Frank Fenner sees no hope for humans – Scientist says ‘Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years’

By Cheryl Jones
June 16, 2010 12:00AM FRANK Fenner doesn’t engage in the skirmishes of the climate wars. To him, the evidence of global warming is in. Our fate is sealed. “We’re going to become extinct,” the eminent scientist says. “Whatever we do now is too late.” Fenner is an authority on extinction. The emeritus professor in microbiology at the Australian National University played a leading role in sending one species into oblivion: the variola virus that causes smallpox. And his work on the myxoma virus suppressed wild rabbit populations on farming land in southeastern Australia in the early 1950s. He made the comments in an interview at his home in a leafy Canberra suburb. Now 95, he rarely gives interviews. But until recently he went into work each day at the ANU’s John Curtin School of Medical Research, of which he was director from 1967 to 1973. … His deep understanding of evolution has never diminished his fascination with observing it in the field. That understanding was shaped by studies of every scale, from the molecular level to the ecosystem and planetary levels. … Fenner says the real trouble is the population explosion and “unbridled consumption”. The number of Homo sapiens is projected to exceed 6.9 billion this year, according to the UN. With delays in firm action on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Fenner is pessimistic. “We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island,” he says. “Climate change is just at the very beginning. But we’re seeing remarkable changes in the weather already. “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. “Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years,” he says. “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. “Mitigation would slow things down a bit, but there are too many people here already.” … “As the population keeps growing to seven, eight or nine billion, there will be a lot more wars over food,” he says. “The grandchildren of today’s generations will face a much more difficult world.”