A small dot in evolution

If we see the human species in a timeline of evolution, it’s pretty clear that 150 years are nothing, they’re a very small dot that shouldn’t stand out from the line of evolution. However, what we achieved with our way of inventing things and creating a economy system of growth in the past decades can only be described as a clearly visible dot creating not a line but a peak.

How can we justify that we should be able to fly because the previous one or two generations could, too? Hundreds of generations before us couldn’t and probably we’re one of the last ones. Technology won’t save us. We can.

How can we justify to live on our children’s shoulders by exploiting their livelihood? To me, our current model of economy doesn’t make much sense anymore since I know this context of climate change, our impact, counting in human generations instead of years or decades.

My parents stood up to fight against climate change already in 1970s. By now that’s 50 years old, and nothing changed for the better, instead it’s worse today. Many of us don’t even try to reach a 0deg C goal anymore, we aim for the 1.5deg or 2 deg while we have no clue whether humans can survive these goals. We probably still will, but what about our children or theirs?

There’s a very good German book by Martin Grassberger (let me know of similar English ones) on the topic of our evolution, our existance, our health, and what we’d need to do to keep living as a human species if we don’t want to go extinct as dinosaurs did in the past.

We’re the only ones who can change something. Our economy won’t, companies certainly won’t and politics won’t as well. Don’t be apolitical but your own acting is much more important than relying on others.

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