One of the smartest people of our time is ushering a major warning, and for some reason, so few people seem to be aware of it. The planet is heating up; we're using our planet's resources quicker than we can figure out alternatives, and our population is increasing exponentially. These are all things that we all know, but what are we doing about it? Given the circumstances, how much longer can we exist as this? Well, according to Stephen Hawking, not long. He has recently announced that the world as we know it will not exist much longer with the path we have put ourselves on.
There are two ways we could meet our demise he says, if not first by nuclear extinction then by the consequences of our mistreatment of our planet. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million," Stephen Hawking said. Either way, we can't undo the actions that have led us to this point, but Hawking, calling himself an optimist, offers us a way out. He says, "Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space." It sounds like a science fiction novel, but Hawking is not letting that affect the gravity of his message.
Hawking claims that the frequency of such instances like the Cuban Missile Crisis is likely to increase in the coming years if the destruction of our own planet doesn't take us over first. According to the Federation of American Scientists, there are still about 22,600 hidden nuclear weapons scattered around the planet and nearly 7,700 of them are still operational. And given the relations happening amongst people in the world right now, how long until one of the thousands of nuclear weapons is put to use? Is anyone going to listen to him? As a theoretical physicist, Hawking has proposed numerous new ideas and theories that the world has not only respected but accepted as well. But now that he is speaking this particularly scary truth, no one seems to want to support him.
But not only is he calling attention to an issue, that the planet is dying and the interrelations of humankind could very well lead to our own demise, he is offering a solution. As of now, the human race is not capable of stretching to the stars to further our existence, but in the years it will take for us to meet our demise, we could have already saved ourselves. Its more of a question as to if we can decide whether we should try to make things work with the given circumstances on our planet, or invest all of our time in finding a new home. In a universe that is constantly expanding outwards, with infinite density, there must be somewhere else for us to go. But in order for us to move together and find a new home or save this on, we have to come to some union. We must move together. We must be aware. Everyone must know. We have to all be aware of our conditions and the possibilities for our existence.
Humankind was born on earth, but will it die here also? How long can we exist by constantly using but never fixing?
Question it. Think about it. Talk about it.