Pessimism for the future of the humankind is consequence of the analysis of its present state and deduction from it of the future. According to the essay 5, the fundamental perilous factors of the human evolution are the already excessive and rapidly growing volume of the humanity and its consumerism, with their problems.
The questions are whether can be imagined any means to avoid the danger, if it is possible and is not to0late yet to apply them, and whether something is being done in that matter.

Contents.- Life and mind.- Industrial revolution.- The greenhouse effect.- Two alternatives.- Space colonization.- Future fiction.

Life is existence of the immaterial part of live entities. It has its own laws beside those of material part. So life comes only from life. Therefore it moves animals or persons to strive for there life and transmit it before death to descendents. The general trend of life is towards the diversification by the increase of complexity, searching the progress by the method of trial and error. Effect of these factors is evident in comparison of primitive humans with cultured persons of some advanced countries, or of their primitive instruments with the actual technology.

Life of a person when awake is full of reactions to stimuli and of stimuli for desired reactions of other people. All these actions are influenced by the traits of the individual’s character. Some traits are general for the species and others are less common; they are innate or acquired.. Different persons have different combinations of traits, i.e. different characters. Different peoples have different average characters, product of their evolutions, which are product of the conditions of life and of the history, but depend also from the character of people.

Industrial revolution transformed profoundly the economy, social structure and average character of peoples. The ancient, basically rural, household family and barter economy was replaced by capitalist, industrial and mercantile. It commenced in England in the eighteenth century, and in the next, in continental Europe and then in other parts of the world. At present the humanity is discriminated in peoples of developed and developing countries.

The process of the industrial revolution was gradual transformation of the system of production and consumption. Before, they were from person to person: members of an agricultural family for the family and for the noble to whom they belonged, a skilled worker with his assistants for the person that ordered the object. Now production and supply of goods are realized generally by workers employed in enterprises, private and public, of all kinds: providers of raw materials and of services, producers of material and no material goods, commercial, financial; and any transfer of goods or services costs money.

In the past, life of peoples was in principle stable, the same from generation to generation, depending of the social class. It was considered normal, established by God. Now it is not so. At present any good or service can be bought if one has the money for it. Life is considered so agreeable as money one has for anything that may be wanted. And people generally want much more or better of what they have: good life, amusement and satisfaction of other desires; all of which is a way to the consumerism.

Funds for creation of enterprises are obtained by selling to public stocks, which have to render regularly appropriate interest. For it and profit for the owners of the enterprise is necessary to compete with rival enterprises by improving the quality or by the novelty of the product. So, consecutive progress of the medicinal industry and medicine, together with the improvement of conditions of life and work in advanced countries, produced considerable increase of the expectance of life, and with it acceleration of the growth of the humanity.

Industrialization was growing in profoundness and extension during one and a half century, but in only half a century, after the Second World War, it changed radically the mind of a great part of the humanity. At the same time began to appear consequences of the excess of people and of the consumerism.

At present most of work in the industry of developed countries is done by appropriate equipment. The respective staff has to prepare and control its function and maintain it in good condition. For it are required individuals, better young, intelligent, properly educated and with experience. In the developed countries are many people, apart of the retired and including the illegal immigrants, who do not satisfy them. In consequence many are poor. In the developing countries the situation ´may be even worse. Difference between the conditions of life of the prosperous and the poor people in developed countries and in cities of developing is great and conduces to hostility and disorders. Besides, concentrations of the unoccupied people are locations fit for drugs and criminality. And in case of common catastrophes are the poor who suffer much more.

Greenhouse effect is the growing negative consequences, considered in the Essay 5, due to the global increase of the temperature. That increase is produced by the increase of the carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere, caused by the progress of the industrialization in great developing countries. The problem is bad enough to induce UNO to treat it.. Target of the Kyoto protocol, ratified in 2005, was: to have at 2012 the level of carbon dioxide emission 5% smaller than in 1990. But global emission in 2008 was already 41 % above that of 1990. [i]

In 2005, for the international Scientific Symposium on Stabilization of Greenhouse Gas, the necessary limit to avoid the most serious effects of global warming was considered to be 2°C (3.6°F) above the pre-industrial level (1.4°C above the level at the date of Symposium). If action to reduce emissions is delayed by 20 years, rates of emission reduction may need to be 3 to 7 times greater for the above temperature level. [ii]

The main source of energy is combustion of fuels. It provides thermal energy which is used as such, or is converted into electrical. The best fuels for that are petrol and natural gas. However, it becomes already more difficult to find and exploit new sources of them. On the other hand, combustion of any fuel produces, by joining its carbon with oxygen, the carbon dioxide that goes to the atmosphere. Moreover, the atmosphere is polluted with the impurities of the combustibles.

Substitution in the production of electricity of thermal energy from fossil fuels by energy of nuclear fission of uranium permitted reduce in some countries the production of the carbon dioxide. However, uranium comes as mineral from beds that are not eternal; processes of its use produce radioactive waste of very difficult disposition, and a defect or error in a uranium power plant did become already a catastrophe for the environment.

