{"id":854,"date":"2008-07-08T00:00:44","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T00:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/?p=854"},"modified":"2022-04-09T20:22:35","modified_gmt":"2022-04-09T20:22:35","slug":"854","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/?p=854","title":{"rendered":"Martin Rees"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are not part of common culture&#8211;except among some creationists and fundamentalists.  But most educated people, even if they are fully aware that our emergence took billions of years, somehow think we humans are the culmination of the evolutionary tree.  That is not so.  Our Sun is less than half way through its life.  It is slowly brightening, but Earth will remain habitable for another billion years. However, even in that cosmic perspective\u2014extending far into the future as well as into the past\u2014the twenty-first century may be a defining moment.  It is the first in our planet\u2019s history where one species\u2014ours\u2014has Earth\u2019s future in its hands and could jeopardise not only itself but also life\u2019s immense potential.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Martin Rees, &#8216;Foreword&#8217;, in Nick Bostrom and Milan M. \u0106irkovi\u0107 (eds.), <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0198570503\/103-1144573-7423038?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=famouspeoplewith&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creativeASIN=0198570503\">Global Catastrophic Risks<\/a><\/em>, Oxford, 2008, p. xi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The stupendous time spans of the evolutionary past are not part of common culture&#8211;except among some creationists and fundamentalists. But most educated people, even if they are fully aware that our emergence took billions of years, somehow think we humans are the culmination of the evolutionary tree. That is not so. Our Sun is less [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[178],"tags":[575],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1824,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions\/1824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stafforini.com\/quotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}