The Eight Greatest Threats to Human Survival

An Overview

The Conditions Necessary for Human Life

As much as we try to ignore it, we are, in fact, animals. As such we are dependent on the same set of conditions as all the other living things.

We must breath in air for the oxygen molecule required for ATP production in our cells. We must eat and drink water. We must reproduce sexually which requires a combining of ova and sperm, and a womb plus cervix to house and deliver the baby. We all die eventually and the matter contained in our bodies will rejoin the earth.

In order for these necessities to take place we need air with very specific concentrations of each gaseous component. We need arable land and fresh water.

Having access to these needed conditions depends on a web of other living things. For example, pollinators to fertilize our plant based food sources.

It also requires the smooth running of various natural processes and systems such as the hydrological cycle, the cycling of nutrients through the soil, and other primary ecological services.

Because we are weaker than some other animals and hairless, we also need clothing and shelter. We need to be in communities for safety and belonging. And to safely raise our young.

Because we are biological beings there are also things we can’t be exposed beyond a critical threshhold because certain compounds are poisonous to us. These compounds also poison many other species. We can see what is harmful by mere observation.

Each of these eight threats involves damage or alteration to the web of living things and/or the natural systems and processes upon which all life depends.

Ecocide

Ecocide is the killing of entire ecosystems and the destruction of the natural systems upon which all life depends.

This includes and comes above climate disruption in the order of things. And shares several common causes.

I often hear from people who think it is kind of cool that we are on the verge of extinction. “The earth will take care of itself” they say. “The rest of the planet is better off without us”.

Leaving aside the profound cynicism of those statements, they are not even true. The earth will certainly continue on— as a dead ball of rock.

The biosphere, on the other hand, will require humans to clean up the mess, as natural systems have been overwhelmed by the human activities that are choking it to death.

Climate Disruption 

A great deal has been said about climate disruption. If anyone wants to understand the science or the prognosis there are reams of reports.

We know it is coming much faster than the earlier predictions. We know about the mega wildfires, the floods, the tornadoes, the hurricanes that are so powerful they outstrip the Cat 5 designation.

We know about the extreme heat and the wet bulbs that will make swaths of once productive land uninhabitable.

And the failure of food crops, permanent droughts, and spread of invasive pests.

Maybe some of those reading this have lost a house or been injured by one or more of these catastrophes.

We also know that the world leaders have been addressing the entire mess. And coming up empty for year after year as species die out and climate refugees are on the move. Why?

In the movies, when faced with a global threat, all humankind bands together, and with the aid of governments they save the earth. But here we are, faced with the real threat and we refuse not only to act, but even to agree.

The answer is primarily found in fossil fuel addiction. Oil and guns are the two great movers of the economy of the oligarchs.

Burning things is driving the climate collapse. They want to keep burning things because it is hugely profitable and solidifies their power.

As natural and social systems deteriorate the madness of mass delusion becomes more marked. And the capitalists have used this to generate doubt in just enough of the population to prevent the only solution that will work: stop burning things.

There are some legitimate concerns about the transition completely off petroleum. The life provided by seemingly unlimited free energy is orders of magnitude more comfortable than any previously known in history.

The need to regulate the temperature in our homes is legitimate. As is the need for transportation and communication. But these things have sustainable solutions that will never be found until the desires of the few are cast aside for the needs of the many.

Lets stop asking if the leaders “believe” in climate disruption and instead ask if they understand it. Then make them prove it.

Unfortunately this requires two things we no longer have. An educated populace and a free and fair democratic system.

Nuclear War

The fact that human beings could think it is ok to have a weapon that can literally destroy life on earth is a form of insanity. We know ourselves. We are a species with delusions of conscious control, but in reality are run by our lizard brain. 

The fact that we are still here in light of this particular insanity is nothing short of a miracle. But how long before the streak breaks?

As the natural world begins to die at a faster pace and the climate starts to collapse, the geo-politics will become less and less stable.

A suit case bomb won’t wipe out the whole of creation. But thermonuclear war could. 

The fact that this issue is back in the spotlight should chill us all to the bone.

Corporatocracy, Capitalism, and Oligarchy

The ruling class is not new. It has been with us as long as the patriarchy. What has changed is its reach, which is now global, and the delivery system which is now a capitalist corporatocracy.

As capitalism has become, unsurprisingly, the dominant economic system in the world, it has empowered a new set of plutocrats, who look very like the aristocrats of old.

One of their most dangerous characteristics is their appetite. They consume everything in their path, like a plague of locusts.

Capitalism has spread throughout the world and is now dominant. The blood of capitalism is money and it has made its blood more important and worth protecting than our literal human blood. Everyone not a member of the capitalist class is expendable. And if you fail to pay into its great maw you are either worthless or threat.

If this brutal system were localized it would be a tragedy but not an existential threat.

But it is global. Let us look, therefore, at the ways in which the corporate oligarchy damages the ecological web and violates the terms of life noted above.

First, it is the primary driver of the burning of fossil fuels, and of the agenda to suppress all efforts to stop the climate collapse. It uses all of its innate power, the tendency in times of instability towards mass delusion, obscene sums of money, and the mechanics of governments veering towards fascism, to maintain the unsustainable status quo.

But that is not all. It also does everything as cheaply as possible. One example is food. The factory food industry may not be going out of its way to slowly poison people. But it has also gamed the regulatory agencies such that it decides which additives are deemed “safe”. There are some 3000 additives to factory food. Many barely tested. Some KNOWN to be toxic. Red dye, for example, is a known carcinogenic, but it is still used in many processed foods.

