We
are solely responsible for the existence of that problem:
nuclear
war
Some
calculations have been done at the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in which a five-thousand-megaton war occurs in July ... the
prompt effects might kill almost half the people on the planet ...
those conditions kill not just people and agricultural plants and
domesticated animals but the natural ecosystem as well ... the
effects are global, they last for months, possibly years ... many
biologists believe that massive extinctions are likely of plants, of
animals, of microorganisms, the possibility of a wholesale
restructuring of the kind of life we have on Earth. A number of
scientists have said that under those circumstances they cannot
exclude the extinction of the human species.
Now,
extinction seems to me serious. Hard to think of something more
serious, more worthy of our attention, more crying out to be
prevented. Extinction is forever. Extinction undoes the human
enterprise. Extinction makes pointless the activities of all of our
ancestors back those hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
Because surely if they struggled for anything, it was for the
continuance of our species. And yet the paleontological record is
absolutely clear. Most species become extinct. There's nothing that
guarantees it won't happen to us. In the ordinary course of events,
it might happen to us. Just wait long enough. A million years is
quite young for a species. But we are a peculiar species. We have
invented the means of our self-destruction. And it can be argued
that we show only modest disinclination to use it.
Carl
Sagan: The varieties of scientific experience, A personal view of
the search for God, The Penguin Press, New York, 2006.
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