Understanding Power: the indispensable Chomsky (85 page)

Well, that’s extending elsewhere now, and it involves us too. The rich and the powerful are going to survive longer, but the effects are very real—and they’re getting worse very quickly as more and more people get marginalized because they play no role in profit-making, which is considered the only human value. Well, the environmental problems are simply much more significant in scale than anything else in the past. And there’s a fair possibility—certainly a possibility high enough so that no rational person would exclude it—that within a couple hundred years the world’s water-level will have risen to the point that most of human life will have been destroyed. Alright, if we don’t start to do something about that now, it’s not impossible that that’ll happen. In fact, it’s even likely.

So whatever
I
happen to think, that’s irrelevant. The answer to your question is: if you remain marginalized, there’s not going to be much history to worry about. Whether people will react or not, who knows? You know? Everyone’s got to decide.