This episode brought up some tough questions for me, but it is a few weeks since I listened to it so please forgive off-topic ramblings.
As an Oceanographer involved with, amongst other things, measuring changes to the chemical composition and current patterns in the oceans, I find it hard not to accept that something unprecedented in human history is occurring, that humans are responsible for it, and that it could well lead to the end of life as we know it. However, many of the methods used by scientists and environmental campaigners (particularly the latter) to make people care about the environment jar hugely with my sense of scientific integrity. In the interest of supposedly making findings more understandable to “ordinary people” there is an alarming tendency to misrepresent or blatantly fabricate evidence so that people are scared into doing what they see as the right thing.
It is definitely true that, supposing things go in the direction it appears they will, we will not feel the full impact until many years after it is too late to do anything about it. For most of the things that have the potential to cause problems, the timescale between their being triggered and the effects being felt is 20-100 years. How bad those impacts will turn out to be it is very hard to say at this point though.
The planet will always be fine. Even supposing that the worst possible predictions for climate change come true, with all of the attendant disasters; if the ice-caps melt, ocean circulation stops and the majority of life is wiped out, in 1,000,000 years or 10,000,000 years it is likely that the Earth wouldn’t look that wildly different to now assuming nothing else happened in the mean time. Humans might well not be here, but would that be so terrible? The question is definitely more of a moral/philosophical one about who and what we care about now rather than whether or not we will destroy the Earth.
No decision should be based on fear.
As for how to tackle it, like Petit-Michel I am going to dodge that for now. There are simply too many things to take into account.
I have seriously rambled here, and am not sure that I have explained myself very well. I have also probably put a lot more of my personal opinion into this than I should have; however I hope that my opinion has been formed based on first hand experience rather than imbibing the propaganda of environmental campaign groups.
Please keep up the good work. Hearing opinions that are different to mine and those around is what keeps me sane. 