Trump, Nukes, AI And Civilizational Suicide
For the brief time human beings have roamed the earth–less than five seconds if earth's history were a 24-hour clock–we've shown nearly equal aptitude and enthusiasm for reproducing and for suicide. Aptitude for reproduction is nothing special.
As Cole Porter put it, birds, bees and even fleas do it. But you have to be human to know suicide, by which I mean the act of engaging in knowing self-destruction, as most wars of recorded and (easy to guess) unrecorded history of the last 100,000 years have been.
Those mass suicides have ended tribes, empires and civilizations, but so far not humanity itself. It is only since 1945 that we've acquired that skill. A global nuclear war today would end life on the planet, which would become“a republic of insects and grass,” as Jonathan Schell, the Cole Porter of nukes, put it in“The Fate of the Earth” (1982).
Nuclear war was the top public concern of 1985, even ahead of unemployment, which averaged above 6% all year. We worried, we debated, and to Gorbachev's and Reagan's credit, in that order, we got a start on arms control deals that improved with time, at least until Obama, Trump and Putin decided to bring us back near the brink, where we are now: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' famous Doomsday Clock is at 85 seconds to midnight,“the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history.”
Almost half of Americans think a nuclear war is likely in the coming decade, though they don't seem to be too concerned about it, as if it were something they might still get to watch on TV: This year's list of top concerns doesn't even include nukes.
Since the 19th century we'd been developing a new method of global suicide, only we didn't know it until June 23, 1988, when NASA's James Hansen testified to Congress that“the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” The implication was that global warming was a threat, but not yet a life-ending threat.
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the
information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any
responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos,
licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information
contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues
related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.
Comments
No comment