It is hard to stay deaf to the religious overtones of the current talk on climate change and biodiversity loss. The environmentalist talks about an imminent ecological disaster that will engulf the planet in an everlasting darkness. No doubt these overtones are unavoidable when one talks about the end of life on Earth.
It talks about “substantial species extinctions”, of “large risks to global and regional food security”, of “consequential constraints on common human activities”, and of the “increasing likelihood of triggering tipping points”.is also astonishing. It found that the rate of species extinction has been higher than the rate of speciation since the 1950s and that this too is a result of human activities.
They believe that the population extinction of vertebrates will have cascading effects on ecosystems. The “biosphere is undergoing mass species extinction”. This is causing “a vast reduction of the fauna and flora of the planet”. It will also have “serious ecological, economic and social consequences”. They conclude that humanity “will eventually pay a very high price for the decimation of the only assemblage of life that we know of in the universe”.
The ordinary course of experience and knowledge is based on the conviction that the future resembles the past. We believe that what we’ve not yet experienced will resemble what we have. But the end of life refers to a future that is unlike anything we’ve experienced before. It is without precedent. This puts it beyond the scope of experience and knowledge. Even if it happens, we won’t be around to see it, at any rate if it is truly the end of all life.
This perspective also demonstrates that a disaster is a planetary crisis. It represents an existential threat to the globe. The prototype of a disaster is that of a planetary catastrophe. Global warming and biodiversity loss are disasters. So are the nuclear incidents at Fukushima and Chernobyl. September 11 also perhaps falls under this category, the destruction of the Twin Towers as symbols of global financial capital, the heart of the world economy.
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