Problem –  a Time Bomb.

Unfortunately, it’s not “the bomb” that’s the problem. Today’s news that mammals are going extinct at a faster rate than…er…well ever, actually, would hopefully make people sit up and pay attention.

Mammals facing extinction threat

The last time I looked (warm blood, nipples, live birth) I was a mammal and that headline fills me with a small amount of worry.

Q. So why only small?

A. I’m pretty certain that barring a very large meteor or similar global Extinction Level Event, even a dinosaur killing KT-type episode or a Permian freeze won’t wipe out our species.  This is because like shrews and rats and badgers, we can eat almost anything. We have our intelligence, forward vision, omnivorous appetites and opposing thumb which should see us in good stead.  WE have the ability to modify our environment for our own benefit.  Q.E.D. Quad erat demonstrandum.

However, it’ll be a pretty piss-poor existence.

Because there won’t be many of us and the world will be a pretty empty place.  The man gesturing “hi” (or is it “bye” ) on the Pioneer Spacecraft plaque above, may be our only lasting achievement. The current environmental crisis is likened by many to an extinction event on it’s own.

Because of the generally slow pace of geological deposition, our own species’ time will be just a sliver of sediment in the rocks of the future.  Any future being examining them will see the termination of many animals and plants. Many educated people are now are calling our time,

The Holocene extinction event!!! Red List of Endangered Species

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

• All we must do is ensure we don’t gobble up our world like simple hunter-gatherers stuffing their faces as they walk through the bramble bushes.
• We must live within the energy budget of the Sun as it arrives on our world (this is plenty by a long chalk) not by digging up stored solar energy from the rocks and basing whole civilisations on the products.

Now, at this time of global financial woe, is the ideal check to our civilisation, and to ensure it fits within the bounds of our world.  It really is a most wonderful opportunity.  The problems that we’ve made in our past are now laid before us, stark and bare.  It’s clear that we cannot repeat those mistakes.

We must live sustainably if we want any sort of civilised future. This is now the time to make real changes, employing people constructively in our world, not destructively.  We must stop the ludicrous situation where both the United States of America and Europe each need 10 whole Earths to sustain themselves.   We must ensure that no-one seeks to emulate them.

It’s truly the logic of the mad house that must end now.