Is Humanity on the Path to Extinction?

I write about the future?here.

It's hard to be a serious amateur futurist without talking about the end-game of humanity. People dismiss the threat of extinction as a serious topic. Yet with the fundamentals of capitalism breaking down in wealth inequality, there are multiple areas of concern growing. The pandemic forced millions into poverty while the wealth of billionaires soared, new study says.

Global billionaires last year enjoyed the steepest increase in their share of wealth since the World Inequality Lab began keeping records in 1995, according to the research group's analysis released Tuesday. Their net worth grew by more than $3.6 trillion in 2020 alone, boosting their share of global household wealth to 3.5%.

In the 21st century human beings face a reckoning of their dominance on the planet. While history shows we are responsible for an?incredible loss of biodiversity?on the planet (which has been very hospitable to us), we may be creating events that sow our own demise.

The size of China’s population already peaked this year, which is much earlier than expected, according to Trip.com Group executive chairman James Liang. Even Elon Musk (is ranting again) says?‘civilization is going to crumble’?if people don’t have more children.

Humans Are Unleashing the 6th Mass Extinction Fueled by the Financial Elite

So what’s going on here? Humans are bringing about a 6th Mass Extinction and if we don’t become a multi-planetary species in the next two hundred years, we’re likely done for. Wealth inequality and the?deterioration of the oceans?might lead to our cities becoming unlivable in the near future.

As people we are by default both historians and futurists and as an individual can predict its own death, so can a civilization. The alarm bells are starting to go off. It’s impact the mental health of young people and the positivity of young would-be mothers to even start a new family.

The Monetization of the End of Times

Have you noticed a lot of Netflix content now focuses on dystopia, doomsday and human extinction? We are even monetizing the pressure young people feel to face a future that might not even be worth saving.

Earth’s skin already bears the scars of the climate crisis. Fires ravage forests, hurricanes swamp coastlines, floods drown city blocks and entire species disappear. Add in pandemics, geopolitical tensions and mounting economic inequality and our ability to end ourselves is growing rapidly.

Increasing data is showing human fertility and a ‘great decline’ is coming with or without environmental doomsday cascades that we know is coming. In fact, by the end of this century, the global population could start its inevitable decline, paleontologist and?Nature?editor Henry Gee argued in a new?opinion piece for?Scientific American?— and he’s not shy about using the word “extinction.”

Elon Musk believes that low and rapidly declining birth rates are “one of the biggest risks to civilization.” Yet for our generation, many of us can’t afford to have children. This is a growing concern not just in China, but all over the world. Humans are?likely Doomed to go Extinct (Scientific America).

The New Normal: Inflation and Fertility Declines

So how will we decline? The general consensus for world population is that it’ll top out sometime midcentury and start to fall sharply. As soon as 2100, the global population size could be less than it is now. All the potential threats combined are more likely to manifest in unusual paradigm changing events. Omicron mutating into a more deadly version of itself is such an event. It’s just a numbers game, and the doomsday clock is getting more potential variables with each decade, so the prognosis is grim.

As sad as household debt to GDP is,?extinction debt?is creeping up on us. We are no longer a young and vigorous global society, we are fragmented and mistrustful now of the world order and the old monetary kingdoms. Capitalism, democracy, housing affordability, career progression — nothing is working like it once did for people.

The Global Risk of Infertility

Wealth inequality hastens population decline in a way that deflation and inflation both are full of surprises in the global economy and in specific countries. People are now becoming worried about underpopulation. To survive, humanity needs to prioritize, ration and plan for the long-term future and not simply glorify the present in profit-centric consumerism. If we keep on that way, we will surely collapse society.

Humanity might “already be a dead species walking” due to how we have homogenized and destroyed planetary biodiversity, it certainly isn’t natural.

Our extinction debt might catch up with us in a karma of the natural order, it’s possible we even deserve to go extinct on some deep fundamental moral level of natural balance. This is even what a lot of young people today truly believe, in stark contrast to the optimism of previous generations.

Mammal species tend to come and go rather rapidly, appearing, flourishing and disappearing in a million years or so. What will make us so different? We aren’t particularly intelligent in our long-term planning to flourish throughout the galaxy?

As a species we mostly crave convenience, comfort, influence, mates and an easy life centered on our immediate family, tribe and personal identity. Those aren’t instincts well adapted to the challenges human beings face today.

Humans have shaped the world at the expense of many species and we just don’t take our role in the galaxy or even in our own survival very seriously. In ecology,?extinction debt?is the future extinction of species due to events in the past.

Humans appear to lack a collective moral conscience in proportion to the damage we have caused. The internet and living on social media has also not made us more empathetic, but less so. This impact of technology on human morality has not been positive. It’s perhaps this mental health impact that will also impact the fertility rates of GenZ and the Alpha cohorts in Western societies in ways we did not anticipate.

Everything is Temporary

The architecture, sociology and psychology of our extinction appears to have been set up.?Homo sapiens?has been around for 315,000 years or so, but for most of that time, the species was rare — so rare, in fact, that it?came close to extinction, perhaps more than once. In our population explosion and brief period of prosperity, what did we really accomplish? Certainly not anything permanent or even a good path forwards for our viability.

Humans live in a?death pool of homogenization. Think about it, as a species,?H. sapiens?is extraordinarily samey. There is more?genetic variation?in a few troupes of wild chimpanzees than in the entire human population. Lack of genetic variation is never good for species survival. Even the?plants we hang out?with are samey.

This lack of diversity, vitality and our lack of adaptability surely means to survive even a few more centuries will be difficult, maybe even improbable. It’s not only the individual that must YOLO, it’s an entire species that rises to dominance on a planet. Most, never make it off their home Star.

Stress, pollution, micro-plastics — human fertility is also in a biological decline. Wealth inequality, environmental-climate press and geopolitics complicates how we face the struggles of the species together. Our systems are old and fragmented and no longer work. Feudal lords (think authoritarian dictatorships) and corrupt politics (think the failure of democracy or the European Union) points to a breakdown in human leadership.

Global Consumerism Fosters Extinction Debt

Human beings also exploit nature to gain economic surplus. But this expectation of surplus is not realistic. Economic growth is an artificial human standard. Another reason for the downturn in population growth is economic.

The financial elite, corporate leaders, shareholders, the stock market and politicians strive for relentless economic growth, but this is not sustainable in a world where resources are finite.?H. sapiens?already?sequesters?between 25 and 40 percent of net primary productivity — that is, the organic matter that plants create out of air, water and sunshine.

Our behavior around consumerism and GDP isn’t sustainable given the other challenges we will face in the 21st century. This suggests our global population levels won’t be sustained. Delta and Omicron are just a reminder that we are not immortal. People nowadays have to work harder and longer to maintain the standards of living enjoyed by their parents, if such standards are even obtainable. Young people will rebel, eventually.?Extinction debt is already becoming a fertility dilemma.

We will be following this story as it unfolds. Economic productivity has likely stalled or even declined globally in the past 20 years. That interestingly coincides with the Internet and the rise of Billionaires.

The financial elite aren’t going anywhere though, their ranks will increase and it could lead to economic collapse. This is what I call?wealth inequality debt. As extinction debt and wealth inequality debt build up momentum, humanity becomes trapped in a downward spiral like we will see with the permafrost and ocean degradation.

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