Stephen Hawking has a stark warning for what Brexit could mean for the human species

Cosmologist Stephen Hawking calls for humanity to rethink role wealth plays in society.
Image: Van Tine Dennis/Sipa USA USA

Stephen Hawking has penned a thoughtful appeal for post-Brexit Britain to reconsider the role that wealth plays in society, warning that isolationism and envy could even lead to the end of the human species. 

In a Guardian essay, the world-renowned physicist made the case for a more comprehensive and generous definition of wealth "to include knowledge, natural resources and human capacity." 

Noticing that we're living in "perilous times," Hawking lists all the multiple challenges that the planet and human race face: climate change, food production, overpopulation, the decimation of other species, epidemic disease, and acidification of the ocean.

"Such pressing issues will require us to collaborate, all of us, with a shared vision and cooperative endeavour to ensure that humanity can survive," he says. "We will need to adapt, rethink, refocus and change some of our fundamental assumptions about what we mean by wealth, by possessions, by mine and yours. Just like children, we will have to learn to share."

The cosmologist argues that wealth played a crucial role in Britain's decision to leave the EU, and he highlights how the verdict could be damaging for EU grants to science and research. 



He goes on to explain how he came to see money "as a means to an end" but never as an end in itself. It's an attitude that is becoming more widespread, he wrote: 


Redefining wealth and learning to share it is the challenge of our times, Hawking argues. Failing to do so could lead to end of human race: 


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