The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe

Humans are rapidly approaching a moment of truth with the advent of global warming and the nuclear arms race, symbolized by a candle lighting the dark yet burning away to extinction. Existentialist philosophy offers a way of coping with the unthinkable, but Homo sapiens continues to transfer every extractable molecule of carbon from the Earth to the atmosphere, ensuring the demise of the planetary life support system.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 134 pages
Publication date: 10 October 2021
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The human race is facing a critical juncture as a result of the twin threats of global warming and the nuclear arms race. Technologically advanced, humans manifest their dreams and nightmares in the real world through science, art, adventure, and brutal wars, a paradox symbolized by a candle lighting the dark yet burning away to extinction. As these words are being written, fires are raging on multiple continents, the Earth's ice sheets are melting, and the oceans are rising, threatening to flood the planet's coastal zones and river valleys, where civilization arose and humans live and grow food.

Humans are the only life form that utilizes fire, creating developments they can hardly control. For more than a million years, gathered around campfires during the long nights, mesmerized by the flickering life-like dance of the flames, prehistoric humans acquired imagination, a yearning for omnipotence, premonitions of death, cravings for immortality, and conceiving the supernatural. Humans live in realms of perceptions, dreams, myths, and legends, in denial of critical facts, waking up for a brief moment to witness a world that is as beautiful as it is cruel.

Existentialist philosophy offers a way of coping with the unthinkable. Looking into the future produces fear, an instinctive response that can obsess the human mind and create a conflict between the intuitive reptilian brain and the growing neocortex, with dire consequences. As contrasted with Stapledon's Last and First Man, where an advanced human species mourns the fate of the Earth, Homo sapiens continues to transfer every extractable molecule of carbon from the Earth to the atmosphere, the lungs of the biosphere, ensuring the demise of planetary life.

Weight: 238g
Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030547363
Edition number: 1st ed. 2021