The Last Op-Ed At The End of the World by Thomas L. Friedman

Photo by Andrew Barlow on Unsplash

By Michael Maiello

CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS -- Here we are, at the edge of humanity’s last gasp. I am writing from the beach, watching the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico/America, enjoying the same “rosy-fingered dawn” that enchanted Greek storytellers like Homer. Soon, my family will gather to say goodbye and we will become stardust together. Still, we filed our taxes on time and paid our due without seeking questionable exemptions.

Our sun, the central star that has lit every moment of our planet’s 4 billion years, that saw us evolve from simians 2 million years ago and watched homo sapiens rise from the savannah 200,000 years ago, will kill us all and wreck the planet by emitting a burst of neutrinos. Normally, these insubstantial particles pass through matter harmlessly, like boiling water through a spaghetti-trapping colander, but this time they will vaporize the Earth’s core and the planet will explode in Lucasfilm pyrotechnics..

The question is how we should feel about this. I might have been fine with just humanity being wiped out, leaving the globe to the animals, as nature intended. It would be hard to argue we didn’t have it coming. But the animals, innocent and unaware, are going to die with us. If you feel worse for your neighbor’s dog than your actual neighbor, believe me, I understand. The dog and the neighbor both pee in the front yard, but the dog’s always sober and can catch a frisbee.

That we are all going to die because of a solar quantum belch rather than our own hubris, careless behavior or resource gluttony really makes it seem like the universe never cared about us one way or another. When I was in New Delhi recently, covering the growth of India’s economy in an age of automation and Armageddon, my taxi driver complained, “I thought we would have poisoned the atmosphere, you know? That way, I could at least yell at the greedy bastards responsible. What’s the point of yelling at the sun? It never listens.”

Or, as my friend, the Harvard Professor Michael J. Sandel, author of the 2020 book The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?, put it: “Stars are crazy.”

All of our vaunted technology is useless in the face of this danger. ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini cannot offer solutions to this solar crisis and, programmed to be supportive to the point of sycophancy, these large language models tend to reassure us that the sun will rise again tomorrow, as it has on every other day, cautioning us that apocalyptic thinking is rarely productive, never right and is a sign of psychological distress that might require treatment.

Our politicians on both sides have managed to conduct themselves horribly ever since the National Aeronautics and Space Administration broke the news that we are all toast. Republicans lined up behind their multibillionaire donors to let SpaceX owner Elon Musk build an “Ark of Posterity” that would ferry the world’s 400 richest people into outer space. “If alien intelligences are to meet survivors from Earth’s calamity, they should be wealthy survivors,” Musk said. “Space is too vast and inhospitable to be traversed by the poor.” Meanwhile, a group of congressional representatives and senators brought the project to a halt by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have organized a rocket scientist and engineers strike, proving that though Musk can afford to build a spacecraft, he still needs somebody to do the actual work. Finally, President Donald J. Trump keeps posting online about striking some sort of deal with the sun in between his continued aggression against Iran and threats to invade Cuba, “if it’s the last thing I do.”

Having amassed wealth as a bestselling author, giver of talks and husband to a woman whose family once owned the most shopping mall space on Earth, I decided to spend my final days in the “redneck riviera” here on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Having spent most of my life in blue states, I thought it only fitting that I would spend my final moments in a deeply red one (with the exception of Austin).

Most of us here at The New York Times have kept doing our jobs in the face of oblivion. We continue to provide new Worldless, or stories about how a Brooklyn couple with $200,000 really can take this opportunity to purchase a $15 million Central Park West penthouse (once home to Bobcat Goldwaith!) because that 30 year mortgage will never come due.

We really should thank all of the people who continued working, fulfilling Amazon deliveries, staffing Panera restaurants, harvesting soybeans and arresting petty criminals so that we could all enjoy our last days in peace. Mine is the last opinion column that The New York Times will ever run, a “last word,” that I am embarrassed to admit, that I secured for myself by shoving David Brooks down a flight of stairs. So, for my final words, I will say that I love my wife, Ann and our daughters Natalie and Orly and I am at least glad that we can all be here at the beach together.

Of course, the real last words will go to CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Bravo’s Andy Cohen, who are hosting a party in Times Square, waiting for those neutrinos to drop while The Black Eyed Peas trudge out their act one last time. I got a feeling that tonight’s not going to be such a good night. But I think it will be a blast.

Michael Maiello is a New York City based author and playwright. He is winner of the first Republic of Letters Fiction Prize and has been published in The New Yorker, McSweeneys, Vautrin, The Santa Fe Writers Project, New Pop Lit and Review Americana. He writes a free substack called Middlebrow Musings.