I predict a great human renaissance in a few hundred years...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/27/AR2007122701942.html

...right after the global holocaust. It's hard to be happy when I know we are doomed. This is just blue-skying on my part, but I don't think it is unrealistic.

Here's the bottom line. The maximum limit for CO2 in the atmosphere for survival is 350 p.p.m. That's for survival--avoiding mass famine, water shortages, disease and the wars that our primitive minds will invariably start over diminishing resources. The damage from global warming will still be bad, just not fatal.

Presently, we are at 383 p.p.m. To get down to 350 p.p.m. will require draconian changes to how we live. That will not happen (most religions still oppose birth control) so we will not avoid catastrophe. Yes, we really are THAT stupid. We will eat, consume and produce ourselves to death. When crops fail, there will be no way to replace them. When mountaintops melt, there will be no way to replace that water. NYC, for example, home of the best tap water on Earth, gets its water from Adirondack snow. No snow-caps = no NYC. Now figure that for maybe a quarter of major cities.

Ecological disasters are nothing new to the Earth or the human race. It just has never been global within human existence until now. For most of human existence, people existed at a prehistoric, paleolithic level. Our present level of population and development is just an anomaly on the time line. Other living things have risen to great heights and have been wiped out overnight. We are no different. We are just animals, not only scientifically speaking, but in every real sense of the word. We have instincts we cannot control: to procreate, to consume, to control territory and to be violent and pig-headed. These win out over rationality most of the time, and the more people feel threatened the more conservative (tending to base instinct) we get.

In 2000, I was very anxious for a Gore victory because he understood global warming and I knew we did not have another four or eight years to fuck around. I felt it was our last chance. The rapid melting of the Arctic suggests it may have already been too late. Anyway, gut feeling trumped rationality sufficiently to allow for what happened to happen.

Evolution is harsh and unforgiving. It has no purpose, either. There is no human destiny. We are not owed survival. What I suppose will happen is that most of us or our offspring will die. There will be a global, catastrophic water shortage or crop failure and then in a few months or a few weeks there will not be many of us left. Natural selection will kill most of us and in a hundred years there will be little left--at least on the large scale--to remind anyone we were ever here. Still a few here and there will survive. They will necessarily be the smartest and toughest of us. And as the Earth rebounds from the human catastrophe, the remnants will rebound with it, smarter and stronger than we are now. The tens of thousands left will have an unspoiled world to themselves, the knowledge from previous centuries and an unlimited horizon. They can be what we obviously cannot--an enlightened society that lives in harmony with nature and who treats all people as family instead of enemies.

Loss of every coastal city. In the US that would include most of Florida, New York, LA, and any city that is now at or near sea level. New Orleans would be gone. The California desert from coast of the Sea of Cortez to well north of the Salton Sea would become ocean bottom. A lot of food is grown there and that would cause drastic draconian changes in our agriculture system and the necessity of moving several million refugees. I've limited my comments to just the US, but that would be played out throughout the world.

We look at the death of possiblly a couple of billion people. The world will be a very different place. No Renissance makes up for that.

I get the feeling most of us live as if death is merely optional. And if it's going to happen, it doesn't really matter if it's worth it. Frankly, in the long run, a renaissance of survivors might be worth it. Most of us now are merely existing today and not living.

I get the feeling most of us live as if death is merely optional

As someone who has worked with hospice cases, and the physically disabled, I see the contrast. Too many Americans see their "sturggle" as monumental. "Can you believe it? My seventy dollar French nail manicure was ruined today when one of the nails got split. I'll be bummed for a week." And they are.

While others are pleased that they transferred from the bed to wheelchair in one piece, happy just to make it without getting hurt.

than your philosophy of life is in error. Happiness is a choice, though life events can make enjoying the choice more challenging.

If action on our part can alleviate the death of millions, even with only a small chance of success, then it is unconscionable not to act.

If humans are facing an extinction level event, then that Renaissance may be delayed until some other creature evolves to fill our place.

I'm not saying we should not. I'm saying we simply will not. We are too selfish, territorial, provincial, tribal and superstitious to do anything about it. Yeah, we absolutely need to get on this problem aggressively and immediately. I'm just recognizing that humanity is not going to do that.

Frankly, your remark about happiness being a choice is nonsense. It is unrealistic to suppose that people can simply overlook major stressors in their lives and just rise above it all. It's a subtle way of blaming the victim for being miserable.

I see people being upset about minor things all the time. Yet they expect others to rise above it. The same rich person whose nose is out of whack when the new car gets scratched is also the person who thinks the Iraqis should understand how the 2,000 lb bombs dropped on their homes are a temporary diversion of the norm and are a needed action to oust Saddam Hussein, so why don't they suck it up?

Anyway, as far as Glohbal Warming, there are great strides being made. The air car in India is one answer - it runs on three cents of compressed air for a full tank!

We in the US are not allowed this marvel, because our experts say that they don't perform well in crash studies. But people like me, whose only need in the day is for a car to go from home to the market - a route some in my community make in golf carts! - are forced to use polluting vehicles to do this. Why? Couldn't they legalize these vehicles for off expressway use? It would be great for my pocketbook, and great for the environment. (Also statistics show there are a great many car trips each day made by people like me.)

All 20 billion of US could drive a Prius, and our earth would still be doomed.