Nuclear fusion power could be a better solution for the problems of reduction the greenhouse effect and for provision of the substance resource of energy. In the present year (2010) was initiated in the southern France construction of the 500MW “International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)” by EU and five partner countries. The overall cost of the project should be about 16 billion euros. By 2026/27 the reactor should generate significantly more power than the consumed, but a commercial fusion reactor would not appear before 2040 at the earliest. [iii] It is improbable that construction of corresponding power plants could be initiated before, and it will require much time and disposal of considerable capital. It means that help of nuclear fusion will not begin soon.

Target of the Kyoto Protocol (1997) was general 5% reduction of the emission of carbon dioxide gas for 2012. In the following years (up to end of 2010) the emission varied with the variations of the global economy, but increased with the progress of industrialization of the developing countries. In a scientific symposium (2005) was accepted a ceiling for the global temperature of 2º above the pre-industrial level (1.4º above the level at the time of symposium). According to Cancun Conference (Dec. 2010) the goal is maintain global warming below 2º (later below 1.5º); by 2020 rich countries must have reduced emissions of carbon dioxide 25% to 40% from the 1990 levels.[iv]

Population of our globe is distributed in many countries, differing politically, religiously, culturally, economically. People of each one of them care about own needs and convictions, maintained even at the cost of conflicts with others. But the reduction of the greenhouse effect requires organized global cooperation in spite of differences and sacrifices.

Two alternatives can be assumed. One that humanity would restrain the global warming before it reaches the level of catastrophic consequences. Life will continue as before for some time, may be except some limitations. Humankind will continue to grow and industry to progress to the next warming.

The other alternative is that efforts to restrain the warming would fail. According to speculative predictions, by 2050 cross-border climate-induced migration would be about 200-250 millions.[v] At the end of the century the warming may reach 4°C. Corresponding speculative predictions vary from salvation of the entire humanity to only 10% of it.[vi]

It is impossible to foresee how much would grow the warming, but it is possible to imagine more or less what would occur. Increase of the temperature will increase the melting of the glaciers, the deforestation and dryness of the earth’s surface. Existent deserts will become larger, and new ones will appear. Tropical regions will be the first to become inhabitable. People of those regions will have to migrate or to die North of Asia and of America will become warmer and the density of their population is relatively low. But they are territories of independent countriies. It is not very probable that they would admit immigrants without some kind of selection. .

When some territories will begin to become inhabitable, will increase the selected legal migration of their developed population, and of illegal of the udeveloped, what may produce conflicts between countries, even terrorist or military acts, up to the use of mass-destruction weapons.

Territories occupied by the agriculture, cattle breeding, forests,and the towns will begin to becom desert. However, not quite desert. There will remain operating extraction of minerals and fossil fuels, great industry and services, cultivation of plants and breeding of animals in greenhouses. Besides, plants and animals can be made somewhat more adapted to higher temperatures by doing it selectively or modifying the genome. Probably, a last some cities will remain also. People from the affected territories will migrate to those cities, creating consequent problems.

It is impossible to predict how much would be diminished the humanity, except that the catastrophe will be reducing its volume and the consumerism until the temperature does not fall under the critical level. The greenhouse effect will be stopped, or even reduced, for so long as the growing rest of humankind would maintain the temperature below the critical level.

According to newspapers, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking declared that the humankind will disappear if it does not colonize the space in the next 200 years. Apparently there are scientists who believe that soon enough it may become possible to settle down in some other planet. Mars is near, but life of people in it would pass enclosed hermetically in space shelters and, outside, in spacesuits of the same characteristics (providing pressure, temperature and air for respiration) from birth to death, For something better would be necessary first search and select an appropriate planet, probably in some other solar system, light-years from our (1 light-year is about ten trillion km). Then would commence a long and burdensome space voyage of a few people with the lots of luggage for the beginning of their life from nothing. And that is not all. A small group of humans, probably not adapted to the new ambient, has to be converted into the independent developed population of the before waste planet. This would be impossible without the help of humankind on earth, remained all that time in condition to do it. Besides, it should be remembered that in case of unexpected problem during the space voyage and the initial life in other planet, there will be no rescue from outside.

It looks that space colonization was and continues to be science fiction.

The greenhouse effect is reversible: it can increase or decrease. Catastrophic events may change the average global character of the humanity: people may accept limits required for keeping permanently the heating below the critical level. However, there will remain approaching the other, apparently irrevocable, menace for the humanity: insufficiency and even emptying-out sources of natural products, consumed unsustainably. The present mode of life, earlier or later, will bring the humanity to extinction. Indefinite prolongation of its existence would require changing of that mode of life to more adequate, and solution of some difficult problems,

Growth of the humanity may be reduced by limitation of births, though it will increase aging of the humankind, with its consequences. Unsustainable use of the natural goods also can be reduced in different ways. However, it would require of humanity to become a global union of countries, having its government right to emit global laws and power to oblige their fulfillment. Then, prohibition of wars between the countries would allow global elimination of all kinds of weapons and of military staff. With it consumption of natural goods would be diminished considerable. But reduction of industry and increase of impoverished unemployed people also would be considerable. The same would occur if it is tried to reduce, for example, exaggerated automobile business. And so on However. the number of unemployed workers also may be reduced: having two equal staffs interchanging on the work e.g. every week.

The above is a fiction. The reality, worse or better, will be learned when it occurs. It may be reminded that, according to the end of Essay 1, there are two humanities. One is of three worlds, on the earth, and other, of mental selves, in the world of mind. Disappearance of the first will cause that of the second too.

Feb. 2011.