"Human race 'will be extinct within 100 years", claims leading scientist
Professor Frank Fenner has warned that the human race can not survive
As the scientist who helped eradicate smallpox he certainly know a thing or two about extinction.
And now Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has predicted that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.
He has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and "unbridled consumption."
Fenner told The Australian newspaper that "homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years."
"A lot of other animals will, too," he added.
"It's an irreversible situation. I think it's too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off."
Since humans entered an unofficial scientific period known as the Anthropocene - the time since industrialisation - we have had an effect on the planet that rivals any ice age or comet impact, he said.
Fenner, 95, has won awards for his work in helping eradicate the variola virus that causes smallpox and has written or co-written 22 books.
He announced the eradication of the disease to the World Health Assembly in 1980 and it is still regarded as one of the World Health Organisation's greatest achievements.
He was also heavily involved in helping to control Australia's myxomatosis problem in rabbits.
Last year official UN figures estimated that the world’s population is currently 6.8 billion. It is predicted to exceed seven billion by the end of 2011.
Fenner blames the onset of climate change for the human race’s imminent demise.
He said: "We'll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island. Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we're seeing remarkable changes in the weather already."
"The Aborigines showed that without science and the production of carbon dioxide and global warming, they could survive for 40,000 or 50,000 years. But the world can't. The human species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that we've seen disappear."
Retired professor Stephen Boyden, a colleague of Professor Fenner, said that while there was deep pessimism among some ecologists, others had a more optimistic view.
'Frank may well be right, but some of us still harbour the hope that there will come about an awareness of the situation and, as a result the revolutionary changes necessary to achieve ecological sustainability.'
Simon Ross, the vice-chairman of the Optimum Population Trust, said: "Mankind is facing real challenges including climate change, loss of bio-diversity and unprecedented growth in population."
And it comes after Professor Nicholas Boyle of Cambridge University said that a 'Doomsday' moment will take place in 2014 - and will determine whether the 21st century is full of violence and poverty or will be peaceful and prosperous.
In the last 500 years there has been a cataclysmic 'Great Event' of international significance at the start of each century, he claimed.
In 2006 another esteemed academic, Professor James Lovelock, warned that the world's population may sink as low as 500 million over the next century due to global warming.
He claimed that any attempts to tackle climate change will not be able to solve the problem, merely buy us time.
In his 2003 book Our Final Hour, the eminent British scholar Martin Rees estimated that the probability of human extinction before the year 2100 is around 50 per cent, based on the possibility of malign or accidental release of destructive technology.
Pero ahora viene lo más contundente y trágicamente presagiante, dicho ¡¡dieciocho años antes de la advertencia del Professor Frank Fenner!!. Fue copiado de la revista -desaparecida- "Covert Action" en el año 2000 :
An Urgent Warning to Humanity
Following are brief excerpts from an "Urgent Warning lo Humanity" which was issued by sixteen hundred Nobel Prize winning and other scientists from around the world in 1992 --eight years ago --:
"Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage, on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable lo sustain life in the manner that we know.
Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about...
No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished....
We the undersigned senior members of the worlds scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast miseries are to be avoided and our global home on this planel is not to be irretrievably mutilated."
Estas advertencias y presagios de:
-Frank Fenner,
-Stephen Boyden,
-Simon Ross,
-Nicholas Boyle,
-James Lovelock,
-Martin Rees...
y, por si fuese poco,
-Mil seiscientos Pemios Nobel,
incluyendo a muchos científicos alrededor del mundo,
pesan demasiado, naturalmente, como para no tener
en cuenta sus fúnebres oráculos
...al menos, claro está,
que la entera Humanidad
no esté convertida ya en ese pueblo al que se refería Jesucristo:
"Con vuestro oídos oíreis y no entendereís;
con vuestro ojos vereís y no conocereís.
Porque éste pueblo se ha vuelto lerdo de corazón,
y se ha taponado los oídos
y se ha puesto un velo en los ojos
por miedo a oír y ver con claridad..."
(San Mateo 13. 11-19)
Y ésta es la situación de la Humanidad.
"Por miedo a oír y ver con claridad",
todas las admoniciones de éstas mentes científicas
que nos avisan del abismo
al que vamos a llegar
...se pierden en esos oídos taponados
y en esos ojos velados.
Entonces, la pregunta, obviamente, es:
¿POR QUÉ NOS HEMOS VUELTO LERDOS DE CORAZÓN?
¿POR QUÉ NOS HEMOS TAPONADO LOS OÍDOS
Y NOS HEMOS PUESTO UN VELO EN LOS OJOS?
A ver:
Antropólogos,
psicólogos,
paleontólogos,
sociólogos,
académicos,
eruditos,
hombres y mujeres de diplomas y títulos,
responded.
¿Estará ésta etiología colectiva ubicada en el 'motto' a la entrada de nuestro 'blog' de que "el capitalismo sólo conduce a la autodestrucción"...o es el régimen capitalista tan sólo un efecto, una manifestación de algo mucho más profundo y ancestral que, filogenéticamente, se vino acumulando y acuñando de muchísimo, muchísimo más atrás?
