h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maybe not, but if you think environmental deterioration is inevitable then you need to realise that only human ignorance is making it that way.

Please start living a healthier life now. Don't make excuses, walk more, take the bus more, throw less shit away. I get so angry and depressed when I think about where the earth is going. Maybe if humans are willing to throw the future away and deny it's going to happen, they deserve that fate. It's only greed: the need to be better, faster, more efficient. This basic disregard for what you can't see or touch makes people disgusting.

It needs to start somewhere, so start making a difference.

Yeah! My 'pet hates' when discussing this issue with people are when they either say "yeah but nothing I do is going to make any difference so what's the point" - if everyone who said that just made a small change in their lives, who knows what effect it could have?
The other one is "oh, but I won't be around when this happens" i.e when global warming etc REALLY kicks in - I'm sorry? You aren't ever planning on having kids then, are you? How short-sightedly selfish can people be?!
It'd be a good start if the USA would finally agree to cut down on their fossil-fuel consumption - anyone know how that's going? Last I heard they weren't budging. Correct me if I'm wrong!
AK

I want to know if we could reach the limits of the current biological regime. I mean, the industrial revolution happened because of some cirtain circumstances, but it wouldn't have happened if britain hadn't ran out of wood and hadn't needed a secondary energy source. I don't know statistics, but aren't we going to use all the fossil fuels and populate the world until there's some sort of malthusian disaster and we're all wiped out?

Or will we somehow find a way to harness atomic energy or find some other huge energy source? Is the former more likely?

don't we already harness atomic energy? From what I know many countries already have nuclear power plants that work realy well and even emmit less CO2 than fossile plants (so in this they are cleaner, I not going into nuclear waste...). Reason they are not widely used is all the environmental organizations that protest against them (not taking sides, merely stating a fact...)
As for other sources of energy, they too exist. Cars already exist that run on Hydrogen and that run realy well (with only water as a waste!!) at the moment more expensive than normal cars, but they work. And since one of the main components of water (H2O) is Hydrogen, having an energy source isn't that big a problem.

Rod

Whats even better to think about is that the hydrogen would recyle
back into the water and be even cleaner than before.

with nuclear power the CO2 would go float around and be exorbed by
plants and create more oxygen