Genius says apocalypse is near, but that won’t distract us
As our doom draws near, within 100 years, we could be paying less attention to our PM’s socks
I hope you’re hiding under the bed because Stephen Hawking has revised his doomsday clock and we are pretty much doomed.
Not that long ago, didn’t we have about 10,000 years to dodge catastrophe? Or was it 100,000 years? It was definitely one of the two.
Then in November, I recall spitting out my Nicaraguan Fair Trade Organic Coffee when the theoretical physicist said, and I’m paraphrasing, “We need to hatch an exit plan to get off Earth within 1,000 years. Please update your calendars.”
Sure. No problem. I’ve been meaning to move boxes out of my shed for five years, but hopefully my descendants can relocate to the moon in less time. You see where this is headed. And now? “Professor Stephen Hawking thinks the human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive,” said the BBC in a statement that is either irresponsible in its serenity or proof nothing rattles the British.
“With climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth, our own planet is increasingly precarious.”
So if you’re scoring at home, Hawking’s apocalypse date jumped forward by 900 years in six months.
At this rate, he will deliver a lecture in early October to say, “My bad. Pack your bags. We need to colonize Mars by Halloween.”
It’s amazing how we humans are so lost in the moment, so obsessed with our own small pictures that we don’t really pay heed to time. I fear our capacity for procrastination will prove costly when the space escape is upon us and last-minute shoppers are delaying liftoff because they’re lined up for intergalactic underwear and zero-gravity snacks.
I’m sorry, 100 YEARS? Why is this not dominating the news? Wolf Blitzer’s oversized Ewok head should be filling up my LG flatscreen now as he gravely warns: “We are following breaking news as a renowned scientist says Earth will be uninhabitable by 2117. We’ll tell you what you need to know to survive.”
Instead, we have to wait until this summer for BBC’s science documentary, Stephen Hawking: Expedition New Earth.
This is nuts. If he’s already travelled this world to discover “cuttingedge research” in “astronomy, biology, rocket technology and human hibernation” — for that last one, all he needed to do was come over on a Sunday morning and observe my wife — this data should be shared immediately.
It took, what, more than 2,000 years to build the Great Wall of China? But we now have a century to skedaddle and traverse the Milky Way, a mass exodus that’s fraught with hitches, not the least of which are time and distance: “The good news is we’ve discovered a new planet that’s suitable for human life. That bad news is you’ll die of old age before we get 0.0001per cent of the way there.”
Why are our leaders not listening to Hawking’s accelerated warnings? Why are they treating him like a nerd in the corner of a dorm kegger who keeps meekly mumbling about how it’s probably not a good idea to light those shot glasses on fire?
Our politicians should be devoting every resource to figuring out if our Countdown Clock is indeed calibrated to T minus 100 years.
Prime Minister Trudeau, instead of donning Star Wars socks to celebrate May the Fourth, shouldn’t you be forming a task force to determine how millions of Canadians in 2117 will triumph in global bidding wars and secure bungalows on Planet B when nobody can now afford a semi in Toronto and Vancouver?
Sir, peel C-3PO and R2-D2 off your pedicured feet. Put on your big-boy pants. If Hawking is right, our obsessions and tech trajectories are not only backwards — they’re pointless. Self-driving cars? Please. Next-level digital assistants? “Siri, what time is that overdue asteroid expected to obliterate my neighbourhood?”
The only upside to fixating on the present is that artificial intelligence may reach a point where fleeing the planet becomes moot after robots learn to think, hold a robots-only vote and decide to slaughter us.
Hawking is the smartest man alive. I tried to read A Brief History of Time three times in high school and it was like trying to get through Ulysses as someone wallops you over the head with a Styrofoam bat.
His mind is operating on a different level, one that is often difficult to track deep into the cosmos.
But on our future here on Earth, his message is clear: escape or die.
“The journey shows that Prof. Hawking’s ambition isn’t as fantastical as it sounds — that science fact is closer to science fiction than we ever thought,” the BBC says.
Yes. But still not close enough for us to care. vmenon@thestar.ca