Time Is Running Out, We’d Better Slow Down

There are lots of articles, books, presentations, podcasts, and videos that point to a rapidly shortening of time before a cataclysmic future overwhelms us. We hear that by 2050, and perhaps by 2030, we need to have reduced our dependence upon fossil fuels significantly. We read that, if we don’t do something urgently, then one-third of species on the Earth will be extinct by 2100. We look at the increasing polarisation around the world and fear for the possibility of another world war, and note with terror the likelihood that such a war could include nuclear weapons.

Or, perhaps we think of ourselves. Each birthday reminds us that we are one year older, one year closer to the end of our time on Earth. Yet, there are many things we still want to do, much we wish to accomplish and achieve.

Time is running out.

We must act with urgency.

We gotta do something, and fast.

We must complete our bucket list.

We have to save the planet.

We have to reduce carbon emissions. We have to transition to green technology soon.

Each of these sentiments are understandable. Yet, more than likely, they are unhealthy and unwise. Speeding up might get us there faster, but when we get there we will find that it is not where we wanted to be or what we expected.

Just look at the current situation we are in with carbon emissions. It can be argued that we have got to this position because we wanted to hurry up. We built, purchased, and drove private motorcars because we wanted to get from one place to another quicker. We tapped into the stored sunlight of fossil fuels so that we could more rapidly heat our homes and cook our meals. Those same fossil fuel power stations enabled the elites of the world to more quickly build their fortunes.

The mobile phone, too, is a go faster piece of technology. We can more quickly contact anyone, anywhere on the planet. We can send text, photographs, and documents at the speed of light. That’s fast! Yet, those same phones have presented us with numerous problems; e-waste, cyber-bullying, cognitive decline, and the modern disease of nomophobia – the fear of not having access to a mobile phone.

The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh names all this as Habit Energy which he describes as,

"We are always running and rushing. It has become a habit, the norm of everyday living. We run all the time, during our sleep, the time we are supposed to be resting and regenerating our bodies. We can be worst enemies, in conflict with ourselves, and therefore, you can easily start conflict with others..."

It is exhausting us. It is exhausting the planet as well.

‘But surely we have to do something quickly in the face of imminent and mounting crises. We are in the midst of a predicament of massive proportions. We can’t sit back. We have to get on with it. We have to save the planet, and ourselves.’

I hear such sentiments every week.

And, we are responding to this predicament in exactly the way described. We are quickly digging up not only fossil fuels, but also minerals to power the green energy transition. The speed with which we are doing this has not reduced electricity consumption at all – it has simply added to it. We are using twice as much electricity today as we were at the turn of the century. Wind and solar electricity production is 1/3^rd of that increase. Wind and solar have added to the consumption, they have not displaced it. They are not proving to be alternatives at all.

What if we slowed down?

What if, as a friendly psychologist told me about four decades ago, we stopped awhile and smelt the roses?

At an individual level slowing down has been shown, in numerous studies, to lower our levels of anxiety and stress, improve our cognitive responses, enhance our connection and relationships with other people, and elevate our body’s ability to heal and recuperate. In short, slowing down is good for our well-being.

For the planet too, our slowing down would have tremendous benefit. We have vastly overshot the carrying capacity of Earth. Overshoot occurs when the Earth can no longer recover from the effects of human waste and pollution quicker than the waste and pollution is created. Overshoot is also when the Earth can no longer replenish the stores of forest, minerals, water, and other components of an eco-system faster than humans are extracting and exploiting those components.

We have been in this state of overshoot for many decades, and the rate of overshoot is increasing. Globally, we now require 1.6 Earths to satisfy our rate of extraction and levels of pollution. This figure (1.6 planets) is unevenly distributed around the world. If everyone lived as those in rich nations lived, we would need between three and six Earths to satisfy our consumption levels.

Slowing down would assist the Earth in restoring its balance immensely.

The Earth is always seeking to restore balance and homeostasis. But it needs time to do that. We could greatly assist that process by simply slowing down.

8,699,999 + 1

Ernst Haeckel's
"Tree of Life."
(note the position of MAN)

It is estimated that there are 8,699,999 animal species on Earth. Plus one; the species we call Homo sapiens.

That makes a total of 8.7 million species. Of these 8.7 million, it is thought that as many as 86% have not yet been discovered, let alone described. Yet, that number is only the animal species, a small fraction of all species.

