When Did You Realize: We’re Screwed

The data is pretty clear. Human life on this planet, as we know it, is on its descent. Ten thousand years after we harnessed the extractive possibilities of agriculture, we are racing through the planet’s resources — and heating it up in the process — at such a rate that we probably don’t have ten thousand more years to go. Maybe not even a thousand. Doomsayers barely give us another century.

Human life is likely to persist on earth in some manner, either through greatly altered lifestyle, reduced numbers, or some sonic-paced evolution that transforms us into creatures whose mental capabilities expand without our physical bodies being such gluttons of Mother Earth’s bounty. Any way we slice it, life as we know it is unsustainable.

Still, all that data hasn’t moved human behavior in any significant way. More than sixty years after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring sounded the wakeup call, we haven’t curbed our impact on the planet in any meaningful way, unless you consider flying so-called leaders to world-wide conferences to establish target reductions that are never achieved as an actionable step.

Data is not going to change our behavior because human beings — so ingenious in facing immediate, individual threats — are terrible at addressing slow-moving, collective problems. Lowering my thermostat, boycotting plastic containers, riding…