Porque éste tremendo y omnipresente canibalismo (consumismo) al que asistimos hoy en día en toda la Tierra,
ésta "unbridled consumption",
cómo la llama Fenner,
¿no estará conectada (más allá de la 'autodestrucción' del capitalismo) con aquella otra "unbridled consumption" que empezamos al consumir --al transgredir-- aquella 'otra fruta prohibida' del 'árbol de la ciencia del bien y del mal'
por lo que perdimos la armonía ancestral, y, desde entonces,
con los medios a nuestro alcance, nunca hemos parado éste demencial canibalismo-consumismo (llamado "progreso") hasta llegar a éste peligrosísimo momento actúal dónde las mentes mas preclaras de la humanidad nos advierten que..."A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast miseries are to be avoided and our global home on this planel is not to be irretrievably mutilated." ?
En otras palabras:
¿estámos ante el cul-de-sac de un 'conundrum' político-económico o ante un 'corto-circuíto' filogenético de la especie humana...el mismo que, al no quererse subconscientemente percibir, nos 'taponamos los oídos y nos ponemos un velo en los ojos'?
Esperemos que sea lo primero.
EPÍLOGO:
Respecto a ese 'cul-de-sac' o 'corto-circuito' filogenético, Wilhelm Reich, en la primera parte de su libro "La Muerte de Cristo", títulada, 'La Trampa', tiene ciertas cosas interesantes que aportarnos sobre el particular:
"Eyerything seems to point to one single fact:
There is something basically and crucially wrong in the whole setup of man's procedure of learning to know himself.
The mechano-rationalistic view has completely broken down. Locke and Hume and Kant and Hegel and Marx and Spencer and Spengler and Freud and all the others were truly great thinkers, but somehow it left the world empty after all and the mass of mankind remained untouched by all the philsophical digging. Modesty in proclaiming truth won't do it, either. It is often no more than a subterfuge for hiding one's evasion of the crucial point. Aristotle, who governed thinking for many centuries, turned out to be wrong, and little can be done with Plato's or Socrates' wisdom. Epicurus did not succeed and neither did a single saint....
....The devastating effect of such attempts has revealed itself too drastically. Wherever we turn we find man running around in circles as if trapped and searching the exit in vain and in desesperation.
(Aqui quiere decir R. que todo el tinglado cultural no ha servido para nada porque ha evadido las cuestiones fundamentales, no de otra manera se ha podido llegar al mundo que ha producido las apocalípticas advertencias de todos esos científicos)
It IS possible to get out of a trap.
('Si no nos taparamos los oídos y no nos cubríesemos los ojos')
However, in order to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison. The trap is man's emotional structure, his character structure.
(Aquí está claro: el problema es la estructura --¿filogenética?,-- del hombre mismo) .
There is little use in devising system of thought about the nature of the trap if the only thing to do in order to get out of the trap is to know the trap and find the exit. Everything else is utterly useless: singing hymns about the sufering in the trap, as the enslaved Negro does; or making poems about the beauty of freedom outside of the trap, dreamed of within the trap; or promising a life outside the trap after death, as Catholicism promises it's congregations; or confessing a 'semper ignorabimus' as do the resigned philosophers; or building a philosophic system around the despair of life within the trap, as did Schopenhauer; or dreaming up a superman who would be so much different from the man in the trap, as Nietzsche did, until, trapped in a lunatic asylum, he wrote, finally, the full truth about himself — too late. . .
(Todo el llamado 'progreso' humano ha sido dedicado a engalanar y hacer mas confortable --para algunos-- la 'Trampa' , en lugar de encontrarle una salida, en lugar de dejar de ser un pueblo 'lerdo')
The first thing to do is to find the exit out of the trap.
The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point:
WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP?
(Es decir: ¿dónde están las coherentes y prácticas respuestas con las que tenemos que enfrentar las lúgubres predicciones de F. Fenner, y tantísimos otros, para que no se hagan realidad?)
One can decorate a trap to make life more comfortable in it. This is done by Michelangelos and the Shakespeares and the Goethes. One can invent makeshift contraptions to secure longer life in the trap. This is done by the great scientists and physicians, the Mayers and the Pasteurs and the Flemings. One can devise great art in healing broken bones when, one falls into the trap. But he crucial point still is and remains: to find the exit out of the trap: WHERE IS THE EXIT INTO THE ENDLESS OPEN SPACE?
(Otra vez el mismo epicentro: toda la Historia humana ha sido cómo decorar y hacer el tiempo mas comodo y apacible en la Trampa mediante el crescendo de la producción material --pasado el limite de las necesidades primordiales-- de objetos y cacharros que solo han traído mas problemas, dolores de cabeza y destrucción del medio ambiante...en lugar de dirigir todo el trabajo a hallar la salida del conundrum que hemos ído creando al tratar de hacer mas 'confortable' --para algunos-- la existencia en la Trampa)
The exit remains hidden. It is the greatest riddle of all. The most ridiculous as well as tragic thing is this:
THE EXIT IS CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ALL TRAPPED IN THE HOLE. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO SEE IT. EVERYBODY KNOWS WHERE THE EXITF IS, YET NOBODY SEEMS TO MAKE A MOVE TOWARD IT. MORE: WHOEVER MOVES TOWARD THE EXIT, OR
WHOEVER POINTS TOWARD IT IS DECLARED CRAZY OR CRIMINAL OR A SINNER TO BURN IN HELL.
