What's Happening To Our Planet?

The growing hazard of global crises is receiving increased attention from the media as well as from the authors of books, reviews and research articles accentuating various aspects of the problem. In addition to economic crises, the challenges facing mankind today include dangerous environmental poisoning, depletion of natural resources, opposition between the rich ("Golden Billion") and the poor, large-scale wars involving weapons of mass destruction and the danger of Earth's collision with a sizable celestial object.

Although these problems belong to different spheres of life, it is the incompatibility of the accepted behavioral patterns with modern day realities that strongly complicates the task of mankind's shifting to sustainable development. Mankind is lacking unity and coordination in the solution of global problems. Human consciousness is developing too slowly; its development is lagging behind the rapidly changing world.

One of the biggest dangers looming over mankind now is apparently that of a global war which might be triggered by a great many of causes and pretexts. Biologically, our brain has not changed for many thousands of years, hence there is no progress in the methods of conflict resolution, there is still no limit to aggression and the use force is rampant. In the meantime, situation is getting increasingly dramatic: The death toll of ancient wars was counted in the thousands, but the 20th century wars claimed tens of millions of human lives. From the mid 1950s, the situation started getting critical as weapons of mass destruction threatening to wipe out human race from the face of the Earth were invented, tested and accumulated in huge amounts. By the 1980s, the total of 70,000 H-bombs had been accumulated in the arsenals of the opposing superpowers and it was calculated that the explosion of only 10% of these bombs would cause a "nuclear winter," which would make the planet unsuitable for living for a long time to come. Despite the disarmament that followed after the end of the Cold War, the stocks of weapons of mass destruction still remaining on the planet are more than sufficient to support the worst scenario for the human race. Data is scarce about the global hazards associated with chemical and biological weapons. At least, it is officially declared that the United States and the Russian Federation each pledged to eliminate 30,000-40,000 tons of chemical agents. As regards biological weapons, information about their production and effects is scrimpy.

If one takes into account the rapid progress of science and new, even more dangerous, weapons on the horizon, mankind's prospects for the future appear nebulous. There is no doubt that certain achievements in nanotechnology, robototechnics or genetic engineering (probably, other disciplines too) will be employed in the development of new weapons of mass destruction. The mankind's entire experience only goes to show that whenever people got hold of new powers, priority was almost invariably given to their military applications. (It could not have been otherwise because there was always a though that potential adversary might have achieved similar results!). Without a doubt, new, fantastic, breakthroughs in science and technology are in the offing.

The following are just a couple of examples from the recent past. A bomb with explosive power of 10,000–15,000 times that of conventional bomb was created within 6 years as a result of the Manhattan Project; a similar program was implemented in the Soviet Union. Then, thermonuclear bombs had appeared with explosive power per warhead increased by hundreds and thousands of times over the next several years. Hot on the trail of the Earth's first artificial satellite – a tremendous achievement in itself – a nearly 1,500 times heavier spacecraft destined for a Moon voyage appeared 12 years later. The first artificial satellite weighted only 83 kilos, while the weight of the Moon-bound vehicle was 120 tons; orbiting apparatuses in the U.S. Shuttle and Russia's Buran projects have approximately the same weight. Since some 20 years ago more than one billion people have gotten connected to the Internet, nearly 3.5 billion mobile phone have been produced and sold, hundreds of television programs have come out and there has been a very rapid progress in the computer industry. There are many other examples of breakthroughs in science and technology made within historically brief periods of time.

Similar or even more impressive breakthroughs will definitely take place in the future in various fields of science, particularly where intensive research is underway. We should be aware of that now. Besides, it might happen that such new weapons will not require any sophisticated equipment or huge state-run industrial facilities to produce, which will make their control much more difficult. For example, that could be self-reproducing nanorobots programmed to kills representatives of certain ethnicities or highly pathogenic selectively attacking viruses. In the worst case, a small group of people might be able to put such weapons to use. In fact, on the planet overstocked with weapons of mass destruction, a global war might be triggered by the effect of various factors – from somebody's evil will to mere carelessness on somebody's part or just somebody's psychological disorder. Quick proliferation of knowledge around the planet enables increasing numbers of people to destroy the world, including nation leaders, the military, terrorists and technical specialists. The fate of our planet is in our hands and depends on our ability to control events.

However, it will not be correct to conclude that no possibilities exist for mankind to avert the hazard of self-annihilation. First, we can implement programs promoting tolerance in people, develop effective mechanisms for peaceful regulation of conflicts and set up effective organizations to support these mechanisms, and simultaneously we should go along the path of disarmament and putting under control those cutting edge fields of research which might generate potentially dangerous products (see Survival Programs herebelow). It may seem that the accumulated knowledgebase, available resources and ability to concentrate them on the priority directions cannot but allow us to overcome the problems challenging us. Alas, the overwhelming majority of the people do not recognize all seriousness of the danger we are facing and the need to counteract it before it is too late. Many are trying to hide away from problems and not to notice threats, while others believe that those who speak of the dangers are just alarmists. Only an objective and truthful assessment of the present-day situation followed by decisive action, which is likely to take time and effort, will allow our civilization to survive and last.

How long will the human civilization last? This question is not given much public discussion. The reason probably lies in the fact that it is not possible to extrapolate many of the processes which determine evolution and developments of our life; these processes often bear explosive, uncontrollable nature.

If we recall the laws of evolution of life on our planet which lasted for about 4 billion years, we will see that victors in the incessant struggle for survival were precisely the most aggressive and cruel and best adapted species. It was this merciless struggle that brought homo sapiens to the apex of the pyramid squeezing out numerous other species; having become dominant species, humans have continued to propagate occupying new territories and changing the environment to the extent of making it almost unsuitable for living. People will not stop at exterminating any plant or animal species if this is needed to satisfy their egoistic needs. Aggressive wars, killing neighbors for the sake of seizing their territories has been a modus vivendi. Relative lulls were followed by new outbreaks of violence. Incidentally, it has been only ten thousand years since cannibalism ceased to be a common practice. Now we – a species with a mentality generated in the merciless struggle for survival – are getting hold of more and more sophisticated weapons, and we almost invariably use these weapons to kill each other.

This gloomy picture should force us to stop and think about possible ways to survival: What needs to be changed, how we can use our brain, intelligence, knowledgebase, resources and technologies in order to preserve our civilization. Obviously, the first thing to be done is to bring this logic and this concern to the understanding of the broad public and those who make decisions and govern our life. Then, it will be necessary to develop and start implementing measures designed to turn away from the risky path we are treading now in favor of a safer and more stable one. The book Civilization in the 21st Century (4th edition, in Russian and in English, 2009) provides a detailed analysis of the problem and puts forth a number of Survival Programs (see www.savefuture.net and www.savefuture.ru).Of course, the programs put forth in the book require further detailed review, elaboration, and, probably, some rework, for which purpose keen attention of the broad public needs to be drawn to the issue.

P.S. The fact that we are not receiving any signals from the Universe and no positive results of SETI might be an indication of the unstable and short-lived character of industrialized civilizations which is why the probability of overlap between the time interval of signal arrival and that of its possible reception is negligibly small. It has been only about 100 years since we created apparatuses capable of receiving signals from extraterrestrial intelligence – too short a time compared to the 4 billion years of life evolution on this planet. This is an added reason for us to stop and think again about our future and prospects for our civilization's life expectancy. Isn't it only typical that those creatures who make it to the apex of the evolution pyramid and become "very clever" still go on fighting with each other and using weapons of mass destruction? (From Why is the Universe Silent? http://evg-abramyan.livejournal.com).