I once heard author Jared Diamond speak about his book “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” As he was addressing Easter Island, a once forested isle that was eventually denuded by its inhabitants (leading to their demise), Diamond wondered aloud about the last tree. What must the guy who cut it down have been thinking?
Now, as the global human population exceeds seven billion, and we watch real and potential cataclysm unfold around us—civil war, collapse of ocean and tropical ecosystems, global warming, storms and floods, the emergence of new pathogens, nuclear holocaust—I can’t help but ponder the eventual extinction of our species. And I can’t help but wonder what it will be like for the last man or woman left standing….
I suspect that the last humans, fully cognizant of the role mankind will have had in its own demise and plagued by variegated sufferings we can scarcely imagine (I envision oceans transformed into vast pools of human feces and urine), will resign themselves to the inevitable and long for death as a release from their misery, this amid the suffocating stench of human waste mixing with the odor of universal decomposition from dead plants and animals.
I really do believe in a moral obligation to be polite, friendly and cheerful to the individuals I encounter in daily life, and I almost invariably act in accordance with that belief; I also believe in cultivating compassion for the immense pain swirling all around. But when I consider not individuals but the species Homo Sapiens, the great unwashed masses of human primates, frenetically fucking and spewing out babies and consuming mountains of pre-turds (food and drink) and spewing out the filthy residue, I am filled with disgust and loathing beyond measure. Why is no one TALKING about this? Because to do so would involve acknowledging our irreducible animal nature, and that is a truth too unsavory to admit to. People would rather die than admit it and that is exactly what will happen.
A bit misanthropic, are we? :-). While we are already “soiling our nest,” so to speak, I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point you describe. Something more like a war, biowarfare, or a pathogen, or maybe a breakdown of infrastructure will bring numbers down significantly. And, short of another meteor or nuclear winter, I see a lingering end, not a cataclysmic one. But however or whatever or whenever, I don’t cast blame on either individuals nor the race. I see our species as a tragic figure, a victim of our own biology and psychology. I doubt we could save ourselves even if the entire seven billion of us suddenly awoke to the need.