(Si a alguíen se le ocurriese que una de las posibles salidas de la Trampa sería la eliminación del capitalismo, de la propiedad privada, antes de que sea demasiado tarde...lo crucificarían!!!)
It turns out that the trouble is not, with the trap or even with finding the exit. The trouble is within the trapped ones!!
(¡Que gran verdad! ¡Resulta que el problema para hallar 'la salida' son los propios entrampados!)
All this is, seen from outside the trap, incomprehensible to a simple mind. It is even somehow insane. Why don't they see and move toward the clearly visible exit?. As soon as anyone among them tries to get out, they kill him. Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep.
This is the situationin which Jesus Christ finds himself. And this is the behaviour of the victims in the trap when they will kill him.
(La frase famosa de que todos los Redentores terminan en la cruz es axiomática. Quiere decir ello que todo poder se nutre de 'anti-Redentores'. Aquí, la 'selección darwiniana' se dá al revés: como todos los Redentores son crucificados, como todos aquellos que tratan de encontrarle una salida a la Trampa son muertos o encarcelados, sólo vamos quedando los peores. Y éste es el aspecto más mosntruoso dela humanidad...ese 'cable suelto' del que nadie quiere hablar.)
The functioning of living Life is all around us, within us, in our senses, before our noses, clearly visible in every single animal or tree or flower. We feel it in our bodies and in our blood. Yet it remained for the trapped ones the greatest, most inaccessible riddle of all.
However, Life was not the riddle. The riddle is how it could have remained misolved for such a long period of time. The great problem of biogenesis and bio-energetics is easily accessible by direct observation. The great problem of Life and the origin of Life is a psychiatric one; it is a problem of the character structure of Man who succeeded so long in evading its solution...
IT IS THE BASIC EVASION OF THE ESSENTIAL which is the problem of man. This evasion and evasiveness is a part of the deep structure of man. The running away from the exit out of the trap is the result of this structure. Man fears and hates the exit from the trap. He guards cruelly against any attempt at finding the exit. And this is the great riddle".
Llegamos al fín.
Las palabras de Reich han aclarado bastante sobre el hecho, sobre el increíble hecho de que, a pesar de que las grandes mentes de la Humanidad nos advierten que, de seguir el 'Titanic' donde todos viajamos --ya no hay países, ya sólo hay Un Barco Comunal Para Todos-- con el rumbo que le ha imprimido éste absurdo y demencial "progreso" humano...vamos directos a chocar con el Iceberg, y vamos a naufragar (y a los de tercera clase no nos dejaran subir a cubierta) porque, como dice Reich, 'man fears and hates the exit from the trap', --man--'guards cruelly against any attempt at finding the exit'.
Y A ESTAS CRUCIALES ALTURAS, EL NO HABLAR SOBRE ESTO, EXPONERLO Y DENUNCIARLO, HARIA QUE TODO ELLO QUEDASE TRANSFORMADO EN LO QUE VUELVE A DECIR REICH:
LA BASICA EVASION DE LO ESENCIAL,
LO CUAL HA SIDO EL PROBLEMA DE SIEMPRE DEL HOMBRE.
PERO HA LLEGADO LA HORA:
ANTE ESAS GRAVISIMAS ADVERTENCIAS,
COMO LAS DE FRANK FENNER Y TANTISIMOS OTROS,
TENEMOS QUE DESENTAPONARNOS LOS OIDOS,
Y OIRLOS,
TENEMOS QUE SACARNOS EL VELO DE LOS OJOS
Y VER LA REALIDAD QUE ANUNCIAN
SUS PREDICCIONES.
NO NOS QUEDA OTRA OPCION.
¿O ES QUE LO DE NUESTRA 'INTELIGENCIA'
FUE OTRO CUENTO MAS PARA AUTO-ENGAÑARNOS?
P.D.:
Estamos obligados a tener un P.D., sin él, al tema tratado le faltaría el pilar esencial del reconocimiento a esos pueblos, a esos hombres y mujeres que estan regando la planta cuya flor olemos al despertar, esos pueblos que estan haciendo lo que esta a su alcance para que la advertencia de Frank Fenner nunca se haga realidad:
Venezuela,
Bolivia,
Cuba,
Nicaragua,
y tantos pueblos mas,
estan tratando de racionalizar la vida economica y social,
y aunque sus esfuerzos no conllevan la revolucion total
de parar y transferir el desarrollo economico del crescendo de la produccion de bienes materiales a la resolucion de los autenticos problemas animicos que es el transfondo del real conundrum de la humanidad, estan intentando llevar a cabo un sistema que reduzca la demencia del regimen de la acumulacion de capital.
