The mariner is Amos. The mariner is Chicken Little. The mariner is John Malthus. Woe will be cast upon us! The Lord shall end the days of Israel! The sky is falling! There will be no food!

It seems no one cares that the Holocene extinction will end the existence of humans within the lifetime of three or four generations. As spoken before, the mariner is befuddled. Perhaps Stanford University, world class environmental scientists, Food and Water Watch, World Wide Fund for Nature and dozens of similar organizations around the world are wrong. Perhaps 90% of the world’s scientists are wrong. Perhaps 400 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere is nothing more than an empty fact. Perhaps the warmest decade since records began is good fortune. Perhaps the rising seas, rising at Fibonacci speeds every decade, are good for sea life. Perhaps depleted aquifers will be good for life in general. Perhaps longer droughts, especially in the US, will provide more sunny days for picnics.

The mariner suspects imminent extinction is too big a pill for mankind to swallow. The event is beyond imagination. It is more surreal than the silliest science fiction movie. Extinction is a confrontation that has no answer except to wait and see. And so we shall wait and see. And it will be too late.

Ancient Mariner