I want to offer you a different lens through which to better understand the climatological and environmental crises that we—indeed all of humanity—are facing. I would like you to view these crises through the long lens of our planet’s geologic and evolutionary history.
From the beginning of our planet’s formation, some 4.6 billion years ago, to the present there have been five major extinction events which destroyed anywhere from70% (during the Devonian Period) to 95% (at the end of the Permian Period) of all living things on earth. These extinctions were natural events: caused by some combination of rapid and dramatic changes in climate, combined with significant changes in the composition of environments on land or in the ocean brought on by plate tectonics, volcanic activity, climate change (including the super cooling or super heating of earth), decreases in oxygen levels in the deep ocean, changes in atmospheric chemistry (acid rain), changes in oceanic chemistry and circulation, and in at least one instance, a cosmological event—the massive asteroid strike inChicxulub, near what is now the Yucatan peninsula.
Contrary to climate change detractors, science-deniers and those who refuse to acknowledge the climatological and environmental crises facing us, any notion that these do not exist, will not come to fruition, or that humans will somehow subdue the earth is utter nonsense. Rather, it is the earth and cosmos that will, in due course, subdue all living things—as nature has already done, time and time again, for billions of preceding years.
Indeed, and to that point, our planet is presently in the midst of adverse climatological changes and a sixth major extinction event—in this instance, however, both caused by human beings.
And that brings me to the new apex predator--US.
Humans--homo—evolved from a genus of apes about 2.5 million years ago. Our species, homo sapiens, evolved from these early humans, between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Up until a time between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago (12,000 years ago is the date most frequently cited) humans lived in small hunting and gathering groups. It was during this time forward, that various of these hunter/gatherer groups settled in larger units—villages, towns, cities, and empires--planting and harvesting food crops, domesticating animals, and dividing labor as a more efficient way of living. Modern civilization.
If one were to view this geologic and evolutionary history through the lens of a standard 12-month calendar, life first appeared on January 1st; the dinosaurs went extinct on December 25th; humans first appeared at 11:00 pm on December 31st; and modern civilization began at two minutes before midnight on December 31st.
During these two minutes homo sapiens crafted written language, digital technology, and methods to communicate information anywhere in the world in seconds. We split atoms, and harnessed their power. We sent people to the moon. Our presence in space grows more far-reaching and sophisticated each year. With our space-based telescopes, we have observed the light from a few hundred thousand years after our universe’s formation.2 We domesticated animals, and we grew agriculture on a massive scale. We invented treatments and cures for a goodly number of ills that killed many of us less than a hundred years ago. We probed the depths of the oceans. We learned how to change the structure of DNA and genes, ours included. We developed machine intelligence that will in all likelihood, itself, become sentient in not too many years. We explored the particles and forces that comprise time, space, gravity, and the laws that created us and still enable our very existence.
All of that in those two minutes.
However, in those same two minutes we also created monotheistic religions; we wrote sacred texts; and, for good and evil, we empowered priests, pontiffs, prelates, and prophets to institutionalize our sectarian myths. We governed ourselves with warlords, kings, queens, dictators, and presidents, counting among those both the wisest and most evil and ignorant leaders. We warred against each other constantly, and killed billions of us. We explored, and we decimated indigenous populations in the process. We hold on to systemic racism, sexual and gender-based phobia, misogyny, and xenophobia. We discriminate against and punish each other for our differences. And, we have fouled our nests, our waters and our air with allmanner of filth, waste, disease, pollution and, ultimately, the heat from our industriesand lifestyles equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs detonating everyday--four every second.3 Since the start of the industrial revolution we have pumped over 2000 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere—presently, about 40 billion metric tons every year; over 5000 million metric tons by the U.S. alone.
We are the first species with the power to render our kind and most otherliving things extinct; and we are exercising this power to do just that. Homo sapiens has become homo extinctor (man the destroyer, the annihilator).
All in those same two minutes.
We became so smart, so fast, that we outsmarted ourselves. Modern humans have existed but for a nanosecond of geologic time. But, look at the appalling, toxic mess that we have created in our two minutes on earth.
Indeed, if we do not change course, if we do not engage our prefrontal cortex to rein-in our limbic brain, we will not be around for the next two minutes in a new January 1st. If we are to preserve the right of this and future generations to exist in
a clean and healthful environment, then we must act.
And, make no mistake, we don’t have a million years to get our act together—that option is not on the table. We will not have another 40,000 years much less even 12,000 years--another two minutes-- to learn to respect and nurture what our planet has given us, and to try to slow the progress of the disastrous climatologic and environmental Rubicon we are destined to cross within the next six years. As it is, it will take many thousands of years, if not more, for our planet to recoup and rebalance from the excesses and mismanagement already committed in our two minutes of stewardship.
We are at the edge of the abyss. If we don’t change, homo extinctor will have destroyed most living things, and, in the end, will have annihilated our own species.
Our two minutes on earth will be over. And, we will have squandered it.
James C. Nelson is a retired attorney and served as an associate justice of the Montana Supreme Court from 1993 through 2012.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.