I honestly can't. Carbon emissions/climate change is not something the world is prepared to take on. The can has been kicked down the road for years and years. The problem is just getting worse.

I'm really wildly guessing here, are doing much about the problem. Many Americans go on obliviously polluting and not considering their own safety being at risk in the near future.

The kind of collective action -- on a global scale -- that we need to effectively deal with our gas emissions is beyond the scope of our species behavior. We don't have the emotional/psychological mechanisms to govern ourselves as a whole; we are struggling as it is to even act effectively at a national level.

Humans are basically a Cassandra species. We have just enough abstract, conceptual intelligence to glimpse the consequences of our actions, but we're still mired in tribal patterns of authority and identity. Our threat responses don't scale to "50 years from now"; they're calibrated to "what's in front of me right now."

I'm about as pessimistic as anyone concerning our fate, but I'm less inclined to blame people. We're a very clever species that has outstripped our coping mechanisms. We won't control our population numbers, we won't give up today's comfort and convenience to save future generations, and we won't even see the problem until it is right in our face. Not because everyone is evil even stupid, but because that's pretty much how all animals deal with situations, including us.

Very thoughtful and well stated. The climate issue has brought me to the exact same conclusions. I do think stupidity and evil, if that's what we want to call it, play a role and, conversely, some good-hearted people are trying to save us from ourselves. But the second sentence of your last paragraph pretty much sums up where we're at as a species.

I too am pessimistic but I'm going to keep fighting and hoping for the changes that are needed, even though I think the chances for that change are slim. George Carlin once said that we are a species that is just circling the drain. I just didn't think the drain was approaching this quickly.

Just this last week I've been reading (and re-reading) Peter Brannen's Ends of the World, which covers the last 5 major extinctions since life began. It's a surprisingly good read if you're not already a geology fan (which I'm not), and it clearly explains how oxygen and CO2 levels have danced up and down through time, leaving massive wreckage in their wake. Each extinction event may be different in the exact details, but they all share the same basic premise that there's only so far species can go to survive extreme climate changes, and when the perfect storm hits, nearly everything dies.

But a few random stragglers manage to survive and eventually life flourishes.... until it doesn't, and the cycle starts all over again.

We aren't the first species to bring about a mass extinction, and we probably won't be the last. For instance, one emerging theory is that land-based plant life, especially trees, triggered the Devonian Mass Extinction by drawing down so much CO2 that the climate entered into a prolonged glacial era. Our CO2 and methane emissions may trigger a hot-house planet that destroys many (even most) species alive today, but fast-forward millions of years and new landscape of alien flora and fauna -- of incredible complexity and beauty -- will have arisen. Most likely, we won't be around to see that, but some weird animal that is our descendant will carry on some DNA souvenirs of who we once were.

I take a lot of comfort in that scenario.

From an evolutionary perspective, "good" is what keeps you alive. That has nothing to do with moral and ethical values, which are quite fleeting and change practically by the century, if not the decade.

We'll survive with whatever combination of aggression and altruism maximizes are chances for survival. What gets us there may not be very palatable to modern sensibilities.

I'm well aware of how evolution works.

The land will do badly, the oceans will do worse.

I hope we discover some kind of primitive life on Europa or Enceladus before the end comes. It would be kind of nice to have that as part of human history.

Speaking for myself, I am glad that I don't have children. I would be horrified to have them inherit the world that we are turning over to the next generation.