If plant and microbial species are added into the count then the total number of species upon the Earth could be one trillion, or more.

Yet, that one species – Homo sapiens – has come to domesticate, dominate, or destroy many of the other species that share this planet with us.

Of all the mammals upon the Earth, we humans account for 34% of the total biomass. Mammals domesticated by us make up 62% of the total biomass. That means that just 4% of the Earth’s total mammalian biomass is made up of wild mammals.¹

Just 4%! The biomass of wild land mammals has declined by an estimated 85% since humans emerged onto the planet. 85%! The numbers are staggering.

Humanity has also domesticated chickens, which are not mammals. What about them? Well, that is a sordid tale as well. Domesticated chickens make up 71% of the total bird mass on the planet.

What of the number of species we have destroyed?

It is estimated that the average length of time for a species to exist on the Earth, before becoming extinct, is between one and ten million years, with most going extinct at the lower end of this range. The extinction rate, since the arrival of humans, is assessed as being between 100 and 1,000 times the natural background extinction rate. Another staggering number.

All the numbers and figures cited above are because of that one extra species added to the 8,699,999 total for all animal species. Just one! Yet another staggering number.

How did, and why should, one species, amongst 8.7 million animal species, come to domesticate, dominate, and destroy so many creatures?

Within western cultures the origin can perhaps be traced back to its genesis. Yes – Genesis. The first book of the Bible. Whether a person today, living a westernized lifestyle, is a religious follower of the Bible is immaterial. Western culture has its roots firmly embedded within Judeo-Christian belief systems.

Genesis 1, verses 26-28 twice repeats the phrase that humans are to ‘have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air…and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’² This word dominion has for some two and a half thousand years often been interpreted as meaning mankind has the right to subdue, control, and exploit the creatures of the earth.

Over the past couple of centuries this interpretation has come under scrutiny, with many Biblical scholars and linguists advising that the original Hebrew words limited the interpretation to meaning a stewardship or governance.

Notwithstanding the debates within Biblical scholarship, the right of dominance is the one that has firmly entrenched itself within western worldviews. By extension, this right of dominance and control led those worldviews to a belief in human exceptionalism – the belief that humans are different from, and superior to, other forms of life.

This Biblically mandated role for humankind remained a foundation of the human journey for many centuries. It was not until the middle of the 19^th century that the Biblical position on the place of humans was challenged. Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species, published in 1859, introduced humans to the Theory of Evolution. But even this theory did not dislodge the belief in human exceptionalism. If anything, it gave it pseudo-scientific credibility.

The German naturalist, Ernst Haeckel, was fascinated by Darwin’s ideas and actively promoted them. In doing so, Haeckel depicted evolution as a tree with man (sic) placed at the apex of the tree, insinuating that humanity was the inevitable and only possible outcome for evolution (see graphic). This depiction still has favour today. Human exceptionalism remains embedded within our westernized worldview.

With two such powerful influences upon westernised worldviews – the Biblical one and the evolutionary tree one – it is little wonder that the 8.7 million species upon the Earth have become domesticated, dominated, and destroyed by just one species – us.

A final comment should be made about this one species. Yes, we are one species amongst 8.7 million, but we don’t all share the same worldviews. The worldviews summarised above have been developed over millennia within western cultures. They are not shared by many indigenous and nature-based cultures. However, the process of colonisation, beginning in the late 15^th century, has all but eradicated any other worldview.

Human exceptionalism remains a dominant view throughout the world.

8,699,999 creatures continue to suffer because of this view.

Notes:

1. All data from https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass  accessed 18 November 2025

2. Text from Holy Bible, New King James Version, Genesis 1: 26-28

Voyage Without Contact

On 5^th September 1977 Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Today (13^th November 2025) Voyager 1 will reach one light-day from Earth. One light-day is close to 26 billion kilometres. That’s a long way.

Yet, in astronomical terms it is not far at all. Although Voyager 1 has gone past the orbits of the outer planets of our solar system, it remains within the gravitational realm of the Solar System. A region of Space, known as the Oort Cloud, is considered to mark the edge of the Solar System’s gravitational influence. This vast “cloud” is where many of the comets that we see are thought to originate. Voyager 1 is not expected to reach this “cloud” for another few centuries and then remain within the cloud for perhaps thousands of years.

