A thousand years from now, I fear that the planet will be a vast, almost unlivable wasteland

[MrScorpio]

Clear air and fresh water will be rare commodities, and wild animal and plant life devastated.

Humans are destroying the planet.

And for what... Money?

Money that's not even real anyway?

We have no shame as a species... Human beings are the worst thing that's ever happened to the Earth.

[villager]

1. This won't necessarily assuage you:

http://www.vice.com/read/near-term-extinctionists-believe-the-world-is-going-to-end-very-soon


"If you were to take a comparative look back at our planet during the 1950s from some sort of cosmic time-traveling orbiter cube, you would probably first notice that millions of pieces of space trash had disappeared from orbit.

The moon would appear six and a half feet closer to Earth, and the continents of Europe and North America would be four feet closer together. Zooming in, you would be able to spot some of the results of the Golden Age of Capitalism in the West and the Great Leap Forward in the East. Lasers, bar codes, contraceptives, hydrogen bombs, microchips, credit cards, synthesizers, superglue, Barbie dolls, pharmaceuticals, factory farming, and distortion pedals would just be coming into existence.

There would be two-thirds fewer humans on the planet than there are now. Over a million different species of plants and animals would exist that have since gone extinct. There would be 90 percent more fish, a billion fewer tons of plastic, and 40 percent more phytoplankton (producers of half the planet’s oxygen) in the oceans. There would be twice as many trees covering the land and about three times more drinking water available from ancient aquifers. There would be about 80 percent more ice covering the northern pole during the summer season and 30 percent less carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. The list goes on..."

[PowerToThePeople]

2. We are a cancer.

[Rex]

3. And in a million or so, a lush wonderful green garden of eden

waiting for the next greatest thing to pop out of the wood works.

[cali]

9. +1

I really like that post of yours.

[Rex]

17. Thanks.

I'm not or never worry about our planet, I worry about the tiny creatures that inhabit it and if they will destroy the tiny ecosystem that keeps us all alive. The planet has a great recycling system!

[abelenkpe]

4. Doubt it will take that long. :( nt

[ileus]

5. Good news is I only have 45 or so more years.

Woot!

[kentuck]

12. How do you know that??

Does anyone really know how long they are going to be on this earth?

[ileus]

16. I should have said 45 or so years Max.

My bad....

[RZM]

6. In terms of life lost

Nothing compares to the Permian-Triassic extinction event of about 250 million years ago.

1000 years is nothing.

[Dreamer Tatum]

7. That's what they said 40 years ago about 40 years in the future. nt

[NYC_SKP]

8. In 1000 years I think the planet will have made a "correction"...

...meaning that we will be gone because the planet won't take any more of our shit and has mechanisms in place to cure such problems.

What do you think?

[cali]

14. I had a rather dour anthropology prof once

who said that the best thing for humanity and the planet would be if we bombed ourselves back into the stone age.

[KurtNYC]

24. Yes. The "planet" will be here and it will be just fine without us.

Nature has many mechanism for course correction; many boom and bust cycles that have kept things in some kind of balance for millions of years.

[RZM]

25. Population crashes are normal

Not sure when the next one will be, but there will be one. Could be natural, man-made, or both.

The planet itself causing a full extinction seems unlikely. That would take nuclear bombs or something from space.

But a major crash seems plausible somewhere down the road.

[hlthe2b]

10. Ironically, those I encounter when involving myself in "green" causes and are most concerned

often (like myself) have NO children and no real plans to have them. That's not to say a hell of a lot of parents aren't very concerned about climate change, but merely to question why ALL are not?

I care about the legacy for all animals--human and othrwise-- that are left once I'm gone. How is it possible that EVERYONE is not, but especially those with kids and grandchildren?

[DonRedwood]

11. I figure mother nature will figure out a way to knock us down a few pegs.

The Spanish flu took out a chunk of mankind. The plague, the same. Nature has a way of knocking a species down a few pegs.

But, I am a sad sad man that we abuse our planet so. It is such a wonderful, wonderful place.

[Shivering Jemmy]

13. I don't fear that even a little bit.

[Turbineguy]

15. This wasteland brought to you by

the Republican Party.

[TBF]

18. Don't worry - Bill Gates and Steve Jobs' descendants will have their

colony on Mars with large houses and all will be right in their world.

