Chantelle Leswell ’20J | Opinions Staff Writer
Earlier this week, I was looking up Stephen Hawking’s posthumous book “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” and was immediately taken back to my high school computer science teacher’s lectures on some of these big questions. Hawking’s book discusses artificial intelligence, a superhuman race and the potential end of humanity. Light stuff, right? I remember sitting in class around 2012, while my 70-something teacher assured us that Jeff Bezos was building an empire and working towards taking over the marketplace, shutting down high street stores entirely. His claims didn’t sound credible to me at the time — I was just trying to stay awake. But now I’m wishing I listened to him a little more intently.
Also in the news this past week, following the United Nations’ report on climate change, were various bizarre claims that our richest are working to colonize the planet Mars as we speak — a last-ditch attempt, it seems, to serve self-interests as the blue planet dies a painful death. Are these claims so far-fetched? Speaking of Jeff Bezos, Amazon hemorrhages approximately $1 million per annum to fund his “boyhood dream” company, BlueOrigin, that would ultimately sanction his move to outer space when things go south here. This isn’t just an opinions essay to call out Jeff Bezos — it’s no secret that Elon Musk is also obsessed with space travel and colonizing Mars in particular. Their positions on clinging onto profit at the expense of Earth itself is not unique among their class.
In the wake of our learning how dire the climate crisis is, it has been widely reported that just 100 corporations worldwide account for a little over 71% of carbon emissions. This is gut-wrenching to me for several obvious reasons. Not only does it make any individual effort feel futile (and the neoliberal ideology that targets blame largely at individuals all the more unpalatable,) it also leaves me with the very real understanding that the universe is offering up an ultimatum. Either our world leaders, fossil fuel investors and tech pioneers must stop ruthlessly pursuing profit and focus their energies undoing harm to the environment largely owed to capitalism, or we will be left, quite literally, with nothing.
Call me a cynic, but I see absolutely no way that these people, who gained power through recklessly and selfishly destroying the environment for personal gain, have any intentions of reforming their corporations enough to become sustainable — a sobering thought for the day. Nonetheless, we can take small comfort in knowing that some countries and companies are trying, and perhaps this will become the norm. More and more are pledging to reduce single-use plastic waste, while others have opted to ban use of those polymers entirely. Paris has just committed to one car-free Sunday per month, so these are some small victories at least.
Hearing the thoughts of the brilliant Hawking so shortly after his death feels both poignant and a little terrifying, especially following so closely behind such a dire warning from one of the most powerful humanitarian entities in the world. I can only hope that playing with rockets and dreaming of life on Mars take a little bit of a backseat in coming years for the people who essentially hold all of our lives in their silk-lined pockets.
