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Summary
In his talk, Noam Chomsky emphasizes the urgency of addressing environmental degradation and the critical decisions that humanity must make to secure a viable future. He outlines the influence of major fossil fuel corporations and political institutions like NATO in perpetuating environmental harm. Chomsky underscores the role of human rationality and morality in preventing self-destruction, comparing the current crisis to historical moments such as the agricultural and industrial revolutions. He introduces the Fermi Paradox, speculating on whether intelligent civilizations inevitably self-destruct. Chomsky calls on the current generation to utilize available means to avoid catastrophic outcomes and ensure the survival of life on Earth.
Highlights
Decisions made now will influence human history's path, or whether there will even be one. ⏳
Fossil fuel industries and political structures like NATO contribute significantly to environmental degradation. 🏭
Human rationality and moral judgment are essential in avoiding self-annihilation. 🧠
Historically, humans lived in harmony with nature, but technological revolutions increased destructive capacity. 📜
The Fermi Paradox suggests civilizations may self-destruct; we're experimenting to see if we will too. 🚀
Today's generation has the tools to avert disaster but must act quickly to save humanity and other life forms. 🌍
Key Takeaways
The urgency of decision-making in ensuring a viable future for human history. ⏳
The detrimental role of fossil fuel industries and NATO in environmental degradation. 🏭
Human intelligence and morality as crucial in averting self-destruction. 🧠
Comparison of the current crisis to pivotal historical transformations. 📜
The existential question posed by the Fermi Paradox: do intelligent civilizations always self-destruct? 🚀
A call to action for the current generation to lead in preventing disaster. 🌍
Overview
In an urgent and provocative speech, Noam Chomsky addresses the audience about humanity's critical juncture, emphasizing the life-altering decisions needed to avert environmental catastrophe. He discusses the calculated efforts by energy conglomerates and political entities like NATO that threaten organized human life. Chomsky argues that the answers to these crises lie within our grasp, but time is running short to implement them.
Chomsky's talk also reflects on the marvels and perils of human intelligence, particularly our capacity for thought and language. He delves into the historical context, tracing how humankind's interactions with nature have evolved, especially through the agricultural and industrial revolutions. He identifies a gap between our technological prowess to destroy and our moral ability to contain such impulses, a gap that has widened alarmingly in recent decades.
He concludes by posing an existential question, invoking the Fermi Paradox—the unsettling idea that civilizations might inherently self-destruct. Chomsky challenges the current generation to confront this hypothesis, urging them to take immediate, decisive action to secure a sustainable future, reminding them that the tools to prevent such a dire destiny are within reach, provided there is the will to use them.
The End of Organized Humanity Noam Chomsky Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 it's uh difficult to overestimate the importance of this conference other events like it in fact impossible to do so there's no need for this audience to take time to discuss the fact that we are at a unique moment in human history
00:30 - 01:00 decisions that must be made right now will determine the course of future history if there is to be any human history which is very much in doubt there is a narrow window in which we must Implement measures to avert cataclysmic destruction of the environment measures that are quite feasible as shown in your invaluable
01:00 - 01:30 work and that of others the facts are clear enough they rais two questions one of them immediate and compelling the other probing more deeply I'll return to the latter after a few words on the immediate crisis which is severe the crisis is coming to aead in
01:30 - 02:00 Washington in the most powerful state in world history what happens in Washington now will determine the fate of the world for reasons too obvious to review what is happening right now in Washington should cause profound concern it's not Secret some of it was exposed in the lead
02:00 - 02:30 article in the New York Times last Sunday probably saw it fine report by energy environment correspondent Carol devp Davenport she reviews a long carefully executed campaign to destroy organized human life on Earth it's now outrageous
02:30 - 03:00 comment for which I do not apologize because it is completely accurate the campaign has been carried out meticulously for years by the Energy System it's an enormous institutional structure consists of course of the fossil fuel Industries Banks other financial institutions substanti part of the legal
03:00 - 03:30 community and other centers of private and state power it also has an international base it's called NATO it's little known that post Cold War NATO forly undertook an expanded Mission quoting it to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas
03:30 - 04:00 that is directed for the west and more generally to protect sea roots used by tankers and other crucial infrastructure of the Energy System I'm quoting NATO Secretary General y hope Sheffer outlining NATO's Mission at a NATO conference well the campaign has a political base in the
04:00 - 04:30 Republican party particularly since 2009 the year before presidential candidate John McCain included a climate blank in his campaign program was insufficient given the gravity of the situation but it was a start Republicans and Congress were also exploring such options the huge coch Brothers energy
04:30 - 05:00 conglomerate that wind of this quickly went into action for years they'd been working hard to ensure that the party never veered from climate denialism and they weren't going to tolerate this deviation they launched a huge Juggernaut bribery intimidation an enormous lobbying campaign fake citizens group and all out
05:00 - 05:30 assault the efforts were successful you know the consequences I don't have to run through them with this in mind let's return to Washington today and Davenport's column on Sunday reviewing the long and carefully planned campaign of the energy system and its ramified
05:30 - 06:00 Associates now reaching consummation the Supreme Court now properly reactionary is about to consider a case which if approved will constitute a major step towards preventing the government from enacting measures to restrict the use of fossil fuels or to limit the effects of environment Al
06:00 - 06:30 destruction if approved it will also serve as a precedent for others that are winding their way through the legal system relying on a variety of intricate artifices designed by the high pric law firms that are making their own crucial contributions to the project of destroying organized life on Earth note
06:30 - 07:00 again the extremism of this charge which is mitigated by the fact that it's plain truth campaign has received a shot in the arm from the increase in gasoline prices the major contributor to inflation accelerated by Putin's criminal invasion of Ukraine the Euphoria in the executive offices of the fossil fuel companies is
