The thing is that we assume that we can do something about it. In my opinion, there is nothing in the history of mankind that shows we are in any way capable of dealing with a potential threat. We can deal with actual threats. Once the sea levels start to rise and the agricultural landscape starts shifting and the permafrost starts to go, we'll doubtless be all over it. But right now, it's a potential threat sitting on top of a bunch of very real threats. Same with the fish. I'm more worried about the fish actually. We have no idea what is going on with the oceans, and we are fishing the crap out of them with hundreds of fish-factory trawlers scraping the ocean floor, and there is never anything in the media about it, and no one knows what is going on out there, and we've already seen in Canada how fast a major fishery can disappear.
As a species, we will simply mulitply and expand as fast as we can until such time as resource depletion, or a virus, or a black swan event knocks us back a few steps or wipes us out completely.
We think, because of our intelligence, that we can change the future, chart a course. But, with global warming, for every one that wants to do soemthing about it, there's somebody else who doesn't. So all that much-vaunted intelligence amounts to nothing. It's a zero sum game, and our behaviour becomes as predictable as a colony of yeast cells multiplying, and ultimately expiring in their own waste, in a beer vat.
That may sound depressing, but I suppose it's another way of saying what Skkokumchuk is getting at. Enjoy waht time you have.
