Hi everyone. In my last post, I talked about the Paris Climate Agreement. Today I want to talk about humankind and how much time we have left on Earth. About a month ago, physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking said that unless we colonize another planet in the next hundred years, humankind will not survive. He predicted this based on 4 possibilities: Nuclear Warfare- In the 1980’s during the height of the cold war, only the US and Russia had nuclear weapons. But now many countries have that capability and our aggressive nature could lead to nuclear warfare which would destroy us. Global Warming- This goes back to the Paris agreement. Mr. Trump has said that it is a hoax. But there are definitely signs of global warming and that humans are the ones responsible. Now many people say that our models could be wrong, but what if they are right? We need to take some deliberate steps to reduce/reverse global warming. Also, by the end of this century, i.e. in the year 2100, human population is predicted to be 20 billion. We are probably going to run out of space to live and food to eat especially because we are destroying forests and open land to make room for housing. Man Made Viruses- Decoding the human genome is a great advance. We can now figure out what genes are responsible for diseases. But we still don’t know a lot about genes. What if we create microorganisms that are resistant to existing medicines? They could wipe out our race. Robots-Advances in Artificial Intelligence could lead to more advanced weapons. Robots could take over kind of like in the Terminator movies.

But Mr. Hawking also says that he is an optimist and that human beings can survive longer if we recognize all these dangers and take steps to manage them.

Please let me know what you think.