The two dolphins swam side by side and carried on a lively discussion using the high pitched sounds known as the Pacific Dolphin language.
“Why do you think the humans became extinct in the 21st century? They had so much going for them – intelligence, ambition, technical abilities. I know that the environment became degraded and that was the ultimate reason, but what were the real reasons?"
“ Well, they just could not stop breeding and the billions of humans did some pretty bad things – both knowingly and unknowingly. For example, in the early years of the 21st century, their climate scientists discovered that the production of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” was trapping heat from the sun and causing the temperature of the atmosphere and even the ocean to rise. They predicted with a high level of probability the consequences of this “runaway” greenhouse effect as increased intensity of storms, changes in weather patterns resulting in the loss of regions suitable for agriculture, extinction of animal species such as the coral reefs in the ocean which we used to enjoy visiting, melting of the world’s glaciers that produced most of the fresh water for the billions of humans, and in rising in world-wide ocean levels resulting in flooding of coastal regions and cities and in migrations of millions of people who would be displaced by flooding and loss of fresh water. However, there were people throughout the world, and especially in the United States, who believed more in their crazy religions than in science and their religions told them that Armageddon was coming and they could do nothing about it. These "climate change deniers" in the United States were known as “Republicans”, and they convinced many people and had an enormous amount of power in determining how the country would respond to this crisis. They just closed their minds and let the changes occur, and this behavior had an enormous effect on the rest of the world.”
“In fact the only people who actually understood what was happening and why were the military. They could see that these changes would affect the security of their nations. In a few countries the militaries actually took over the governments and tried to force changes in behavior, but it was already too late. The changes were irreversible. Even the imposition of martial law in the “rich” countries to prevent unwanted immigration simply led to wars with their neighbor countries over the vanishing resources."
“And closely tied in with these changes was the major problem that humans were innately aggressive and loved to fight each other, instead of helping each other as we do. Again, in the United States, there was actually an organization known as the “National Rifle Association” that essentially financially owned or frightened the ruling politicians into believing that guns were not instruments to kill but toys to play with and that everyone should have a gun. This of course, combined with all the disintegration of society that was occurring, led to a vast amount of bloodshed, and this mentality of aggression and selfish nationalism actually led countries to use nuclear weapons before it was impossible to do so, which caused even more environmental degradation and loss of life.”
“Very rapidly the environment became almost uninhabitable due to the lack of water and food and the radioactive destruction of the cities. Cities were abandoned and millions of people migrated northward, destroying other cities and other regions. Even the resulting great kill-off of humans did not solve the problems, and eventually the earth began to look like the hot house planet, Venus. I believe that the last humans died off by the end of the 21stcentury, at least as far as we could tell."
“We dolphins also suffered greatly but the ocean mitigated many of the worst problems and our ancestors eventually evolved to be able to live in the warm water and began our rapid climb to becoming the next great intelligent tool-using species.”
“Do you think that this sort of thing will happen to the dolphin civilization?”
“It is always possible, but I believe that we have learned some important lessons from the extinction of humans”.
