> One possibility is that it will never happen and we’re doomed. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that. It's unfortunate, but gosh, there are a whole lo

> One possibility is that it will never happen and we’re doomed. Unfortunately, a lot of people believe that. It's unfortunate, but gosh, there are a whole lot of people on the planet. Something like 8 billion? I mean, that is a really high number for megafauna. People need to eat a lot, pets eat a lot, people want a warm house and hot water and so on. Setting aside cars and air travel and useless consumerism entirely, the energy it takes to provide all this food and heating is just a stupefyingly high amount. It is challenging to imagine people will set aside fossil fuels, raising crops with pesticides, and even procreation until absolutely forced to by external, nonpolitical, non-negotiable factors. Getting wealthy people to spend a little more on things to which they might assign some luxury value / extra quality / better virtue is just spitting into the ocean. People-at-large simply do not live long enough and are not wired to do what's necessary to avoid eventual catastrophe. It'll be "let's try to be comfortable for a few more years while we figure this out," and then the next wave will try the same thing, and so on. Thanks to better living through chemistry, the species has gone from zero to looming disaster within the span of a few individual lifetimes. I guess the good news is, in the long run, the Earth will be just fine.