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PM speech at the UN General Assembly: 22 September 2021

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2021-09-23 13:00:14

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An inspection of the fossil record over the last 178 million years – since mammals first appeared – reveals that the average mammalian species exists for about a million years before it evolves into something else or vanishes into extinction.

If you imagine that million years as the lifespan of an individual human being – about eighty years – then we are now sweet 16.

We have come to that fateful age when we know roughly how to drive and we know how to unlock the drinks cabinet and to engage in all sorts of activity that is not only potentially embarrassing but also terminal.

We still cling with part of our minds to the infantile belief that the world was made for our gratification and pleasure and we combine this narcissism with an assumption of our own immortality.

We trash our habitats again and again with the inductive reasoning that we have got away with it so far, and therefore we will get away with it again.