Nick Bostrom is director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. He organized a 2008 conference for scientists to gather to discuss catastrophic risks. Those are potential events that could threaten the existence the whole human species.
Nick Bostrom: Nuclear proliferation, biological weapons, pandemic disease, despotism, various forms of social and economic collapse scenarios rank high on the list of near to mid-term potential catastrophes.
Humans have experienced global catastrophes in the past, Bostrom said. But modern technology has brought new potential risks.
Nick Bostrom: We have risks that arise from powerful new technologies that we might develop, such as advanced nanotechnology and superintelligent machines.
He said the events of this century could determine the survival of our species.
Nick Bostrom: This critical transition period might pose the biggest existential risk for humanity that we’ve ever faced, because we are developing very powerful technologies that we have no experience with. And it’s unclear at this point whether we have the wisdom to use these technologies to our advantage rather than our destruction.
If you’re concerned about surviving a global catastrophe, Bostrom’s best advice is to stay healthy. After all, it’s still survival of the fittest.
EarthSky asked Bostrom to name the least likely global catastrophic risk. He responded, “That’s the planet-eating space goat – a big goat that eats up our planet.”
Our thanks to:
“Nick Bostrom”:http://www.nickbostrom.com
The Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford University
Oxford, UK
Dear Nick Bostrom, Deborah and Friends of the Earth & Sky community,
If it is all right to do so here, there are two questions I would like to ask the two of you and other members of the Dot Earth community.
As almost everyone knows but few openly discuss, wealth and power buy freedom. What is all too obvious but often cloaked in silence is this: A small minority of individuals in the human family with great fortunes and virtually all large corporations exercise their great wealth and the power it purchases in ways that allow all of these self-proclaimed masters of the universe to live lavishly as well as to willfully refuse assumption of the responsibilities which necessarily come with freedom.
1. How do rich and famous people, who live large and have huge ecological footprints, as well as corporate `citizens’ that cast giant shadows over the Earth today, so easily get away with socially irresponsible behavior?
2. The exercise of freedom without the requisite assumption of responsibility by citizens can lead to psychopathic behavior; the exercise of freedom by those individuals and corporations with great wealth who consensually-validate each others refusal to accept responsibility for their excessive, pernicious and amoral behavior is sociopathic, is it not?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
Rich people have always been able to do what they want, since the start of history. I think in USA we don’t mind because we have a secret hope that it could be us someday;.
Rich people are smart. They dont do stupid things. Well Im not saying all of them are smart but most have them have worked hard their whole lives to earn that money. It stupid to start blaming rich people. Theyve earned lots of money and theyre not going to spend it on stupid things. Dont be jealous of rich people just because you dont have as much money as them. They didnt earn it by being stupid.
That was one of the most unintelligible things I have ever read.
Steve,
It appears that your envy of wealthy people is stretching it’s veil ever more thin. Re-distribution of wealth is one of the most insidious aspects of Marxism. There is no reason, moral or spiritual, which can justify stealing the fruits of one man’s labor to give to someone else, no matter how compelling the argument is.
On the subject of catastrophe, do we not acknowledge that the advances we have made over the last few hundred years have made our lives more comfortable and safer? Consider the advances in medicine, which have enabled us to live longer, more fruitful lives, with many previously fatal afflictions either eliminated or made easily treatable. One example would be the case of Dr. Fleming who discovered penicillin. He experimented on a man who had pricked his finger on a rose thorn and developed septicaemia. The penicillin arrested the infection and he began to recover. Unfortunately, the actual manufacture of the antibiotic had not been developed and the supply ran out. The gardener succumbed to the infection in his blood. Now we take such treatment almost for granted, and death from what has become a trivial injury is practically non-existent.
It is time to stop the negativity. If the entire population of the Earth was put into the USA, each person would have about 1/3 acre each. This rubbish you are propagating about mass disaster being imminent and the Earth being on the brink of collapse through over-population is just that. Rubbish! You should direct your concern in a positive direction and find ways to further improve man’s intelligence and it’s practical implementation.
Dear Perry Bolin,
As usual, I agree with most of what you report; however, in the strongest possible terms, it is necessary for me to continue to disagree with you regarding certain matters.