07:00 - 07:30 matched only by what you see in the offices of the weapons producers they no longer have to face the annoyance of fending off environmental activists they're now praised for pouring poisons into the atmosphere and urg to do more accelerating the march to destruction
07:30 - 08:00 in a sane world the reaction would be different we would seize the opportunity to move much more rapidly to sustainable energy and save coming Generations from a miserable fate the temporary problem of infestation severe indeed can be overcome for those who are suffering from it but fiscal measures and more
08:00 - 08:30 Beyond so options for example include turning the fossil fuel producers into a public utility Economist Robert pollen has done some of the main work on climate issues has shown that the fossil fuel producers could literally be purchased by the government for a fraction of the sums that the treasure Department poured into
08:30 - 09:00 compensating financial institutions for losses during the early stages the pandemic well there are many options and we're not limited to those that cater to the existing Energy System and the Grim fate that it is designing for the human species quite consciously with meticulous planning now there's a lot more to say about
09:00 - 09:30 these topics which I'm sure will be elaborated in many productive ways in the coming sessions I'll leave them here and just turn briefly to the deeper questions questions about human nature still more generally about higher intelligence humans have unique talent
09:30 - 10:00 no comparison anywhere in the animal world the two most sent of these are thought and language which are intimately linked as far back as Classical Greece classical India two and a half Millennia ago it was recognized that language is what generates thought and thought in an IR recognizable
10:00 - 10:30 is what is generated by language well these talents enable humans to reflect on what they're doing to plan for the future to evaluate the choices and decisions to consider the likely consequences and how they rank on a moral scale one special feature of humans that we can and should contemplate
10:30 - 11:00 is their capacity for Destruction that was evident long before modern humans appeared two to 300,000 years ago the flick of an eye an evolutionary time one indication of the capacity of protohumans for Destruction is the steady decline in the weight of mammals as the larger ones were eliminated by more talented killers
11:00 - 11:30 of course everything changed when modern humans appeared on the scene not at once for most of their history Homo sapiens lived in harmony with nature as those who survived the depredations of the powerful still do precariously the Agricultural Revolution
11:30 - 12:00 10,000 years ago brought changes the industrial revolution of the past past few hundred years even more so the question concerned posed by this history concerns a dread G Gap that obtains between our technical capacity to destroy and our moral capacity to control this
12:00 - 12:30 impulse that question burst into public Consciousness on August 6th 1945 the date said no one my age is likely to forget I certainly don't that day taught two staric lessons first human capacity had reached the level where it could destroy everything
12:30 - 13:00 not yet but it soon would and in fact it did a few years later in 1953 when the United States then the Soviet Union exploded thermonuclear weapons the second lesson was that very few seem to care remember that vly the horrible news was announced there was relief that the awful war was over then everyone went
13:00 - 13:30 back to their business The Dread Gap was immense was not known then but the same years marked a sharp acceleration and destruction human destruction of the environment so sharp that the world geological organization a few years ago identified those years as the onset of a
13:30 - 14:00 new geological epic called the anthropos scene that opens a new Gap a new phase in the dread gap between technical capacity to destroy and moral capacity to control this impulse well the immensity of the Gap is revealed rightly by the recent exposure of the intense campaign by core institutions of our
14:00 - 14:30 society to destroy organized human life on Earth and with it the millions of other species that we are wanly destroying in the ongoing six Extinction you're all famous you're all of course familiar with the famous Dooms Day clock said every year by a
14:30 - 15:00 distinguished panel of analysts who assess the state of the world set the hands of the clock a certain distance from Midnight meaning termination the clock was first set in 1947 7 Minutes to Midnight 1953 when humans had demonstrated the capacity to destroy everything the men
15:00 - 15:30 at hand was set at 2 Minutes to Midnight since then its ulated at recognition of the threat grew analysts began to take global warming into account Midway until president Trump's term in office the minut at hand was again sit at 2 Minutes to Midnight first time since 1953
15:30 - 16:00 by the end of his term the analysts abandon minutes turn to seconds 100 seconds to midnight where the clock stands now the clock will be set again in January good case can be made that the second hand should be moved closer to midnight the primary concerns have been the growing threat of nuclear war and the failure to prevent lethal Global
16:00 - 16:30 Heating in the last few years a new concern has been added the deterioration of the Arena of rational discourse which is all too apparent unless we can use our capacities for thought in an arena of rational discourse there's no hope of closing the dread Gap in time to savor
16:30 - 17:00 ourselves there is a still deeper question which merits a final word concerns the famous fmy Paradox in brief where where are they FY was a distinguished astrophysicist he knew that there are huge number of planets that have the conditions to sustain life that lead to higher intelligence and that are within
17:00 - 17:30 the reach of advanced human communication but with the most assiduous search we can find no trace of their existence so where are they well one response that has been seriously proposed and cannot be dismissed is that higher intelligence has developed innumerable times but has proven to be
17:30 - 18:00 lethal it discovered the means for self Annihilation but did not develop the moral capacity to prevent it perhaps that's even an inherent feature of what we call higher intelligence well we are now engaged in an experiment to determine whether this Grim principle holds of modern humans there's not much
18:00 - 18:30 time to find the answer for more precisely to determine the answer as we will do one way or another that cannot be avoided one way or another we will determine the answer or more accurately you will determine the answer like it or not Fate has placed the current
18:30 - 19:00 generation in a position will where it will determine whether we march on the disaster or whether the human species and much other life on Earth can be saved from a terrible Indescribable fate the means are available you're in the lead in developing them and demonstrating how they can be imp mented it's an
19:00 - 19:30 incredible challenge there's been nothing like it in human history which will proceed to an in glorious end unless you can lead the way to facing and overcoming the challenges that lie before us thank you