“We will go down in history as the first society that would not save itself because it was not cost-effective.”
(Kurt Vonnegut)
History will remember us fondly.
Not as fools, but as efficient fools.
Imagine future archaeologists—perhaps a species of cockroaches with MBAs—digging through the rubble of our collapsed cities, marvelling at how we calculated the Net Present Value of breathable air and decided it was simply not worth the investment.
Faced with rising seas, mass extinctions, and skies the colour of mortgage documents, we bravely asked the only question that truly matters: But what will this do to Q2 earnings?
Why build wind turbines when you can build a third yacht? Why preserve forests when you can have biodegradable packaging made from… the last tree?
We became the first society in history to treat the apocalypse as a budgeting issue.
We were the first species to place a price tag on survival—and then offer a discount for early collapse.
And so, with great fiscal discipline and admirable return-on-inaction, we shall go down in history—not with a bang, not even with a whimper, but with a quietly confident cost-benefit analysis that concluded:
“Extinction is cheaper.”