BOOK: 100 Years to Extinction
Peter Solomon
September 2025
Have we created a path forward in evolution? Will the story of monkey to ape to homo sapiens be continued with a genetically engineered superspecies and then Artificial Intelligence (AI) robots? One can imagine a scene taking place 1 million years from now. Humans are gone and robots have taken over planet Earth and colonized the Milky Way. “Isn’t it amazing,” they say, “that our whole civilization was created by animals.” And will they have kept Planet Earth at a habitable temperature? Clean water, clean air?
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking predicted that humans would be extinct on Planet Earth by 2117. He worried about the climate crisis and threats from asteroid impacts, pandemics, AI, and Genetic Engineering.
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NASA addressed the asteroid threat, demonstrating a rocket’s impact to change an asteroid’s trajectory. And genetic engineering developed the Covid-19 vaccines in record time, reducing the pandemics danger. This leaves what I call the Tyranny of Technology; four technologies that offer enormous benefits but carry enormous risks. They are: the 19th Century’s Fossil Fuel Technology; the 20th Century’s Nuclear Technology; and the 21st Century’s AI and Genetic Engineering.​
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Our problem is the Tortoise and the Hare. The hare, representing SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, races into the 21st Century. The tortoise, representing the POLITICS & SOCIETY that must regulate the technologies to control the dangers, remains stuck in the 19th century. ​Fossil Fuel Technology, for heat, electricity, transportation, and industry, dramatically expanded over the last two centuries leading to a 60% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). This molecule captures heat escaping Earth and sends half back, resulting in today’s increase of global temperature of 1.6°C. Predictions are as large as a 4°C increase for 2100. The melting of glaciers can cause the global mean sea-level to rise nearly 11 feet. History suggests that our civilization will not deal rationally with the famines and population displacements caused by crop failures and flooding.
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Nuclear Technology has created benefits in power generation, medical diagnostics, and disease cures. Fusion power, when successfully developed, would provide limitless clean energy, eliminating the need for fossil fuels. But nine countries have built enough nuclear weapons to annihilate the planet.
Genetic Engineering offers rapid mRNA vaccine development and the cures for genetic diseases and cancer. But CRISPR gene editing is so easy to use, it’s available to hobbyists. Will it be employed to create bioweapons, designer babies, giant soldiers, and a new humanoid superspecies?
AI technology is expanding at an alarming pace, offering mechanical robots, instant information, medical technology and the creation of images, videos, literature and music. The music and lyrics for the Turn the Tide music video was created with AI. But, surveys of AI professionals in 2022 and 2024 revealed that half believed a 10% chance exists for AI creating outcomes as bad as human extinction. In 2014 Stephen Hawking predicted, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Hawking could be right, but if we don’t get a handle on climate change, none of the rest of this may matter!
Peter Solomon is a Sierra Club member and author of a novel, 100 Years To Extinction, to be published in September.