Nick TaussigThe most effective and moving film on climate change to date, from someone who has witnessed it firsthand over the past ninety-three years.
We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction, the anthropocene extinction, which we, human beings, are responsible for. Things are dire. I am terrified for future generations.
If we carry on as we are, the next century will indeed be the “century of hell” — the scale of human suffering will be immeasurable, like never seen before — and the majority of human life will cease. In the space of three hundred years, we will have made ourselves extinct.
But there is still hope, in David Attenborough’s final testimony, as long as we confront reality, show the necessary collective will, and act accordingly.
We are fucked, but only if we choose to be. In spite of the pull of our selfish gene, which drives us to seek personal gain and satisfaction above all else, whatever the cost — the current White House incumbent the living embodiment of this human failing — we are able to rise above it, to act for future generations, for humanity, for the continuation of our species … if we choose to. And we must, and will.
Enough of Brexit, Trump and other current preoccupations, which in the context of the mass extinction we are living through and will live through, are mere sideshows, spectacles, irrelevances. They mean nothing. They do not matter.
Let us try, try, try, to focus on what matters, and see where this collective will and focus can take us. Might we save future generations? We must, for them. For what else is there… really. There is nothing.