Humans are so impressively brilliant that we haven't even learned not to shit where we eat. What an impressive species! How noble in action!
Well, to be fair, it's not all bad.
Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.
“We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. “If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done.”
“This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is,” he said. “This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is our life-support system.”So, the battle is between wanting for ourselves and, uh, like, the reach of our collective unselfishness. Take a wild guess which will win out. And as the resources run out, and people move in their tens of millions, take a wild fucking guess how sharing and welcoming people, in the main, will be. "People"--and "nation-states" alike.
Well, to be fair, it's not all bad.