June 11, 2012
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BE AFRAID.
And be motivated to action, before it is too late.
JDN 2456091 EDT 23:17.
You see, you live in only the third generation of Homo sapiens in the history of the Earth for which two things have been true.
1. There is a man who can push a button. If he pushes this button, human civilization will be immediately and completely destroyed. The Earth may in fact become an irradiated wasteland, inhospitable to all life. Of the 310 million people who choose this man and put him in charge… 46% think the Earth is only 6000 years old. We are surrounded by idiots, and at any moment one of them will be put in charge of deciding whether or not to destroy the world.
2. The Earth’s ecosystem is on the verge of total catastrophic collapse. If current policies are not only halted but indeed reversed on a global scale in a matter of decades, we will fall over the cliff and face a mass extinction event comparable to what happened at the end of the Cretaceous (you remember, when there were dinosaurs, and then… weren’t dinosaurs anymore?). If this happens, humans may or may not survive; if we do, it will be after an equally catastrophic political and economic collapse that causes war, famine, drought, and general death counted in the billions of people.
The time to act is NOW. Actually, the time to act was fifty years ago, but we can’t go back. So now is better than tomorrow, and tomorrow is better than a year from now. The more people who really understand just how important this is, and the sooner they do, the better. We still have a chance to prevent these catastrophes. We are uniquely positioned, one way or another: We will either be the first generation of human beings who willfully acted to save the future of humanity—or we may well be the last generation of human beings.
If you’re worried about budget deficits or gay marriage or abortion or animal rights or whatever else… it’s getting beside the point. It’s not that these things aren’t important; just that there is something much, much more important, and that is preserving the survival of the human race.
I wish I knew what I could say to make people understand just how incredibly important this is. We need to fix politics, because nuclear war could kill us all. And we need to fix ecology, because global warming is waiting in line to do the same. We must stop these existential risks—before they stop everything.
If you do nothing else, please take a moment to give to the Union of Concerned Scientists and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Both are highly respected nonprofit organizations administered by experienced scientific professionals, and they are working toward things so mind-bogglingly important that they knock pretty much everything else off the scale. The life you save may be your own.
