> Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right bu

> Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right but who cares? We're still screwed. You're probably better off just hoping things will work out because, honestly, I think there's a pretty decent chance they will. I think you are fundamentally missing the point of the question. The question is what we can do to prevent climate change, not how we should align our beliefs not to worry about it. > So it's kind of sad that a lot of the larger fauna is doomed but you're not going to change people's appetites for rhino horns, fish bladders, tiger oil or pangolin dishes. Then again, maybe future genetics can restore some or all of those species. This perfectly exemplifies my problem with this attitude. You call this "levelheaded optimism", but you're basically throwing your hands up hoping for someone to apply some sort of sci-fi solution to the problem at some point in the future. Calling for Jurassic Park to restore extinct species is the opposite of levelheaded. To say that there's nothing we can do about it now is really just thinly veiled defeatism and not at all optimistic. Meanwhile, for example, the demand and supply of rhino horns is decreasing overall, not because people are content with speculating about how someone else in a future generation will solve the problem, but because deliberate action is being taken to change the attitudes towards rhino horns, campaigning to educate people about the medicinal myths surrounding them, to destroy smuggled horns and to protect the animals from poachers. If the people engaging in these actions had just laid back, convinced that someone will be able to beam rhinos from a parallel universe by 2100AD anyway, they'd probably have been extinct by now.