An Australian scientist, who helped eradicate smallpox from the world, has created a new sensation by predicting that the human race will be extinct within the next 100 years.
Professor Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University, has claimed that the human race will be unable to survive a population explosion and “unbridled consumption”.
“Homo Sapiens will bec-ome extinct, perhaps within 100 years,” Prof. Fenner said. “A lot of other animals will, too. It’s an irreversible situation. I think it’s too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.” He said that since humans have entered an unofficial scientific period known as the Anthropocene — the time since industrialisation — we have had an effect on the planet that rivals any ice age or comet impact, the Daily Mail reported. Prof. Fenner also blames the onset of climate change for the human race’s imminent demise. He said: “Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we’re seeing remarkable changes in the weather already. We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island... The Aborigines showed that without science and the production of carbon dioxide and global warming, they could survive for 40,000 or 50,000 years.”
“But the world can’t. The human species is likely to go the same way as many of the species that we’ve seen disappear.”