This column is hopeful. I promise.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0northern white rhinoceros<\/a>\u00a0is now functionally extinct. Sudan \u2014 the last male of his kind \u2014 passed away recently. There are two females remaining but obviously they can produce no more of their species without a male \u2014 and mating with nearby giraffes is not something in which they seem interested.<\/p>\n This is not the end but the beginning.<\/p>\n This is still the beginning of a great extinction, the\u00a0sixth great extinction<\/a>\u00a0in earth\u2019s history and the first one caused by humans. The others were caused by things like massive asteroid impacts creating damage equivalent to a million nuclear bombs, and judging by the humans I\u2019ve met, I could picture us wreaking an equivalent amount of havoc. (I mean, some are nice but most seem dangerous.)<\/p>\n So we can now say with certainty that the northern white rhino is done. After millions of years on this planet, most of them without a human in sight, the rhino has tapped out. Reading about it is depressing \u2014 I readily admit that. And yet, here I am writing about it. What the fuck am I thinking? Don\u2019t I want readers? Don\u2019t I want people to run and tell their friends about this wonderful and hilarious column they read? Choosing a topic like the death of the northern white rhino is not gonna achieve that. Couldn\u2019t I just follow the middling path of most writers, covering how Ted Cruz said something idiotic or atrocious or\u00a0idiotrocious<\/em>? Or perhaps how Wonder Woman\u2019s new outfit firmly locates the underwear on the inside rather than the outside and this means women around the world are winning the fight for equality? That type of story could probably score me some of the coveted #WokeHive clicks. (I just made up the #WokeHive but now that I did, I have a bad feeling it might really exist. That makes me sad.) And by writing about the underwear revolution, I could grab readership, operate within the bounds of allowable corporate thought, and tell myself that I\u2019m creating change (while actually achieving nothing). The American Dream.<\/p>\n Point being, there are a lot of other topics that would surely grab more attention and more shares. Yet, here I am writing about the extinction of the white rhino and by extension our own extinction. Unfortunately this topic is too important to avoid. We\u2019ve hid our heads in the sand and up our asses long enough. (I guess there\u2019s a lot of sand up our asses?) No matter how scary or depressing mass extinction due to climate change and habitat destruction is, we should all be discussing it, reading\/writing about it, portraying it on the big screen and the little screen and the mid-size screen, and demanding celebrity chefs shape their free-range duck confit like the last remaining pangolins to remind the diners of our tenuous situation on this planet. (Let\u2019s hope no one is serving pangolin confit.)<\/p>\n Species go extinct every day on this planet \u2014 butterflies, and ants, and moths, and fish, and mammals, and lizards \u2014 they disappear forever on a daily basis. Rarely do they get a tiny tombstone or even a slight mention in a science magazine that no one reads (because the writers rarely ever mention Wonder Woman\u2019s new outfit). Despite millions of years of finding ways to survive and continue on, these newly extinct species failed to outlast the most destructive force this planet has ever seen \u2014 humans wielding unfettered capitalism like a battle axe.<\/p>\n (Here are some which are either already extinct or facing extremely long odds.)<\/p>\n As the\u00a0Yangtze giant soft-shell turtle<\/a>\u00a0went extinct, we were busy talking about who won UFC 257.<\/p>\n As the\u00a0Indian cheetah<\/a>\u00a0said goodbye forever, we all raved about how wonderful [Insert Netflix series here] is because the costumes are\u00a0fire<\/em>.<\/p>\n As the\u00a0spix macaw<\/a>\u00a0bid Planet Earth farewell, we couldn\u2019t get enough of Kanye West\u2019s hilarious attempt at running for president.<\/p>\n As the\u00a0Chiriqui harlequin frog<\/a>\u00a0was extinguished, we were in a frenzied state trying to hoard toilet paper because our collective ass is too precious and fragile for paper towels.<\/p>\n As the\u00a0Indochinese tiger<\/a>\u00a0went extinct, we all focused on whether our Tinder profile was hotter if we had a hat on in our picture. (No.)<\/p>\n As the last\u00a0Tapanuli orangutans<\/a>\u00a0faced the long goodnight, we bought three extra spatulas at Ikea because they were three for a dollar and we talked about what a great price that was for the next two weeks. (We have yet to use three spatulas simultaneously, but we did once use two at the same time to kill a tenacious millipede.)<\/p>\n As the\u00a0Catarina pupfish<\/a>\u00a0was snuffed out, we argued about whether a man kneeling during a song before a football game is the most horrific thing to ever happen to humanity including the Bubonic plague.<\/p>\n As the\u00a0Jalpa false brook salamander<\/a>\u00a0entered the dark abyss of the extinction list, we found out our favorite ham and roast beef footlong is\u00a0even better\u00a0<\/em>with bacon and turkey on it, amounting to a veritable Noah\u2019s ark of death and deliciousness. (I guess it\u2019s the anti-Noah\u2019s ark: Causing the death of one of each type of animal.)<\/p>\n We are all Nero, and the world Rome.<\/p>\n A\u00a0recent UN report<\/a>\u00a0said this is an unprecedented time of species extinction. \u201cThe health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, despite it all, the truth is we have the ability to stop this. The\u00a0report said<\/a>, \u201cThrough \u2018transformative change\u2019, nature can still be conserved, restored and used sustainably\u2026 By transformative change, we mean a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values.\u201d<\/p>\n Humans have the skills, talent, and technology to create a sustainable future. (I told you this column is hopeful.) The only question is whether we have the will. Does the human race have the will and desire to break our capitalist social engineering that has screamed at us every day of our lives \u2014 \u201cBuying more is the answer. Eating more is the answer. Collecting more\u00a0things<\/em>\u00a0is the answer. Don\u2019t worry about the cost. Don\u2019t worry about the waste. Don\u2019t worry about the result, the ramifications, the externalities. Live for this moment and to hell with the rest! Anything inhibiting your rapacious consumptive binge is anti-freedom, anti-choice, and anti-you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Can we get off this death spiral? Or is the human race a sprint to extinction?<\/p>\n Once we cut away all the buzzwords and extract the technical terminology, capitalism is a manner of organizing human behavior based on infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. Even children know such a thing is impossible in the long term. We can have capitalism or we can have a future, but we can\u2019t have both.<\/p>\n The post It\u2019s Now or Never \u2014 We Stare Into the Abyss<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This column is hopeful. I promise. The\u00a0northern white rhinoceros\u00a0is now functionally extinct. Sudan \u2014 the last male of his kind \u2014 passed away recently. There are two females remaining but obviously they can produce no more of their species without a male \u2014 and mating with nearby giraffes is not something in which they seem More<\/a><\/p>\n The post It\u2019s Now or Never \u2014 We Stare Into the Abyss<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27323,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27322\/revisions\/27323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}