Factory food is the default. Getting natural foods is hard. Most people now can’t grow their own. And the burden of being the exception is placed on the organic producers, not the factory food industry. Why not have natural organic food be the default and force the factory food sector to label the food-like substances it produces as toxic? Because the capitalists want it this way, and they are orders of magnitude louder than any other voice.

Then there are the persistent or “forever” chemicals that now infuse all the fresh water available to humans and other animals. A recent study found that all rainwater has the persistent toxin polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in it. So even if you get your water from rain catchment it is tainted.

By “forever” it is meant that they can never be removed from the natural systems they invade.

Plastics too have gotten into an entire set of processes from the hydrological system to the soil and beyond. It breaks down into micro particles that are air born. There is no place on the planet where these particles can be avoided.

Now in the oceans, they kill the plankton that forms the backbone of the aquatic food web.

Plastic is toxic for almost all life forms, and certainly all advanced forms.

In the United States every man, woman, and child generates 1800 pounds of solid waste. It takes 5 years for a milk carton to decompose. 1000 years for a plastic bag or water bottle.

These are just some of the attacks on life itself that are not merely condoned by the capitalist system, but baked into the sets of laws it controls.

Covering all of the ways in which this economic system drives ecocide, climate disruption, and possible human extinction is the work of a book, not an essay. So I will offer these examples and proceed.

This does not cover the social costs of capitalism. It is responsible for much misery, but these aspects do not represent an existential threat and I will therefor save them for another time.

Pandemics

This threat is connected to climate change and to ecocide.

What we have seen in the ongoing Covid pandemic was a failure of management on every level. In the United States, of course, but elsewhere as well.

A refusal to mask up, to isolate, to vaccinate, or to even belief the virus is real has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

The two main operatives here have been the unwillingness to shut down long enough to stop the spread and the ideological war waged on both masking up and on vaccinations.

The failure to shut down for a long enough period can be laid at the doorstep of predatory capitalism. It would have required supporting entire populations while the virus was dying out. The capitalists and their lapdogs were not only unwilling to do that, they even said the quiet part out loud. “ Your grandmother is expendable.”

The anti-masking and anti-vaccine propaganda is the result of one of the many mass delusions. In a world with no scientific facts, only equally good opinions, why should anyone believe anything? Even if failing to trust the science will kill you.

But Covid is not the first pandemic and will not be the last. The only organisms getting a leg up during the ecocide are viruses and bacteria.

Imagine an airborne virus with a 50% kill rate. Then imagine an ignorant population and a greedy capitalist class. It is coming.

AI

As of now there is no general machine intelligence. The writing and graphics programs are buggy as hell. AI, as such, does not yet exist, regardless of what they are calling the current generation of programs.

These not quite intelligent iterations probably do not pose an existential threat. They do well at stealing intellectual property, confusing already befuddled people about the nature of reality, and corrupting democratic elections. But they will not destroy life on earth.

If and when general machine intelligence is attained, watch out!

We need the natural world to survive, but an intelligent machine does not. Nor does it have the value system we do. We are already way too dependent on the machines we have. Machines that are, ostensibly under our control.

For example, a computer-controlled power grid goes down during a cold snap and actual breathing humans freeze to death. They, by the millions, have no direct source of heat.

But it goes further. We cannot assume that AI is or will be like Data of the Starship Enterprise. Most of us can envision humans having a reach that exceeds their grasp. Most of us can imagine us making a big mistake with our technology. 

Continuing down the road to general machine intelligence is one of those big mistakes.

Mass Delusions, Rejection of Science for Gobbledygook, Cults, and Mass psychosis

I won’t be going deeply into this one, except to say that it happens on both the right and the left of the political spectrum. I am taking a pass because people with delusional beliefs are generally VERY attached to those beliefs. And can be dangerous. I have been attacked and cyber stalked in the past.

In the age of social media free speech no longer exists.

It is clear, however, that living in the shadow of these many simultaneous grave threats to our continued existence causes serious psychological dysfunction, from violence to various kinds of dysphoria. And in the United States, the corporate oligarchy ensures that the mental illness will not be addressed.

Authoritarianism  

This threat is last because it affects particular nation states and is not yet the primary form of government in the world.

The overarching concept includes fascism, totalitarianism, and other non-democratic forms of government.

The situation in the United States should be setting off alarms in liberal democracies around the world.

But how does authoritarianism push towards human extinction? Because in its modern form it is a creature of a ruling class entirely dominated by the compulsion to consume.

As long as there is even a shred of control by ordinary citizens there is a chance that the ecocidal policies can be altered. Once all shreds of self-governance are gone, the police power of the state will take care of the rest.

The Prognosis

It may not be fixable, and it is very likely that even the fixed version will seem harsh to those of us who were born at the end of the great party known as the industrial revolution.

Even so, we must try. There is one key log among these 8 threats. Capitalism. If we can eliminate that one factor it will fix several of the others in its wake. It is a heavy lift, but not impossible. All things considered it is worth a shot.

Why Bother?

We look out at the vastness of space and many say it makes them feel insignificant.

In a way though, the existence of a planet bursting with life is absolutely miraculous in all of this empty space.

I would like to think that other planets out there somewhere have a biosphere. But this is the only one we can be sure of.

Which makes the ongoing ecocide a tragedy beyond all comprehension.