In June 2010, and a few months before his death, the prestigious Australian scientist Frank Fenner stated in an interview with a media outlet in his country that the human race would be extinct in just one hundred years. The expert claimed that overpopulation, uncontrolled consumption of goods and rapid climate change would be the main reasons that would lead man to self-destruction.
According to the microbiologist, ” we will suffer the same fate as the people of Easter Island, and that taking into account that climate change is just beginning, ” said the academic. The fate suffered by the inhabitants of Easter Island, who disappeared without a trace, remains a mystery, but for many years the theory of ecocide has been considered, according to which the Rapanui would have used up resources so quickly that they would not have had time to recover, causing famines and even wars. Although it is currently not entirely clear that this would have been the reason for his disappearance, the example of Easter Island is still used to get an idea that the planet’s resources are limited and we cannot consume them and generate waste at this rate without that, in some way or another, the excess takes its toll on us.
“The industrial revolution has given rise to an era that is causing an effect on the planet that rivals any ice age or comet impact that has been experienced before on Earth,” said the scientist, famous for being one of protagonists in the eradication of smallpox at the end of the last century.
In his shocking statements, Fenner stated that he was not interested in changing the model of human development that “follows the path of its own biological end despite multiple warnings.” As he said, “it is an irreversible situation and it is too late to remedy it .”
The end of the human species?
No one knows for sure if humanity is hopelessly nearing its end. Although some scientists share the pessimism that Fenner expressed in his later years, others consider that the human species is not going to become extinct in the short term, although it seems that our living conditions are going to get worse , and much worse, if forceful measures are not taken to curbing urgent threats such as climate change, whose effects are increasingly evident.
Other analysts, in turn, are even more pessimistic than the late microbiologist. In June 2019, a specialized center also located in Australia published a terrifying report that affirmed the existence of a “high probability that human civilization will come to an end” in 2050 if mitigation measures are not taken in the next decade. The authors of the work, the climate crisis is bigger and more complex than any other threat that the human being has seen before.
On the other hand, at the beginning of 2020, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published an update on its famous Apocalypse Clock, which came to say that, if the history of humanity lasted 24 hours, we would only have a hundred seconds of existence.
The truth is that, whether or not these apocalyptic predictions are true, the world must prioritize adaptation and mitigation policies in the face of climate change . Will we be up to the challenge?
