Are Humans Condemned to Self-Destruction?

Humanity seems to be the only species that has not so far managed to coexist in balance with its environment. Every achievement of civilization tends to be accompanied, almost inevitably, by acts of barbarism and destruction. Unfortunately, one could consider that human existence is embedded in a mechanics that has fundamentally two ends: to enter a race to exhaust the available resources and then to compete for control of those few resources. It is no coincidence that the essence of economic science is grounded in the principle of scarcity and the need to think about the best way to invest the available resources — in other words, we have a limited supply to satisfy the infinite demands or needs of humanity. Perhaps what distinguishes us from the rest of the species is precisely that inordinate ambition which, although it has indeed led us to solve many of our problems throughout history, is in truth bringing about the ruin of our planet. At bottom we do not stray too far from the primitive societies that devoted themselves solely to appropriating the available resources in order to survive, without paying greater attention to their reproduction, maintenance, or care. We are certainly exhausting everything, and therein lies our great failing, because as a species we are doing precisely everything required to cease to exist; the human being is immersed in the irony of using all their ingenuity to survive and, at the same time, thereby bringing about the circumstances that threaten their own existence. Since ancestral times, the human's devouring appetite for resources motivated them to wipe out other species, and later, with a better understanding of the variables of our environment, human activities came to require more energy to sustain the pace of growth, and it was then that the energy era began, driven by the exploitation of fuels. Recently I have delved into some of the practices incurred in the exploitation of oil, specifically shale oil. Certainly, in any mineral-extraction activity there is always a serious impact on the environment, but until now I had not realized the magnitude of the problem we are about to experience. For various reasons, humanity has altered the climate, the ecosystems, the classic sources of sustenance, and now it is water's turn. The contamination of this vital liquid is of long standing, but the extraction of shale oil in particular takes things to another level, being able to affect underground sources to the point of rendering them unrecoverable. The species, the water, the jungles, the forests, the land — everything is gradually being exhausted, and the human, instead of joining efforts to correct their conduct, begins to be seduced by the conquest of other planets, the exploitation of minerals in space. This only denotes that our true nature is not to find balance, but to wipe out every species, planet, or resource that the universe makes available — and then what will come? Perhaps the human is a virus that afflicts this planet, a form of life that turned into an error and now seriously threatens its destruction; perhaps the solution to saving the planet begins with removing ourselves from the scene. I am an optimist: humanity will have to evolve and will have to learn to live in balance. © Alejandro Guipe | All Rights Reserved.