Gloomy scenario

On the occasion of his 75th birthday, the internationally famed physicist and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, of Cambridge University, expressed gloom and doom about the future of planet Earth and the people living on it.

In a rare television interview conducted with him by BBC last week, Hawking expressed pessimism about the future of mankind and planet Earth because of two hypotheses he strongly believes in. 

One is his conclusion that our planet is heading to a “hothouse” trajectory that would turn it into a planet similar to Venus because of the irreversible climate change factors that mankind has recklessly embarked on.

What tipped the balance in the direction of the Doomsday scenario in Hawking’s mind is US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate change accord.

“We are close to the tipping point,” warned Hawking, “where global warming became irreversible.”

He said that “Trump’s action [withdrawal from the Paris agreement] could push the Earth over the brink, to be one like Venus with a temperature of 250°C and raining sulphuric acid”.

Hawking went on to explain his fears, saying that “climate change is one of the great dangers we face”, and it is one we can prevent if we act now. 

By denying the evidence of climate change and puling out of the Paris climate change agreement, Donald Trump will cause avoidable environmental change to our beautiful planet, endangering the natural world, for us and our children”.

Hawking’s fears go beyond the climate change crisis. He fears that human beings have built greed and aggression in the human genome.

According to Hawking, human being have a genetic predisposition to promote conflicts and acts of aggression.

One does not need to go too far to observe this unfortunate endowment; wars and bloodshed have been associated with the human race ever since man started walking on Earth.

Wherever one looks, aggression and armed conflicts have been the mainstay of human behaviour.

There is no recorded time in history, ancient or contemporary, when peace reigned supreme for a long time in the world.

This genetic trait, Hawking concluded, will eventually destroy man and life, especially when military technology has expanded to monstrous proportions.

The Cambridge scientist concluded that the only escape for the human race is to colonise outer space, but assuming that technology will be advanced enough to help us establish colonies in outer space, the proposition that mankind has the inborn trait to be self destructive means that it will follow man wherever he goes, a scary proposition.