Disposable Earth: How and Why We Gave Our Planet an Expiration Date

"A thoroughly excellent book. With no holds barred, Tsakraklides demolishes our conventional illusions of human progress. In chapter after chapter, he lays bare societies' 'biochauvinism' (human's superiority complex over other species).""I give this 5 stars! George Tsakraklides understands well what is going on (from several perspectives), and his writing style makes it easy reading. Admittedly, subject matter can be difficult for some, but if you are a realist and care about the facts, consider this book. And please, make the most of every minute of every day"(Author)...Disposable Earth is a collection of essays on the climate crisis and the unavoidable collapse of our civilisation. They are meant to awaken one into the tough existential questions the crisis has revealed, attempting to go back to the beginning: to what started it all, hundreds, thousands of years ago when our failed civilisation was still in its infancy. This exploration is undoubtedly a painful journey into our past. A journey that many of us don't want to take at any cost, for fear of coming face to face with our failings as a species. But for those who know me well, in my essays I spare no prisoners. Prepare to feel exposed, sometimes ashamed. Prepare for your world view to be shaken, in the same way that I'm prepared to often be labelled as a "doomist", alarmist and even misanthrope or "ecofascist". But I consider it my duty to have my personal moment of reckoning with my own species and the hundreds of generations of my ancestors, about our so-called civilisation. Belonging in the last generation which could have done something about climate change, I feel taxed with the burden of being the first generation aware of the dead-end ahead, with all the responsibilities that this brings. Our generation carries the weight of every human that has ever lived on Earth. As a molecular biologist, chemist and food scientist, I cannot help but approach the climate crisis through a methodical systems approach that combines science, economics and psychology. I often use the simplistic "Anthropo-Sin" diagram to illustrate our influence on the planet. But at the same time, the climate crisis is a deeply spiritual one. It is a crisis in the human, not the planet. As we gradually lost our path to happiness, we naturally became destructive and ungrateful towards nature. I often tap into my own personal experiences living and surviving within the traumatising civilisation we have created, driven by a mix of frustration, desperation, grief, but also an existential urgency to rise above the steep walls of the trap we have set for ourselves. Disposable Earth is a "sister book" to The Age of Separateness and the Climate Change Within as well as Pocket Philosophy for End Times - A Lexicon of Dystopia. My goal as a writer is to reveal, to set free, the Other Human that resides in each one of us: a human who has been suppressed, traumatised, silenced and forgotten by centuries of capitalism, colonialist oppression and the CO2 Death Support Machine which all of us are hooked up to as consumers. Although we are living through the most uncertain and terrifying time to be a human, this is also a time to feel more alive, more purposeful than ever: a time when we are being forced by our planet to finally think seriously about who we are, who we thought we were, and where we see ourselves in the future, if we want to have one. I hope these essays help you to find a small piece of your Other Human. London, February 2020