Well that's a crock of shit. There is absolutely no evidence presented in that article that suggests human history is drawing to a close. Chomsky's main points are: 1) failure of states in the middle east can be extrapolated to the rest of the world and 2) climate change is causing mass extinctions. Neither of these ideas can be in any way taken to imply human civilization is coming to a close. 1. Failure of the states in the middle east can be extrapolated to the rest of society. This is ridiculous. No one will ever claim that the collapse of any state signals the end of history - did mankind's narrative end when rome fell? Societies come and go, but they leave legacies which future societies build on. Perhaps someday the west will fall (which, I might add, the collapse of the middle east has no bearing on), but new civilization will rise from the ashes. They'll puzzle out our instruction manuals and textbooks, reeducate themselves, and reach greater heights than we ever have. Much of modern math and science is founded on the work of muslims, regardless of the quality of the middle east today that will always be true. Architecture, philosophies and government systems invented by the Romans and Greeks have been refined and are still used today, despite the state of the Greek economy or the fall of Rome. The end of a state is not the erasure of its progress. Additionally, extrapolation is a terrible practice that almost always leads to misguided conclusions. One would expect Chomsky to know this. 2. Climate change is causing mass extinctions and raising the sea level, so human civilization will fall because... it just will, okay? Chomsky's reasoning here is tenuous to the point of nonexistence. I'm not denying climate change poses significant challenges to future generations, but challenges do not automatically equate with failure as the author implies. The generations facing those challenges (depleted resources, rising sea levels, loss of arable land, etc...) will be better equipped to solve them than any iteration of humanity before them. Rising seas can be held back with walls (see: Netherlands, New Orleans) and new farming techniques can be created. Nature will adapt as it always has and rise from its ashes - humanity is far from the greatest threat life has overcome. And renewable resources are being improved constantly, when all the oil is gone and they become our only source of fuel, you can bet your ass society will figure out how to make it work. In conclusion, Chomsky's full of shit. Failing states in the middle east in no way indicate collapse of society, and neither does climate change. I think he's a bitter defeatist at this point.
Actually I would argue that we are, by a long shot. Sure you can say, what about asteroids/volcanoes that caused bottlenecks -- but that was a very different situation. There have been times when c.95% of species were destroyed, but those times were actually good for diversity and evolution. The bottom line is that, yes, nature is "adapting," but not in a healthy way. There's a term in biology called the filtering effect, the essence of which is that nature has adapted by deleting species -- our presence has forced tenuous (and not so tenuous) species to extinction and filtered all but the most adaptable (to us!) species. But no astonishing outburst of evolutionary creativity will follow. Anyway, I don't like Noam Chomsky so I'm probably not gonna bother reading this, and thanks for convincing me of that. But mass extinction horrifies me more than almost every other world problem combined, so it's perhaps not to be dismissed lightly. We'll survive it, in the short term, but in the long run it's incredibly bad for homo sapiens. [Also - "Rising seas can be held back with walls (see: Netherlands, New Orleans)" - this is only partially true in a handful of places and will not at all be a viable solution in regard to predicted sea level increases in 100-200 years.] EDIT: I read the article, because why not, and it was not what I was expecting. Much shorter and more vapid.Nature will adapt as it always has and rise from its ashes - humanity is far from the greatest threat life has overcome.