I am in agreement with Stephen Hawking and James Lovelock – one has only to glance at the last decades’ rates of extinctions, deforestation and the hockey stick-like graph of the human explosion to realize that something’s going to have to give very soon.

It’s extremely doubtful that humanity is going to find a solution in time, so we may as well concentrate on the positive aspects of that which sets us apart from other species: knowledge. Knowledge of beauty, appreciation of art and nature, and love of learning, which can ideally somehow survive the Sixth Extinction.

We also are unique in knowing that we are going to die, thus creating the quest for immortality, which manifests itself in a thirst for power, excessive procreation and the need to believe in an afterlife. Is it not the greatest irony of all that in seeking immortality, we have fated ourselves to the opposite?

So, my mantra is: Make Music, Drink Wine and Be Nice to Animals (and Most People).

As the Roma say: tomorrow may never come, so tonight, let’s dance and sing!