Many of us have been writing about the possibility of the current state of the earth and the progression of man made assaults on it leading to eventual human extinction. Not surprisingly such speculation is met with a great deal of skepticism as it should. On the other hand much of that skepticism is not very well based. Too many who dismiss our projections do so in the spirit of denial rather than because they have followed the argument and are playing the odds. It is one thing to blindly assert that it can't happen and another to recognize the danger and bet against it because you think there is still time to ward it off, which there may well be even if that time is running out.
The issue is important whether or not you have or plan to have children. The reason for this may surprise you but some of the processes that may do in the species are already at work in our bodies and the bodies of your children.
How would such an extinction happen? The combination of factors that would bring it about are all in play now. Read on below and we will examine some of them.
I am just going to mention the more obvious issues that Global Warming is putting into play. Clearly if it gets too hot nothing will survive. If the ocean gets too acid the food it produces will diminish significantly. There are obvious corollary events taking place in the global ecosystem.
Along with those effects are the many ways in which agriculture is contributing to the depletion of the soil and the poisoning of it as well. Sustainable agriculture is being developed but it can not undo the damage in any short time.
The fossil fuel addiction and the capitalist greed driving it are being attacked more and more yet they go on doing serious damage and seem to have no sign of stopping any time soon.
Theirs is one major contribution to the diminishing supply of drinkable water. There are many others.
Let's get to some other factors that I see mentioned less frequently. They are all related to things mentioned above and have other sources as well.
Naomi Klein has a chapter in her book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, devoted to the issue of the way what we are doing is reducing our capacity to reproduce. From the perspective of much needed population control this may be a good idea, but if it has lasting effects it can be a major factor in our species becoming extinct. Here's what Indre Viskontas says about Klein's writings in an article in Mother Jones:
While worries about cancers and other illnesses in Mossville have been covered fairly extensively in the media, the issue of fertility problems is less well known. "When I spoke to women who had lived in Mossville, what I heard about was just an epidemic of infertility and that just so many women had hysterectomies," Klein says. These stories are anecdotal, but Klein hopes more research will be done. "This is often just an understudied part of science," she says.
Klein also points to emerging research that links the fracking boom with various reproductive problems. In a Bloomberg View column earlier this year, Mark Whitehouse reported on data presented at the annual American Economic Association meeting from a yet-to-be published study of Pennsylvania birth records that apparently found a correlation between proximity to shale gas sites and low birth weight in babies. Babies born within a 2.5-kilometer radius of gas drilling sites were almost twice as likely to have a low birth weight (increasing from 5.6 percent to 9 percent of births) or a low APGAR score, the first evaluation of a baby's health after birth. And a study published this year examining birth outcomes and proximity to natural gas development reported that mothers who lived within 10 miles of the highest number of fracking sites (125 wells within a 10-mile radius) were 30 percent more likely to have babies with congenital heart defects and twice as likely to have babies with neurological problems compared to mothers whose homes were at least 10 miles away from any fracking site.
Besides this clear end to the ability to reproduce there are a host of things happening as people reproduce. I'll just mention a few. First of all we know that Air Pollution Can Affect Fetal Development
Exposure to urban air pollution can affect the chromosomes of a developing fetus, a new study suggests. Babies born to mothers exposed to high levels of urban air pollution appear to have a greater chance of chromosomal abnormalities than those whose mothers breathed cleaner air.
This is but one of many examples of how what we are putting into our environment is able to affect developing babies. This list is long. I recommend a book by my friend and colleague, Dan Agin for a broader treatment of this issue:
More Than Genes: What Science Can Tell Us About Toxic Chemicals, Development, and the Risk to Our Children
We are all shaped by our genetic inheritance and by the environment we live in. Indeed, the argument about which of these two forces, nature or nurture, predominates has been raging for decades. But what about our very first environment--the prenatal world where we exist for nine months between conception and birth and where we are more vulnerable than at any other point in our lives?
In More Than Genes, Dan Agin marshals new scientific evidence to argue that the fetal environment can be just as crucial as genetic hard-wiring or even later environment in determining our intelligence and behavior. Stress during pregnancy, for example, puts women at far greater risk of bearing children prone to anxiety disorders. Nutritional deprivation during early fetal development may elevate the risk of late onset schizophrenia. And exposure to a whole host of environmental toxins--methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, pesticides, ionizing radiation, and most especially lead--as well as maternal use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or cocaine can have impacts ranging from mild cognitive impairment to ADHD, autism, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders. Agin argues as well that differences in IQ among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups are far more attributable to higher levels of stress and chemical toxicity in inner cities--which seep into the prenatal environment and compromise the health of the fetus--than to genetic inheritance. The good news is that the prenatal environment is malleable, and Agin suggests that if we can abandon the naive idea of "immaculate gestation," we can begin to protect fetal development properly.
Cogently argued, thoroughly researched, and accessibly written, More Than Genes challenges many long-held assumptions and represents a huge step forward in our understanding of the origins of human intelligence and behavior.
Dan is very conservative about the possible scope of these effects. The scientific community has a lot of work to do before we even get a glimpse of what this means.
Finally, lists are deceptive because the items on them can easily be seen as independent issues. The obvious thing that that kind of thinking misses is interactions and especially those that amplify bad effects.
The rich and powerful may believe that these issues are going to be restricted to the poor who are easily exploited. That is silly. The effects are global and will in one way or another affect everyone.
There is no time frame here because we are anticipating events based on incomplete knowledge and uncertain estimates of future human behavior. However if we take our present sociopolitical awareness and the present level of generation of harmful substances, we can not be very optimistic.