Never in the history of humankind has the blindingly obvious been ignored with such obviously high risk. Never have the cautious and persistent warnings of medical and biological scientists been so spectacularly and swiftly vindicated.
It is genuinely weird. In the next few days an immensely sophisticated piece of technological kit that has taken years of ingenuity and sophistication to conceive and manufacture – the James Webb Space Telescope – will be rocketed into space to peer into the depths of the universe to examine the nature of its origins. Meanwhile, staring us all in the face, is the obvious fact that the human species is playing roulette with its own viability.
We are not now talking about the global environment, where the refusal to invest sufficiently in measures to lower the rate of climate warming is exasperating. At least we can all agree it won’t be easy.
