If we changed our priority to serving the earth and its species, rather than exploiting them, then there would be hope.

I think it was Joe Rogan in a comedy routine that commented on the view of Los Angeles from a plane. Paraphrasing.. It looks like a festering tumor on the landscape, oozing pus and growing larger every day. Perhaps Humanity is nothing more than the mold on bread.

"There is no point to intellectual and political work if one were a pessimist. Intellectual and political work require, nay demand, optimism."

brilliant article JIC! thx.

Yes, thanks for this great lecture. Pessimism is the ballast of thinking, draws attention to the implicit superstitious belief underneath irrational optimism: there is neither logical nor empirical basis for the religious eternalism of believing an invisible hand will protect its darling creatures.

As Agent Smith once said:

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It
came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that
you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively
develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you
humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until
every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is
to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet
that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human
beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we
are the cure

Wow, that is so true, it's scary.

I prefer this paradigm: http://www.deusto.com/ConceptOfParRe/