My decision to reprint and publish this text is not to scare you or to seek popularity by charting an apocalyptic future for humanity. My aim has always been to seek a realistic view of what is happening. That way we could use the power of knowledge to change for the better. So this short excerpt from Yuval Noah Harari’s book, “SAPIENS.
The Industrial Revolution opened up new possibilities for energy transformation and commodity production, largely freeing humanity from dependence on the surrounding ecosystem. Humans are cutting down forests, draining swamps, building dams, flooding plains, laying tens of thousands of kilometres of railways and building cities with skyscrapers towering into the sky. As the system adapts to the needs of Homo sapiens, habitats are destroyed and the species that inhabit them die. Our once green and blue planet is gradually becoming a concrete and plastic shopping mall.
Today the earth is home to over 7 billion people. If you put all these people together and put them on a giant scale, their total mass would be around 300 million tonnes. If you then add up all the domestic animals – cows, pigs, sheep and chickens – and put them on an even more enormous scale, you get about 700 million tons. On the other hand, the total mass of surviving large wild animals, from guinea pigs and penguins to elephants and whales, would be less than 100 million tonnes. Children’s books, pictures and television screens still contain plenty of giraffes, wolves and chimpanzees, but in the real world very few of them have survived. There are 80,000 giraffes in a world of 1.5 head of cattle; only 200,000 gray wolves in 400 million domestic dogs; only 250,000 chimpanzees in several billion people. Humanity has truly taken over the world.
Environmental degradation does not necessarily mean resource depletion. On the contrary, the resources available to humanity are increasing and this is likely to continue in the future. The dire predictions of resource depletion are perhaps unfounded. On the other hand, the fear of environmental destruction has ample justification. In the future, we may harness innumerable materials and energy sources while destroying the last remaining natural habitats, pushing most surviving species towards extinction.
Ecological disruption could threaten the survival of Homo sapiens itself. Global warming, rising ocean levels and pollution could make the Earth less hospitable for our species. The future could become a race between the increasing power of humans and the natural havoc they are causing. By using this power to harness forces and subjugate the entire ecosystem to our needs and whims, we may cause increasingly unexpected and dangerous side effects. Taming them will likely require ever more drastic manipulations of the ecosystem, leading to even greater chaos.
Many describe this process as the ‘destruction of nature’. However, this is not destruction, but rather change. Nature cannot be destroyed. 65 million years ago an asteroid caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, but in doing so cleared the stage for mammals. Today mankind is causing the extinction of many species and may even destroy itself. However, other organisms are doing too well under these conditions. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are experiencing a heyday. These sinewy creatures are likely to crawl out of the smoking wreckage of nuclear Armageddon, ready to multiply their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back with gratitude, into the past, at the death of humanity just as we thank the asteroid that swept away the dinosaurs today.
However, rumors of our extinction are unfounded. Since the Industrial Revolution, the population has grown as never before. In 1700 the world was home to around 700 million people, in 1800 we were 950 million. In 1900, we had nearly doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. In 2000, we had quadrupled to 6 billion. Today we are over 7 billion.
