We may not be long for this world
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.
—Anonymous
My weekly routine usually involves a stop by our community public library. There are books on cooking, gardening, health fads, and more that mention glorious progress in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and political crises going on worldwide.
In the last couple of years, though, I have noticed a plethora of books on topics related to space exploration and, much more recently, climate change. These books by space writers, more or less, paint a futuristic world in which it is almost proclaimed that we all will be taking vacations in outer space in the next few years.
Traveling to Mars is the ultimate goal, and the authors talk about all the details being worked out in terms of building powerful rockets and increases in fuel efficiency of launch vehicles, as well as efforts to make the moon our first stop in a long migration to other planets.
On climate change, I see two sets of opposite points in discussion: the efforts to mitigate climate change, and how the planet is steadily heading to a climate disaster.
Recently we had the COP28 conference on climate change. There is a lot to keep up with, let alone make sense of the information and still be optimistic. Let’s look more closely at COP28, a yearly circus in rhetoric and no action.
COP28, branded as a collective global effort, has become a place of ironies and contradictions. It was held in the Middle East, which produces much of the fossil fuel responsible for global warming. UAE’s top oil executive presided over it.
The conference happened at the end of the hottest year on record. This year, the United States faced at least 25 climate and weather disasters, costing over $ 1 billion, and other parts of the world faced grave disasters that resulted in loss of life. While many experts and activists tried to get the conference to agree on phasing out fossil fuels, the irony is that the leading players—the United States, UAE, and Saudi Arabia—are heavily investing in increasing oil production.
The COP28 conference showed how humans have gotten away from scientific understanding of issues in our addiction to serving our interests and disregarding the fact that we are a minute part of the complex ecosystem around us. As eminent space scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson says, “We, in our arrogance of being an intelligent species, have entirely forgotten that we are animals created by nature, as much a part of the world as flowers, rivers, fish, birds, clouds, and trees. We are not superior to nature; we are her children.”
The gravest irony is that UAE is positioning itself as the champion of avoiding environmental disaster while changing as little as possible about our way of life. Hosting the conference was an effort to rebrand UAE as a leader in sustainability. The petro states, rich because of oil wealth, ensure that the world depends on oil, thus prolonging their hydrocarbon wealth.
Consider this self-defeating contradiction: UAE is restoring coastal mangroves, which it calls an effort to remove carbon from the atmosphere, improve biodiversity, and protect its coastline against rising seas. However, the country is building artificial islands and coastal villas as it destroys the marine ecosystem. Another clash of interests: Much of the population in UAE lives thanks to air conditioning and desalinating water using fossil fuels.
Another paradox is that UAE’s top oil executive Sultan Al Jaber was president of the climate summit. During discussions to phase out fossil fuels by the end of the COP meeting on Dec. 12, he claimed that such a phase-out is impossible unless the world goes back into caves. Abu Dhabi National Oil Company is investing $150 billion to increase its oil production capacity and is securing vast swaths of Africa to pursue various carbon offsetting projects.
Not far behind is Saudi Arabia, which is constructing a futuristic urban area, Neom, underwritten by $500 billion in oil wealth. The U.S. is not far behind; it is pumping more oil than Saudi Arabia.
President Joe Biden, who promised no new drilling in 2020, has approved so much new drilling that some experts warn it will cancel out the emissions reductions we have made into clean infrastructure investment.
I am not optimistic about our future. There is much talk about Open AI, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and their innovative ideas; however, experts in all fields of knowledge are worried about a perfect storm coming in the next few decades. It is like an iceberg in front of the Titanic: We have no way to steer our ship to safety, nor enough life jackets onboard to survive this tragedy.
Global warming is close to reaching the point of no return. Most continental and marine ecosystems are collapsing, and the most significant material resources (fresh water, oil, coal metals, fisheries, and biomass) have peaked and are dropping. We are depleting all kinds of resources.
And our global population grows at a rate of one million people every four to five days. Two more decades of this trend will be enough to force the starvation of billions, and the consequences will be massive migration and complex international conflicts. The magnitude and range of these dramatic consequences are unimaginable.
I have read optimistic scenarios that human evolution will continue to be shaped by the accelerated transmission of cultural information via electronic and other remote means. The extrasomatic forms of knowledge storage we now use (computers, cell phones) will be replaced by implanted devices operating in genetically modified human bodies. Information will be increasingly shared involuntarily, enhancing abilities to think and act collectively for good or ill. In 100 years, most humans will be cyborgs.
However, I believe normal humans will be extinct within a short time as a result of direct or indirect effects of climate change or the impulsive acts of malevolent despots, rather than evolving or transplanting ourselves to another planet.
Things can turn around if the U.S. can work with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to make joint investments in decarbonizing heavy industry and air travel. We need to scale up sustainable tech for desalination and air conditioning and invest in green energy and disaster resilience for poor nations. Currently, these measures are unlikely to happen, given our disagreement on everything that matters.
Do you think our species will be here in the next couple of decades? Considering the demographic issues of our planet and our arrogance, it is time to give up our place to another taxon or species. We are soon going to be extinct.