You report,
“This rubbish you are propagating about mass disaster being imminent……. through over-population is just that. Rubbish!”
What I am presenting can only be thought of as rubbish by people who eschew science. There is adequate scientific evidence to suggest that a finite planet with size and make-up cannot support an endlessly consuming, propagating and producing human species, given the current scale and growth of these distinctly human activities. To suggest, as you and many too many others are doing, that Earth is some sort of cornucopia and can actually sustain such endless growth of human consumption, propagation and production activities now overspreading the Earth does everyone a disservice because your view is ideologically biased and represents self-interested, specious thinking.
Absolute global human population numbers are expected to increase from 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion people by the middle of Century XXI?
Recent reports indicate that the human population worldwide will exceed 7.0 billion in 2012. Only 13 years have passed since the global population passed the 6.0 billion mark.
The USA is refusing to fund UNFPA for the 7th consecutive year. A global gag rule remains in effect regarding open discussions of the human overpopulation of Earth.
If it turns out that skyrocketing human population numbers are indeed the “mother” of all global challenges and that 9 billion humans could literally overwhelm the limited resources and frangible ecosystem services of our planetary home, can you please take a moment and suggest how we could make some forward movement toward openly acknowledging what appears to be the most formidable of all threats to life as we know it and the integrity of Earth?
You report,
“There is no reason, moral or spiritual, which can justify stealing the fruits of one man’s labor to give to someone else, no matter how compelling the argument is.”
Perry, I am not talking about taking anything from anyone. The focus of my comments is on the value of sharing resources and not hoarding them as so many people are doing today.
Conspicuous per-capita consumption of Earth’s resources has reached the point of being reckless and obscene. Such unbridled consumption and relentless hoarding of resources is patently unsustainable on a planet with finite resources. If we condone, let alone adamantly advocate, the unlimited accumulation of wealth and the resources it purchases, please explain how the Earth provides sensibly for more than a very small minority of the family of humanity between now and 2050 when human numbers are expected to increase by no less than 40% over the current level?
Given a world population of 6.7 billion people in our time, please note that 3.7 billion of the 6.7 billion people are existing on resources valued at less than two dollars per day.
Thanks for your comments here. They are helpful. Perhaps you, Deborah and others in the Earth & Sky community will join in this discussion. At least to me, the matters we considering require careful and skillful deliberation because I do believe the Earth has a fever and could overheat. According to James Hansen, Rajendra Pachauri and thousands of other experts in science, human-induced global warming is occurring. If that scientific evidence is somehow correct, then it also appears to me that, as you have put it so well, “the Earth being on the brink of collapse through over-population is just that.”
Sincerely,
Steve
Dear Perry,
You report,
“It appears that your envy of wealthy people is stretching it’s veil ever more thin.”
Perhaps this comment by you is nothing more than a distraction from what could be a valuable dialogue. Regardless of your motivation, I want to respond.
I am a person who does become discontented and resentful when presented with the superior attainments of other people; however, let us be clear here, my envy of others has not to do with other peoples’ perverse proclivity to relentlessly hoard material possessions, to recklessly over-consume resources and to endlessly accumulate wealth. An enthusiasm for adulterated expressions of unrestrained human greed is not what gives rise to envy within me.
The tragedy in which you and I appear to be participants now, I believe, is this: Evidence of human-induced climate change from thousands of scientists has somehow been venally twisted into a “political football†of sorts. You and I, among many others, are kicking the ‘ball’ all over the field and, in the process, obscuring and distracting from the vital discussion of what is happening to the world we inhabit, that is being turned into a colossal shambles for our children to confront soon. You and I are playing a fool’s game. Unfortunately, the game we are playing is also the perpetration of a sham and, even worse, an affront to our children’s intellectual honesty, courage and acceptance of personal responsibility for their behavior. What a shame.
Yes, I am full of envy, but do not envy the people who obscenely hoard possessions, consume resources and care for themselves and their ilk alone.
As ever,
Steve
Dear Perry,
You report,
“Re-distribution of wealth is one of the most insidious aspects of Marxism.”
The thinking of Karl Marx fails to hold my interest and bears no relationship to what I am reporting.
