The Human Paradox

Humans are the greatest threat to life on earth, as well as its only hope for survival.

We are incredible and terrible creatures.

No other species on earth has established anywhere near the dominance we have. In the very brief time that we’ve been in the picture, geologically speaking, we have carved out a niche in every corner of the planet. The plants and animals bend to our whims. For being little more than what are essentially hairless apes, all fleshy and fragile and full of wonder, we have gained an impressive amount of power over the natural kingdoms, thanks to our efficiency with technology, communication, and generational knowledge. It doesn’t hurt that we have opposable thumbs, either.

And, as Uncle Ben wisely said: with great power, comes great responsibility.

Humans are uniquely situated to do something that no other creature on the planet could manage: to destroy the earth and everything that lives on it. This isn’t news — we’ve known we have this capacity since the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Arguably, we’ve known since the beginnings of the Manhattan Project, when the bomb was nothing more than an idea. But the important thing is that we know this capacity exists, and not to forget that.

There's no doubt many of us would prefer a time when nuclear war was not an option, but it is. We made that option possible. Now, it’s an option so large in scale that it has taken on a life of its own. One code read off, one flip of a switch, one push of a red button, and the chain reaction it would set off would surely mean the end of the human race. They’ve even developed a deeply unsettling video game simulating how this would happen. No matter who launches their missiles first, everyone loses, and I mean everyone. There are no winners in this game. There are only primary and secondary losers.

Aside from prospects of nuclear holocaust is the ever-looming, existential threat of climate change. No matter what some people may tell you, climate change as we’re experiencing it now is not equatable to the natural cooling and warming cycles of the planet. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are increasing in the atmosphere at rates not seen before in Earth’s history. These rates started increasing at the turn of the 19th century, when industry and mass production were becoming commonplace. With this brought the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. Since then, our planet has become dominated by the extraction of these resources. Oil quite literally drives the human race. Although we’ve developed cleaner and more efficient means of producing energy, these dirty resources continue to run the energy sector, especially in America and China — even as the burning of these resources continues to warm the planet and threaten the global ecosystem with our full knowledge and understanding.

Make no mistake: we brought this destruction, and capacity for destruction, upon ourselves. We brought the tide of climate change, and the risk it poses to life as we know it, upon ourselves. We brought this danger upon ourselves, and thus, we are the only ones capable of fixing it.

Which brings us back to the titular paradox:

Humans are the greatest threat to life on earth, as well as its only hope for survival.

Now obviously, humans are not inherently evil. We are capable of doing a lot of good for the planet and for ourselves. We’ve proven throughout history that we are capable, from the Native American's respect for nature to the creation of the United Nations, to even more recently, the second tide of the Civil Rights Movement. Despite the risk of climate change and the inaction of world powers to mitigate it, there is an ever-growing desire amongst the general populace to change pace, to undo what we have wrought and bring balance and security back to the world. Yet, through our actions, our arrogance, and our apathy, we seem to also be hellbent on destroying ourselves while taking life as we know it with us.

There will be those reading this piece who believe that the planet would most likely be better off without us. There are those who believe it would be a good thing for us to not be a part of the world we evolved on, to instead reach for the stars and try our luck elsewhere in the universe while the planet heals. Many are unsure if it’s even a good idea to bring more generations into the world, what with the state of (gesturing wildly) all of this.

Therein is precisely the paradox at play. For in our desperate thought experiments on how to better the planet, we are willing to entertain the thought of taking ourselves out of the equation entirely — all 7 billion of us and counting. This is a unique quality of humanity that we do not share with the rest of life: we are the only species whose members seem to be comfortable with the idea of total non-existence, against all of our better instincts.

Yet, there is still that inherent instinct to carry on, even after our existence has ceased. Such thoughts have been had throughout history. Most notably, this longing for eternity helped birth the majority of our world religions. Religion, particularly Christianity, is paradoxical in its own right, simultaneously hoping to better us and excuse us — or not — from consequence by right of our beliefs. But in doing so, there can be a sense among religious thinkers of apathy towards the thinkings of more earthly matters. Co-opt that line of thinking with politics, and it can create a dangerous sentiment that affects the general populace. It’s no secret that American Christian Conservatives have made scientific denial a part of their messaging, so much that they are willing to ignore the science of climate change in lieu of their own thinking: that this change is by design, that we are in the end times, and that we should accept the outcome because it is ordained by God.

All religions have a creation story. Likewise, all religions have an apocalypse story. Creation and destruction go hand in hand, even in science. There is no universe without a big bang. There is no Earth without the eruption of exotic material from the Sun, or the collision of the young planet with what would become the Moon. There would be no humans if our shrew-like ancestors were not able to evolve to become us, which would not have happened had the dinosaurs not gone extinct. All things have a beginning and an end, and oftentimes, the end is a new beginning.

So where does that leave us? If we are capable of extreme change in both directions, then we have a choice. We can work towards a world that leaves our descendants in peace and hopefully staves off the current mass extinction event, or we can let our apathy take charge of our actions and continue to drive the world we know and love into ruin. The choice is ours, is humanity’s, and humanity’s alone.