The Homo Sapiens on the Endangered Species List

Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, has been President of the Royal Society since 2005. His book Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the 21st Century, (Heinemann) came out in 2003. On April 25th, 2003, when the book had come out, BBC broadcast an item about it. The bulletin starts “The human race has only a 50/50 chance of surviving another century” says Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal. (Martin Rees was not yet a peer then). Later on in that bulletin the prophecy of doom is slightly modified. “I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilisation will survive to the end of the present century,” Rees is reported to have said.

Our political leaders are prevented from doing anything to ward off the impending disasters, because they are bound to consider all action in the light of the next election, four years away at most. They are also trapped by the rigid party system: they must not think for themselves; they must work solely for the party’s re-election.

Mary Robinson, ex-President of Ireland, ex UN commissioner for Human Rights, interviewed on the failure of the Copenhagen Conference, stated her belief that governments were no longer capable of taking action to save Plane Earth.

Faced with this, to what shall we liken our political leaders? To Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean in his car with the accelerator pedal clamped down, and the car screaming at an ever-increasing speed, while Mr Bean sits there grinning inanely.

So here we are – us British citizens – in 2010, contemplating a General Election. I have not yet found in the last six months anyone willing to volunteer support for either Government or Opposition. Is there anyone here ready to ascribe to our political leaders any quality other than supreme incompetence?

It is not that they are all imbeciles. It is that they are compelled by their profession to stop thinking. It is as if, on being elected, they took a solemn vow: “I, Fred Smith / Emma Pilkington-Forsyth/ David Cameron / Gordon Brown / solemnly swear that from henceforward I will only act, propose, or think, in terms of the next four years. I will pull down a black veil of inattention over every problem whose solution will take longer than the term of this Parliament. I will devotedly ignore every idea, however promising, which can only become reality in five years or more. “

They are indeed trapped. It is not only a matter of ignoring the future. Even during their four year prison sentence, they must devote themselves to the party line. If they try to think for themselves, they may well be expelled from the prison. But such an expulsion means the loss of a comfortable salary, and, even after the adjustments of 2009, a generous expense allowance.

How can we possibly expect our so-called leaders to do anything to save homo sapiens from extinction? The British Government appears to pride itself on a transport policy which a normal person would assume to have been drawn up by lunatics. The British Government spends billions of pounds on blowing people up. Might it not be sensible to invest some of those billions in technology to make war unnecessary?

No political leader seems to show any grasp whatsoever of the dangers we are in. Their only noticeable talent is the ability to grin inanely like Mr Bean.

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