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In his new book Eternity: our next billion years the Daily Mail’s science editor, Michael Hanlon, takes issue with what he argues has become the received wisdom - that our world is doomed, that we live in the End of Days, that extreme weather, droughts, famines and floods will overtake humanity within the century, or sooner. If not global warming, then supervolcanoes, meteoric impacts, nuclear war, bioterrorism, or natural plagues pose a mortal threat to human existence as we know it.
But Hanlon’s view is that, whatever happens, humankind will go on. He argues that humanity may be thrown back to the Stone Age on hundreds of occasions and may come close to extinction. But recovery will follow, each time more rapidly than the last. The world of 10,000 years hence, let alone 100,000,000 years hence, will be strange and almost unrecognizable. But no matter how battered and re-born, it will still be our world, populated by us through eternity.
Join us to debate this thesis and ask: just how risky is it to adopt a “life-will-go-on” attitude? If this attitude gained prevalence, what would it mean for the sustainability movement and its attempt to educate the public about global environmental and social challenges, and effect radical behaviour change?
Chair: Nico Macdonald, writer and consultant on design, technology and innovation
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