Kim O'Hara wrote:Certainly isn't.
Given the chaotic nature of climate unfortunately one cannot say that. The melting of glaciers has already started. Its side effects are huge. Whether cutting down our emissions will stop what has started there can be doubted. There are effects with interest, when melting ice sets free methane which is below, and when that methane probably does something else. Such effects are not predictable, we can only observe their drifts.
The only thing we can predict that in the long run the earth is going to cool down (if it's not struck by something non-predictable before).
That does not mean I promote "go on". Contributing to the problem will likely aggravate it. But maybe it will even promote a new balance establishing faster, so the intermediate states don't create as much suffering. Linearizing things sometimes is not as beneficial either. If it can't be avoided, complaining and trying to hold on to what was before probably isn't the best strategy for dealing with that which comes.
As I see it the only source of energy we should use on earth is energy which 1. is input by an outside system or 2. is an effect of the input of an outside system that only takes a short time to develop. Using water energy slows down the rivers, which also has an effect. Using wind energy messes with the air which also has an effect. But they don't take thousands of years to re-grow, since the effects of the sun will recreate winds, so that means interfacing a short term dynamic system, not one with huge cycles. That gives a better chance to be able to adjust.
But look at the explosion of numbers of people on this planet. We're born into a time where population numbers on earth rapidly walk towards the maximum the limited habitat earth can bear. This massive amount of people does not come without side effects. When hitting those limits (many of which may still be obscure, think of the development of resistant viruses or bacteria) then that will kick back. 7 million carbon units with bad energetic balance also contribute to the problem (not only the cows that are raised as food). The symbiosis of plants (which use sunlight to grow on carbon from the air, therefore leaving oxagen behind) and that of oxygen consuming animals, who leave CO2 behind from which plants can grow is out of balance. We're putting CO2 in the air all the while mass-killing the plants.
But hey, that's just another dependently arising cycle. As plants grow, there is O2 and food, so animals can (emerge and) grow. At one point they outgrow that on which they depend, turning against it, which will cause their own decline. That's not more than the usual cycle of things.
With all those dependently arising features you can usually say: What has there been earlier, will be there long after what was dependent on it is gone. So even if mankind decays, some pant life is likely to survive. Or even re-emerge. Whereas there is a semitic story, that viewing Sodom a couple hundred years later you can see only grass that's left on that spot, I guess that applies also on a larger scale.
Wanting things to stay the same will not help it. Expecting that with a massive explosion of human population such things will remain stable is an illusion. You cannot preach people into realization, not of the workings of the mind, let alone the combined effects which they do not see right in front of their noses. Of course it is important that the facts are made public and spread, so knowledge is there which one can act upon. But I doubt its effect will be more than that. Now even if you try to convince people to change, you're probably exchanging one effect for creating fear in many. Do you expect people who are driven into fear to act more rationally?
In earlier times we were limited to a small habitat. Then, at some time, people became nomads. They went, where food was available and the conditions do fit our biology. That's pretty much what animals usually do. As we started to cultivate plants ourselves and live in houses, things changed. We started to invest in a place, and cling to that investment. Of course, the pressure increases the more people there are and the less land is available. So now we're no longer competing about the animals or some trees and bushes, so we're competing about the land where food can be cultivated. The system driving that distribution is a wee bit out of balance, and continuing growth of population doesn't make it easier. Whether we can really stabilize this is to be doubted, as the nature of the phenomenon is complex and thus stability is only observed in certain bubbles within, where change is the only constant that is observable overall (which is good, because that means it need not stay that way, even the ugly part).
Of course it is nuts that in such a situation we're cultivating plants for bio-fuel, whereas the people who originally inhabitated the land are starving next to it because they are not allowed to grow food in the same place. Just because some piece of paper that is offspring of some delusioned minds.
But how could you force-stop delusion?
Life showed us it could emerge once to the state it is in right now. Even if we fold, it happening once gives way to it happening again. And who knows how many times it happened before in a similar way?