The dinosaurs walked the earth for 160 million years before they got wiped out when a piece of debris left over from the creation of the solar system collided with the planet, changing weather conditions so drastically that they couldn't survive. The disappearance of the great lizards allowed mammals, then, little squeaky things that hid in holes and scurried through the branches, to evolve and eventually take over. But no species, no matter how powerful—or how cunning—has a lease on the planet. No guarantees. Even humans, with the intelligence they are so proud of, can be wiped out the same way the dinosaurs were. Only a few weeks ago, a chunk of rock the size of Texas passed across earth's orbit, missing it by only a few hundred thousand miles. That's a very near miss, and it's my understanding (and I try to keep up on these things) that astronomers didn't even see it coming. A collision like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs could happen at any time. So we are no safer than the dinosaurs. But—unlike the dinosaurs, we have it within our power to alter our environment in a number of ways, any of which could be sufficient to cause our own extinction.

Anyone who knows anything about meteorology and other planetary sciences knows this. There have been examples in the past, when whole societies have wiped themselves off the map due to their lack of foresight. They caused their own Collapse.

And nowhere is it written that this kind of catastrophe cannot happen on a planetary scale. It has happened before. Venus, our "sister planet" is the way it is because of (and where have we heard this before?) a runaway greenhouse effect.

We are supposed to be an intelligent species. But if we continue in our dull-witted complacency and don't face the all-too-obvious facts and use that intelligence—and damned soon—humannity may not survive for many more centuries.

If, indeed, that long.

Don Firth