Sucks To Be You

The great Randy Watson, and that crackhead Whitney Houston, once vocalized the idea that children are our future in “The Greatest Love of All.”  While this pretty much goes without saying due to the linear existence in which we live, the sentiment of course is that we should “teach them well, and let them the lead the way.”  Well, since the best way to teach is usually leading by example, I’d say we’ve pretty much screwed the future’s proverbial pooch.  If you turn on the news or follow current events, it’s easy to see the rotting fruits of our labor on Earth thus far: widespread famine, disease, apathy, economic meltdowns, wars, oil spills, reality television, racism, religious fanaticism (also known as terrorism) and many, many others.  So, the question becomes, “How will the children choose to lead the way going forward, given the awful paradigm that has been passed down to them?”  The answer is debatable, but if super genius Stephen Hawking’s views on Earth’s impending fate are correct, it looks like the future is as bright as a goth kid’s wardrobe.  The following excerpts are from an article featured on Big Think, and is one part in their “Month of Thinking Dangerously” series:

Earth’s population is expanding at an exponential rate, and the the natural resources vital to our survival are running out faster than we can replace them with sustainable alternatives.  Even if the human race manages not to push itself to the brink of nuclear extinction, it is still a foregone conclusion that our aging sun will expand and swallow the Earth in roughly 7.6 billion years.

So, according to famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, it’s time to free ourselves from Mother Earth.  “I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space,” Hawking tells Big Think. “It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million.

Hawking says he is an optimist, but his outlook for the future of man’s existence is fairly bleak…According to the Federation of American Scientists there are still about 22,600 stockpiled nuclear weapons scattered around the planet, 7,770 of which are still operational…Even if humans manage to avoid a nuclear stand-off over the next thousand years, our fate on this planet is still pretty much certain.  University of Sussex astrophysicist Dr. Robert Smith says eventually the aging Sun will accelerate global warming to a point where all of Earth’s water will simply evaporate.

Despite what Hawking describes as humankind’s “selfish and aggressive instinct,” there may be some biological impediments to finding another planet to inhabit…”The nearest star [to Earth] is Proxima Centauri which is 4.2 light years away,” says University of Michigan astrophysicist Katherine Freese, “That means that, if you were traveling at the speed of light the whole time, it would take 4.2 years to get there.”  Unfortunately, at the moment we can only travel at about ten thousandth of light speed, which means if man were to use chemical fuel rockets similar to the those used during the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey would take about 50,000 years. (Full Story)

If there was one piece of advice I could impart to the future generations who will inevitably have to face these daunting challenges, it would be a paraphrased quote from yet another famous musician: “Get (your) kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames!” – Jim Morrison