Alternative Futures
Finding one that is possible
The great anxiety gripping the planet is a polycrisis of many evolving disasters. The most fundamental issue is climate disaster, which will remove a significant portion of the planet’s life forms over the next few decades.
While there are many things to worry about, the net result will be a planetary-level triage triggered by atmospheric temperature change. We are several decades into the sixth great extinction.
Reference: The Next Great Extinction Event (Spark).
The significant triage in life forms includes Homo sapiens. Current estimates indicate that the human population needs to be reduced to approximately four billion for sustainability. Our planet last had a sustainable population in 1970 at 3.9 billion people.
Most people deny or refuse to think about this great extinction event. Such a thing could not possibly happen. That does not change reality.
Geologic changes have produced significant changes in our planet’s history. Except for the impact of the asteroid at the end of the Cretaceous, which killed most dinosaurs except those that became birds, these changes took several thousand years.
The sixth great extinction is happening with blinding speed, and it is the only one caused by one species, Homo sapiens. Many animal…