From a historical perspective, it appears to me that humankind is the only organism on Earth that produces food, amasses more food than it needs and made food into a commodity. As I see things, farmers have not been growing food because they have wanted to feed a growing population, nor have they been selling food to increase human population numbers. The more food farmers grew, the more wealth they accumulated. Our (agri-)culture has evidently devised an economic system that continuously expands the food supply for human organisms. What I am trying to suggest is simply this: An economic system that requires ever increasing food production, supposedly to feed a rapidly growing human population, appears to be inadvertently and unexpectedly enlarging the size of the human population on Earth.
Sincerely,
Steve
Dear Perry,
Let me try to be a bit more clear about what it is that needs to be communicated here.
The predominant culture and its global economy appears to produce potentially pernicious impacts. Would you agree that if our culture chooses to keep growing the global economy as we are doing now, then we will likely keep getting what we are getting now…….for good or ill?
For a long time, the leaders of the predominant culture have chosen to continuously expand production capabilities, ones that give rise to the rampant economic globalization we see today. Unfortunately, an ever expanding, leviathan-like global economy appears to give rise to something recognizably unsatisfactory.
If you will, please consider how the hoarding of wealth by millions of people leaves billions of people in the family of humanity hungry.
For fortunate million of people with riches to conspicuously consume limited resources, while billions of less forunate people go without adequate food to eat, seems somehow not quite right.
Inequity is sad enough; grotesque inequity will one day be intolerable, I suppose.
If leaders of our predominant culture choose to modify the way the unbridled global economy continuously grows and the way it distributes resources, then perhaps they and we will find more reasonable, sensible, fair and, equally important, SUSTAINABLE ways of doing so.
Perhaps it is a mistake for me to do so; but, nevertheless, I am assuming members of the Earth & Sky community can agree that recklessly expanding the global economy, given its huge scale and rapid growth, will result in the manmade economic colossus eventually reaching a point in human history when it becomes patently unsustainable in a finite world with make-up and size of Earth.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
Dear Perry and other Friends of Earth & Sky,
We have simply got to find reasonable and sensible ways to communicate openly with one another about the real global challenges that are ominously looming before humanity, visible even now on the far horizon. These issues are supremely significant to human and environmental health as well as to life as we know it and the integrity of Earth, even in these early years of Century XXI. Our silence wastes precious time. Time appears to be something that we cannot afford to continue frittering away much longer while the human species unintentionally ravages the Earth.
Many too many so-called and self-proclaimed people with ‘expertise’ assure us that we simply need to do nothing except that which we are doing now; that we must “stay the course” of unbridled economic growth, increasingly conspicuous per-capita overconsumption and unregulated propagation of absolute global human population numbers.
Are people going to stand up, speak out loudly and clearly, to say that the “same ol’ business as usual” course of action may be nothing more or less than a “primrose path” to the future, at the end of which could be the inadvertent loss of life as we know it and an unintended ecological wreckage, the likes of which only the King of kings, Ozymandias has seen.
The idea that silence is regularly triumphant in moments like this one is anathema to me. People with clear vision, intellectual honesty, coherent minds and good scientific evidence have got speak up and, in so doing, overcome the silence.
Perhaps silence presents itself to the human community as the greatest of all dangers: a threat greater than 9.2 billion unrestained human consumers on Earth in 2050; greater still than environs being relentlessly polluted by the unrestricted expansion of large-scale industrialization activities; even greater than the reckless dissipation of Earth’s finite resources and the irreversible loss of biodiversity worldwide. Silence is not only deafening; it is also destructive of everything we are intending to do well.
If now is not the right time for open acknowledgement, then when will that time come? What possible value can be derived from more denial and delay? Who or what can we possibly be awaiting?
The challenges loom before us here and now, I suppose. Then again, perhaps I am mistaken.
Sincerely,
Steve
Dear Perry,
Do you think the children will ask those in my not-so-great generation of elders, “When did you see the good scientific evidence of what everyone knew? Why did you not say anything, even though you did not know precisely what to do? How on Earth could you stand by, as if hysterically blind, willfully deaf and electively mute, and allow “…the greed…..of a thousand little kings…†who arrogantly see and proclaim themselves “masters of the universe†to precipitate the destruction of life as we know it and God’s Creation in the early years of Century XXI?”