[kentuck]

19. Pure conjecture...

But I would think that in a thousand years we will have gone thru glacier melting and massive flooding of much of the land mass around the world and the water will start to recede rapidly, creating desert-like conditions around the world, until eventually Earth will be as barren as Mars...

[hunter]

20. I have great confidence in our ability to screw up.

In ten thousand years there will be far fewer of us, we will be much more humble as a species, and earth's life will be rediversifying.

Eventually there will be no record of the current mass-extinction but an odd layer in the geological record.

I think like a paleontologist. We're not the first innovative species to experienced exponential growth and then a crash, and we won't be the last.

Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home offers a similar perspective.

[99th_Monkey]

21. Yes, except for a few luxury bubbles where the 1% assholes are holed up

in their "break away" clusters, near major aquifers, surrounded
by Blackwater-type mercenary guns-for-hire.

[HardTimes99]

33. Of course, they do have to worry that the Blackwater-type mercenaries will turn their

guns inward on the parasites.

[99th_Monkey]

34. Yes, like Hugo Chavez's Palace Guard did

at the critical moment, to reverse the tide of his US-led coup attempt.

So then maybe the mercinaries will "win" in the end?

I say a pox on both their houses.

[Spider Jerusalem]

22. I think a thousand years is a generous estimate; more like two hundred

[msongs]

23. please refer to george carlin's monologue on this topic :-) nt

[longship]

28. But the Earth needs... PLASTIC!

[Vincardog]

26. Mother Earth has survived worse than us. We will be a hiccup in Geologic time. This is not

to suggest that we will be able to survive what we are doing to the planed.
Greed is leading us to mass suicide by way of environmental destruction.

[MynameisBlarney]

27. Won't be the first time, nor the last.

Not saying we shouldn't try everything to mitigate it as best we can.
But I'm pretty sure we're well past the point of no return.

[MrSlayer]

29. The planet is fine. The people are not.

We'll kill ourselves off and the planet will heal itself just fine. Humans are less than an eyeblink in the lifetime of an old man to the planet. Kind of arrogant to think we're doing anything to harm it.

[RC]

30. Never fear. The earth will start recovering in a few hundred years.

After we have gone extinct. Or our numbers have plummeted to well below the numbers needed for any kind of "advanced" civilization.

See, problem solved.

[hobbit709]

31. Life on Earth has survived over 3 billion years.

There have been greater mass extinctions in the past. The only thing different is that we won't be here. But some form of life will still be around.

[KinMd]

32. Unless there IS reincarnation...

no one's going to care

[madokie]

35. I think we're headed for disaster

as a group. Man is shitting in his nest so to say and many seem to care one wit. Money is at the root of it all too. Too much emphasis put on how much one can accumulate in ones lifetime, too many people following in that endeavor. We as a whole have to change or we're definitely doomed. The good news is the planet will bounce back at some point in the future to go through this whole process again. We find fossils showing that life has been on earth a long time so I think it will continue in one form or another. Whether its in the form as we humans know it or not is anyones guess.
I'd like to come back in a hundred thousand years and marvel at the fossils found from our era. Surely there will be fragments or our society found that will cause a lot of consternation as to what it is or why it was.
I read once where when they were dredging the Boston harbor years ago they found a perfectly preserved except for the cloth interior of a new 64 ford mustang that had on the odometer that showed it had been driven from the lot where it was stolen and driven into the harbor. If my memory serves me right it was in excellent shape as it had settled into the muck where there wasn't any oxygen so it didn't show any signs of deterioration other than the upholstery and they were able to clean it up and restore it to like new condition. In other words that suggest to me there will be other items of our times that will survive under similar situation, possibly thousands of years. When they start finding sections of our buried highways, pipelines etc it will be interesting what the reasoning at the time will be for why this was. I'd love to be able to return to life in the future
just a blowin and a goin, getting lost in thought. mybad

[Initech]

36. Oh wise prophet Carlin, what say you on this topic?

[kestrel91316]

37. In a thousand years this great civilization will be but a bitter memory.

Earth herself will be on the mend, and the few remaining humans will scrape out a meager existence from what little they can find to eat, and their tools will again be stone and stick.

[UTUSN]

38. Nah, once we nasty humans are out of it, it will rejuvenate itself into a wondrously wild place!1 nt