No Equation for It: Numbers with No Attachment

The calamities and stubbornness driving us toward biological negation is a problem in reality as much as one in mind. If we believe despair and annihilation to be inevitable—every sign suggests just that—then we cannot awaken ourselves in time to fix it. If citizen science, environmental law, and ecological ethics are taken up by so meager a percentage of our kind as to be statistically irrelevant, then that by itself speaks to our species’ elimination in the vaster scheme, which is running out of all patience with our illegitimate and petty species-claims to tenure. However, we are firm in our resolve that there remains a critical mass of goodwill, informed science, inspired activists, and the mechanisms for collaboration inherent to human common sense and proven generosity of spirit, which leave a wide margin for planetary amelioration.