It's not nuclear mutually assured destruction we should be worried about. It's us.
Have you ever considered how massively generous nature is?
A watermelon explodes with red sweet water. Try eat one without cutlery and see how bountifully it pours itself down your arms, dripping on the table, the floor. It's uncontainable.
Then think about the burstingness if a grape. You couldn't squeeze in another molecule if you tried, and when you bite it, it positively explodes into your mouth.
Oceans, trees, clouds, rainbows - the entire pantheon of creation expresses a majesty that is excessive in its generosity and awe-inspiring in its appearance.
And us? We are a piece of work. My God, are we a piece of work.
"What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an Angel, in apprehension how like a god. The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!" (William Shakespeare - Hamlet, Act II, sc 2)
As a group, homo sapiens has fallen spectacularly well below that bar.
Granted, there are the exceptions - Shakespeare himself of course, and Beethoven, Einstein, Fibonacci - you know what I mean. Those guys.
But if you just take the numbers, generally as a species, we have turned out to be a mingy, greedy bunch.
No wonder Hamlet continues:
"And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither."
(William Shakespeare - Hamlet, Act II, sc 2)
What homo sapiens does best is rape and pillage. Each other, other species, and the planet.
We abuse our natural resources with a disregard that is both callous and deeply ignorant. We take and take and take, with absolute contempt for its complexity and innate beauty, or its ability to regenerate.
We turn pristine landscapes into overgrazed desert, we strip mine, we excavate, we excrete, we excommunicate the cathedrals of tall forests, we expunge the million year old rhythms of living in harmony with the Breath of Earth.
We pollute, we overfish, we exterminate, we drive entire species to extinction, we kill on an industrial level some of the most intelligent and socially evolved species on our planet as sources of protein, ivory or concocted elixirs that are nothing more than false fables spun by criminal kingpins to drive demand by superstitious and ignorant consumers.
Even more horrifyingly, speaking as a South African, the wealthy flock to our continent to have their pasty, pot-bellied selves nannied through our bush, barely conscious that they're more often than not in a fenced enclosure, tracking game that has been doped to offer no resistance, unable to move with anything resembling their true ferocity, speed or agility.
They happily pose in their corpulent ignorance next to these poor, forlorn carcasses, as if they've done something brave. And then they have them beheaded, and mount the glass-eyed trophies on their walls, as if they did something really dangerous out there in the primal bush of Africa, y'all.
There are too many brutal, ignorant, selfish humans on this planet. Humans with no regard for the sanctity of life, no compassion for the suffering of others, no respect shown or dignity offered to those weaker, poorer or less powerful than them.
As a species, we have reaped more than we have sown. We are living beyond our means.
God knows, it cannot go on like this.
A reckoning is coming.
I don't know how or when. But we cannot continue driving up carbon emissions the way we are and expect there not to be a correction.
We are, right now, the one species which, if eradicated overnight in some spectacular contagion, we would leave the planet better off.
It would have a chance to heal. It doesn't need us.
It needs ants. It needs bees. It needs trees and oceans and forests and streams and fish and birds and animals.
But it doesn't need us.
We need it. For our very survival, we need it.
The great irony of our species is that if we don't do something drastic soon about the way we are treating our planet, then with all our glorious promise and potential, homo sapiens may just end up vanishing into nothingness, starting as a paragon and ending as a brief candle:
"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." (William Shakespeare - Macbeth Act V, sc 5)