> Think about it: Human beings are on a collision course with our own industrialization... Maybe. > We are consuming nonrenewable (or very slowly renewable) r

> Think about it: Human beings are on a collision course with our own industrialization... Maybe. > We are consuming nonrenewable (or very slowly renewable) resources at an unsustainable pace. Coal, oil, and gas are finite resources... It's hard to overstate just how much fossil fuel there is out there compared to demand. Beyond that, we're becoming more efficient at an even faster pace than we are using it. > Even if there is a lot left, there is not an infinite amount left. Plenty of nuclear, solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc. > We are converting rainforests, which produce the majority of our breathable oxygen and consume the majority of the carbon dioxide, into land for farming or housing. This is happening in the 3rd world, and will be arrested by minor effort on the part of the 1st world if it is ever made to care enough. The idea that we are going to run out of breathable oxygen is something that only a journalist could believe. > Our population is growing so fast that our ability to provide food for each person will be in serious doubt within a generation, despite all of our scorched-earth efforts to extract more and more sustenance from the planet. Whoa, has somebody been reading population projections from the 1970s? > Meanwhile, climate change is threatening major coastline developments, some ocean ecosystems are in all-out collapse, and biodiversity throughout the globe is plummeting. 3 separate, though major issues, but none of which threaten civilization. > We are in the midst of a mass extinction caused almost exclusively by our own actions. Who knows how bad things will get before we bottom out? In my youth these sorts of people just joined doomsday cults. (The Jehovah's Witnesses are still in operation if anyone is looking. I'm sure that there are others.) Real threats to civilization exist. The Earth's biosphere has been wiped out several times by large rocks from outer space. It seems likely enough however, that if we can survive the next 1000 years (order of magnitude), we'll have enough technology to create cross-planet ecosystems that are not so threatened from a large rock wiping out any single planet.