This is a depressing column. And I blame the New York Times for putting me in a disheartened state.

Things were bad enough before I read the science section of the October 3 Times. But then they got worse.

A story was headlined “Time Is Ticking for Mammals, Scientists Predict.” It said that in a lousy 250 million years we might become extinct.

“Currently, humans are heating the planet by releasing more than 40 billion tons of carbon from fossils fuels each year. If global warming continues unabated, biologists fear it will lead to the extinction of a number of species, and people will be unable to survive the heat and humidity in large swaths of the planet,” said the article.

So little time left. So many things that I want to see that will probably never happen before we are reduced to has beens.

Below are several happenings that might have occurred if human’s survived for 251 million years, but definitely will not happen in the measly 250 million years, give or take a few hundred centuries, left to us:

Sports

• The Giants and Jets will meet in the Super Bowl.

• TV networks will cease running alcoholic and betting commercials.

• TV and print reporters will stop talking about Taylor Swift.
  In an effort to increase interest in baseball, the innings in a game will be reduced to five.

Late Night TV

• Saturday Night Live will finally be funny (for one show).

• The AMA will suggest that people with insomnia watch any of the late night shows hosted by a comic as a solution.

• In an attempt to keep their audiences, Fox News and MSNBC will reposition themselves as The Bickersons.

Marriage

• Wives across their world will stop telling their husbands that “the tie doesn’t go with that shirt.”

• Wives across the world will stop telling their husband that “you don’t listen to me.”

• Husbands across the world will stop telling their wives, “I’ll get to that tomorrow.”

Politics

• The Republican House caucus will agree on a Speaker on the first ballot.

• Donald Trump’s appeals of his conviction will finally end.

• The Democratic Party will stop saying, “if not for the Electoral College, we would have won.”

Public Relations

• PR practitioners will out number journalists by 2301percent.

• Clients will stop asking, “What am I getting for my money?”

• PR people will say to collogues, “I can’t believe the client thought this will help them.”

• The average work span of a PR practitioner at an agency will increase to five weeks.

• A management promise to an employee will finally be kept.

Advertising

• Advertising practitioners will say to colleagues, “I can’t believe the client thought this will help them.”

• The average work span of an advertising practitioner at an agency will increase to five weeks. “

• A creative head at an agency will ask, “Are there any animals we haven’t used in a commercial.”

• An athlete will finally say, “I don’t know a thing about this product. I’m just endorsing it for the money.”

• A management promise to an employee will finally be kept.

Finance

• The Fed will finally stop saying, “We’re getting inflation under control.”

• A money manager will tell a client, “If I knew how the market will perform, I wouldn’t be doing this for a living.”

Education

• The spiraling cost of a college degree will level off to $4,100 a credit.

• English professors at an Ivy League college will automatically give an “A’ to any student who could write a coherent essay without using artificial intelligence and then have to use spell check before grading the essay because spelling has not been taught for the past 100 million years.

• The Big Ten Conference, the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States, will expand to 132 teams, but will keep the Big Ten name because its football players can count higher than 10.

And if humans could survive for 251 million years, instead of a meager 250 million, scientists would have had the time to discover a remedy that prevents baldness and lose weight that stays off permanently. And women might stop telling their husbands how to dress.

What does the above have to do with public relations? There might not be a direct connection, but there definitely is a philosophical one.

My answer: During the next 250 million years, executives at public relations firms will make millions of promises to employees that they don’t plan to fulfill. As the Italian Renaissance era statesman, writer and philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”

So prudent employees should take any management promises with a grain of salt and do what’s best for themselves today, starting right now, – because 250 million years is a long time for employees to realize that a promise given was never meant to be kept.