In October 2024, mariner wrote a post in response to a challenge to describe ‘Armageddon’, a frequent term he uses to describe the future. Copied from that post, though not fully annotated, are the four elements :

֎ Most imminent would be nuclear war,
֎ Government would yield to oligarchical economies reminiscent of the early Persian Empire.
֎ Worldwide collapse of economics due to global warming – both the restorative cost and the great reduction of natural resources.
֎ Most distant would be the usurpation of the human species by electronic intelligence.

He was reminded of this post and its four elements yesterday when he watched a podcast about the state of available resources today. The guest made the following statement:

“If every person on the entire planet lived the lifestyle of American Citizens, it would require three planets.”

So many, many times mariner has lamented the extinction of tens of thousands of species due to human disruption and consumption of the biosphere. So often he has addressed the amount of land, energy, people and industrial cost that exists between a cow and a McDonald’s hamburger. So often he has lamented the excessive human population living twice as long as was intended by its genome.

Contemporary news around the world is driven by one or two of the items defining Armageddon but the truth is, the human presence is feeling the slow but growing constriction on survivability. Are we soon to join other extinct species?

A simple but telling example that has been around for a long time is successful capitalism. It works fine until there is not enough to go around. Classism emerges and social standards are denied for most of the population. This is the planet’s way of saying, “Okay, enough is enough.”

Where will we find another two planets to solve the human issue?

Ancient Mariner