosphere
- Destroy more than 10 million hectares of forest
- Commit as many as 27,000 species to extinction
- Pump about 7 million tons of toxic pollutants into the environment
- Punch ozone holes in the atmosphere
- Cause hundreds of extremely large dead zones to occur in the oceans and waterways
- Fly 4,479,822,865 people and 80,342,643 tons of freight in the air
- Reproduce more than one child per adult (forming families with more than two children)
- Transform about 27 trillion (million million) tons of raw materials into trash
- Put 65 million cars and light commercial vehicles on the road (total of 1 billion cars by 2011?)
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Continued In Part 2 . . .
Phase III – How many of you, if anyone, will enter the future?
Related Links:
- On the Road Toward One Billion Cars
- One billion cars on the road by 2011
- Is a Future Possible?
- How many are up there polluting our skies?
- Union of Concerned Scientists Issue Some Global Warming Snakeoil
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EDRO 