Secular Apocalypse

The secular Apocalypse was discussed frequently in the “blog” over a decade ago. Overpopulation was found to be the catalyst for all ills of humanity including famine, pollution, resource wars, global warning, global climate change, mass extinction, and the potential for thermonuclear war. At this stage of the game, overpopulation is being exacerbated by the exponentially increasing ecological and environmental “footprints” of each and every individual. The current world chimpo sapien population exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet by at least five or six times.

The recent international focus on climate change, while newsworthy, is “too little, too late.” Much of the hullabaloo is simply useless posturing anyway. The problem is already out of control and irreversible. Climate scientists have been shortening the timeline to catastrophe every year. Now, 2040 is when the “shit hits the fan.” Next year, 2030 will be “time of the end.” In other words, game over!

Nothing is currently being done to mitigate the causes of climate change. Rather, careless human activity appears to be increasing. The Great Prophet, Ernest Becker, identified the cause of all destructive human activity. The Ernest Becker Foundation provides a summary:

Death anxiety and climate change sit uncomfortably side-by-side. The warming of the earth poses a fundamental threat to everything we love. Extreme weather patterns, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels leave no continent untouched. Many communities already feel the impact of climate change. Water supplies are shrinking, forests are burning, crop yields are dropping, and oceans are becoming more acidic. We have marred the Earth, and as Becker cautioned, our fear of death has played a role in this. 

Becker argued that death denial prompts us to “assure the complete triumph of man over nature.” Nature is riddled with reminders of our corporeality, so maintaining order and control over nature creates the illusion that we can avoid death. We extend power over nature through heroic feats of science, technology, and economic growth. We cut our grass and fill our shopping carts to set ourselves apart from nature, which allows us to feel as though death is escapable. As Becker warned, immortality driven consumer desire, unfettered materialism, and exploitation of nature carry a dark underbelly: environmental destruction.

The inertia of global warming and climate change has long surpassed the ability to stop or reverse its course. In ten years, the landscape will be far different than its is today. In Hawai’i, the shorelines will recede with most of Waikiki submerged. The entire populations of Micronesia, Guam, Marshall Island, and Samoa will relocate to Hawai’i as “climate refugees” because their respective islands will be completely submerged. Globally, the effects will culminate in the feared secular Apocalypse.