Hope but little comfort

I am the wrong person to offer comfort - the book project I am working on had the working title "worst case" and part of my dissertation research years ago was to examine the possibility of a total breakdown of the Earth's atmosphere.... The possibility indeed exists and it is difficult to figure out the threshhold - that is the point of no return. According to some models we already crossed it. According to the fossil fuel industry, it does not even exist. But exist it does - that much is certain. And indeed the world currently is not an a very promising part. Global warming occurs much faster than believed, genetic engineering has totally unpredictable side effects (think of the accidentelly produced killer virus by Australian scientists Ian Ramshaw and Ronald Jackson lst year), the economic development paradigm of the last 50 years has failed for the majority of the world's population, we live in the time of one of the largest and by far the fasted loss of biodiversity ever in the history of life on Earth and soil erosion, chemical pollution, deforestation, desertification, population growth, wars (mostly over money and resources), organized crime and so forth. I was shocked for example to learn that world wide some two million people die in car accidents every year. The source for this is the WHO. What shocked me even more was the tone of the article. Thre was no compassion for the victims, but concern about the negative economic effects of lost productivity, especially in third world countries. Well - life is suffering - at least it won't last forever ;-).