This week's show features the conclusion of an interview with a well-known Canadian scientist and environmentalist (at least in Canada), David Suzuki, who has worked his entire life to save the planet for human habitation. This statement near the end of this 25 minute segment of the interview confirmed my worst suspicions and left me a bit discouraged.
...a lot of my colleagues have now said it's too late. Clive Hamilton, an eminent eco-philosopher in Australia wrote a book, “Requiem for a Species.” And we're the species it's a requiem for. I've read everything, the entire book, and there's nothing I disagree with there. James Lovelock, the man who invented this idea of Gaia, says 90 percent of humanity will be gone by the end of the century.
And Sir Martin Rees, the royal astronomer in Britain was asked what are the chances humans will be around by 2100, and he said 50/50. So there are a lot of my colleagues are saying we've passed too many tipping points to go back.In a way the extinction of humans might serve justice in that we humans have caused, and are causing, so many other species going extinct. In any case, Suzuki is not quitting his fight to save us. Shall we just give up or shall we join him in this fight?
We humans created the Age of Enlightenment which held so much promise for our species; but it, like everything else, was hijacked by capitalists to use in their obsessive quest to "own" wealth created by people who work, who contribute something useful to society. To accomplish this capitalists created a system of private ownership of entire economies, a privatization of a human legacy of technology created over many generations. These sociopathic humans, with their infantile minds and grandiose imaginations, have become so obsessed with hoarding wealth and power for themselves that they are now attacking not only their fellow humans but nature which sustains us and so many other species on this planet. Unless we can rid ourselves of the worst of our species and their exploitative economic system, nature will soon flick all of humanity off the planet like some obnoxious flea.