Neither the Earth, nor the Solar System, nor even the Milky Way are something exclusive to the Universe, which has already housed at least two trillion galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars and even more planets.
Knowledge of these facts leads to a completely logical conclusion: life must be widespread in the universe. Somewhere there must be highly developed civilizations with which humanity can come into contact.
Why haven’t we found “brothers in mind” yet? There may be many answers to this question, but today we will consider such an option as catastrophic climate change.
First, we know from experience that progress and an ever-increasing population lead to “planetary overheating”;
Second, looking at Mars, we know that the once warm and wet world can turn into a lifeless desert during runaway processes such as the impact of a large meteorite.
Thus, if we exclude natural processes, as in the case of Mars, the option of human influence on the planet’s climate remains.
Recent studies suggest that we have already passed the point of no return, which means that the situation will only get worse, which in the future could lead to the collapse of civilization.
If we stop burning fossil fuels (oil, gas) now, it will take centuries to eliminate the consequences of climate change. In other words, we have messed up so much that it has become very difficult to clean up after ourselves.
Perhaps we have not found traces of the activities of highly evolved aliens because they disappeared long ago as a species, unable to cope with the climate changes on their planets.
Global warming is an inevitable side effect of any progress, as it is impossible to make the direct leap from primitive tools to renewable energy and electric vehicles. Absolutely any developed civilization is bound to face serious climate problems.
It is likely that in the Universe there were a large number of progressive civilizations that arose long before humanity, which faced irreparable climate changes and simply disappeared.
This, in fact, may be one of the solutions to the Fermi paradox – the absence of visible traces of the activities of highly developed aliens.
Humanity, being a (relatively) young intelligent species, has already reached the point where each new day becomes darker than the last. Therefore, it is possible that highly evolved aliens could simply outrun us in self-destruction.
