I did a little light reading over the last weekend. I started with an essay about defeating learned helplessness, then read the latest from Chris Hedges “Rise Up or Die,” and finished with a story with this snappy headline: Human race 'will be extinct within 100 years', claims leading scientist.
Now this last story sounds like one of the screaming headlines from one of the tabloids clogging a supermarket’s checkout counter but no … this wasn’t a variant of “Bat-child Found in Cave!” or “Donnie & Marie are Aliens!” This was a three-year-old article from The Australian, the biggest-selling national newspaper in Australia.
The leading scientist interviewed was Professor Frank Fenner whose Wiki entry reads, “… an Australian scientist with a distinguished career in the field of virology. His two greatest achievements are cited as overseeing the eradication of smallpox, and the control of Australia's rabbit plague.”
The article starts out on this happy note, ”Frank Fenner doesn't engage in the skirmishes of the climate wars. To him, the evidence of global warming is in. Our fate is sealed.
"We're going to become extinct," the eminent scientist says. "Whatever we do now is too late."
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