When Voyager 1 was launched we had not yet confirmed the existence of any planets outside the Solar System. It was not until 15 years later (in 1992) that the first exoplanet (planet outside the Solar System) was confirmed – and that planet was 2,300 light-years from Earth. Now, over 6,000 exoplanets have been confirmed to exist, with less than 4% of these likely to be Earth-like. However, current estimates put the number of Earth-like exoplanets in our galaxy somewhere in the range from 300 million to 40 billion.

But, contacting any life living on such exoplanets is highly unlikely.

The nearest known Earth-like exoplanet is Proxima b, circling the star Proxima Centauri, part of a triple star system in the constellation Centaurus. Proxima Centauri is 4.25 light-years from us, making it the nearest star to our own star – the Sun.

That doesn’t sound too far, does it – only a bit over 4 light years away.

However, do the mathematics. If Voyager 1 headed directly to Proxima Centauri, then it would arrive there in approximately 74,500 years – 74,452 years more than it has already travelled.

So, don’t keep watching your phone for updates on its arrival.

Now, consider this. Suppose Proxima b does have intelligent life living there. Suppose further, that those Proximians also launched a space probe, with the same technology we had, on the same day we did – 48 years ago. Then, it will be another 37,250 years before the two probes pass by each other in Deep Space.

Here’s yet another thought experiment. Suppose that a space probe emanating from Proxima b were to arrive on our planet Earth tomorrow. Then, that probe would have been launched 74,500 years ago. Can you recollect the state of the world all those years ago?

74,500 years ago we were sharing the planet with another member of the genus Homo – Homo neanderthalensis. Homo sapiens (as we came to be called) had left Africa, was about to arrive in Australia, and it was to be several thousand years before the Americas or the islands of the Pacific were settled. We had invented stone tools and were leaving our marks in forms of artwork on cave walls.

All those years ago we certainly had not invented the technology required to build a machine like Voyager 1 and be able to send it off into space.

This leaves us with two big questions.

Question 1: Are we ever likely to reach the stars?

Question 2: Are inhabitants from other star systems ever likely to reach us?

The answer to both questions has to be: Not likely, or at least with a very low probability.

That answer leads to two more important questions.

When are we going to realise that this is the planet we have, the only one we will ever have available to us?

When are we going to treat this Earth as our (only) home? 

Known For All The Wrong Reasons

One of 500 Dafur refugee children's drawings
from the Waging Peace collection

Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, Franco, Kai-Shek, Mao, Hussein – all well-known names. Most likely though, they are known for the wrong reasons. Asked to associate single words with any of these names and many people would come up with a list looking something like this: dictator, despot, genocide, holocaust, brutal etc.

We know their names because of the atrocities committed under their rule.

Stalin is estimated to have had 40-60 million killed during his regime.

Mao Tse Tung had somewhere between 45 million and 75 million killed whilst in power.

During Hitler’s Reich the number of deaths is estimated at 17-20 million.

Chiang Kai-Shek murdered about 10 million.

Approximately 2 million were killed during Hussein’s rule. Pol Pot’s Cambodian rule killed a similar number.

The number killed during Idi Amin’s reign is indeterminate but estimated at between 100,000 to 500,000. Franco, in Spain, is responsible for about 400,000 deaths.

Those eight names, all from the 20^th century, were responsible for at least a conservative estimate of 116 million deaths. The death toll could have been as high as 170 million. And that number is only by those eight. Others that could be mentioned are: the dictator Milosevic, and the genocides of Rwanda, Dafur, Armenia, and the Rape of Nanking.

More than 116 – 170 million wrong reasons for knowing their names.

In 1948 the Genocide Convention was drafted and gained 153 state parties to it (as of February 2025.) The Convention defines genocide as the ‘… intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group…’  The Convention includes in the rubric of genocide not simply outright killing, but also the causing of bodily or mental harm, deliberately imposing conditions of life that will bring about destruction, preventing births within the group, and forcibly transferring children from the group to another group.

When genocide is considered in the light of this Convention, then the total numbers given above are likely to rise by a considerable number of orders of magnitude.

This definition also enables us to recognise a number of other historical events as genocide. The colonisation (including slaughter) of native Americans by European invaders from the 16^th century onwards, the Atlantic slave trade, the stolen generation in Australia.

Genocide did not end with the signing of the Genocide Convention, and genocide did not end with the shift from the 20^th to the 21^st century. Genocide is continuing.

We can name the names of those contributing to genocide today.

They also will be known for all the wrong reasons when the history of the 21^st century is written.