Yes, We Are Living on the Brink of Mass Extinction
We stumble from crisis to crisis hoping to fall upon some good days by chance. However, the days of revival and prosperity won’t come unless we reconsider what we have been doing till now.
There is hardly any news or writing platform that doesn’t remind us we are living on the brink of mass extinction.
The world is wrought with myriads of crises. Hunger, poverty, terrorism, ethnic clashes, dark nationalism, jingoism, nuclear threats, epidemics, pandemics, floods, earth quacks, global warming, and many more destructive and damaging things we often forget to name or see in a sea of troubles, hastening towards an age of mass extinction.
This hardly ends here. YES…we aren’t only facing external problems alone. The world has fallen into a deep abyss of depression, anxieties, and stress.
We are the first and the last generation to bear the brunt of our actions to hasten the process of modernity and as a result, are living in a hell of frustration that has robbed our peace of mind and beauty of life.
This hastened pace toward modernity and outdoing each other in sophisticated technologies had blinded us to the grim realities of rising global temperatures, only to wake up in a burning hell.
The world temperature is on the constant rise and Europe is burning for the first time in history. During this summer, the temperature in Europe hit 45 degrees Celsius, while London is already facing a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius and above.
This temperature rise has forced people and animals to flee to colder places where they can avoid getting exposed to such heat. A flurry of heatwaves is running wild over the European continent that has raised many eyebrows to worry about their future.
The brave new world is now a coward new world where people are dying and fleeing and the governments are unable to do anything.
America has also seen the rings of fires where the rise in the temperature is banging the drums of dooms. According to studies, America is running out of water. Shasta Lake and Lake Mead are speeding running dry and may reach an alarming point in 2025 — only two and a half years late. The lacks are the lifeline for California’s agriculture and give breath to Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Then there is Asia, particularly the sub-continent, facing the worst scenarios due to global warming. The subcontinent is facing the worst flash floods this year due to monsoon rain and the changing patterns in the seasons.
Have we forgotten the pandemics? The world is facing new waves of Covid and more than that, Monkeypox and the rise of Marburg Virus in Ghana. According to recent reports, the virus has taken two lives in Ghana.
The unprecedented rise in inflation is a bad omen and points toward the age of extinction. The purchasing power of people has dropped to an alarming level. This trend has affected countries across the globe and recently, Sri Lanka went bankrupt due to the lack of money to buy fuel. Other countries, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and developing countries on the American continent are facing existential problems.
History is full of instances where such trends have destroyed civilization. Mighty civilizations have been wiped out of the face of the earth and we are facing the same threat as a whole. In the past, various civilizations flourished and perished quite separately and distinctly. The rise and fall of one civilization didn’t affect the other at all or too little. But now, we have one modern civilization and we are all seeing it going down day by day to the utter collapse.
To build our civilization, we have sacrificed nature. This trend cost us the extinction of precious animals and plants necessary for a balanced life cycle. According to studies, the last extinction (Cretaceous-Paleogene) happened 66 million years ago that wiped out 76 percent of all the species on the earth.
Today, we are approaching another extinction hundreds of times faster than expected naturally. The coming extinction is about to come in 240 to 540 years for now and it will be a mass extinction, where everything will be wiped out of the earth and nothing will remain.
And we are to be held responsible for the hastened mass extinction because our out-of-mind activities have already forced millions of people to drink dirty water, breathe in polluted air, face depleting energy sources, and face starvation due to a lack of availability of food.
People are fighting for water. In some parts of the globe, people hardly get drinking water. The countries are also in a tough competition to reach warm waters for trade purposes escalates the problems more.
Glaciers are melting around the globe. Countries are running out of glacial water supply day by day. China is preserving its glaciers for the future with advanced technologies because studies have shown that glaciers on the poles are melting at a horrifying speed that can cause huge floods.
We can collectively avoid the final destruction that will wipe us all out from the face of the earth soon. We can do it. YES, if we collaborate our efforts in securing the current energy sources and avoid playing dumb to the question of mass extinction.
We need to leave behind the fascist agenda and work for the betterment of the whole world. Working for small national interests will only bring more destruction to us all. No one will be spared from the wrath of global warming.
WE can do it by adopting sustainable living habits, refraining from depleting our energy sources on useless competition, and working for the betterment of humanity and not just for our nations.
And we don’t need to make big organizations or debating forums where only debates are carried out and nothing beneficial comes out of it. WE need to act now instead of waiting for the right time to act. NOW is the right time.
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