I would love to be positive about it; so I am having a reluctant debate here ;-). I guess our difference in opinion comes down to if you focus on the human condition itself or the environmental ecosystem as a whole. The human condition has never been better (for 99% of us); that I agree and I appreciate the link you posted however every one of those metrics related to the human condition . We do however do more damage every decade now to the environmental ecology than we did every century before this last one and this is accelerating. A lot of this damage, such as species extinction is non-reversible unless considered on long term geological timeframes. Even things like reef destruction, while not requiring geological time-frames to recover assuming you save the species, still take in the order of 500-1000 years to recover. You could say change is inevitable and the loss of ecological diversity is just a result of our species domination. All of which is true. We are after all living though the 6th mass extinction event the world has seen since life evolved (the Holocene extinction or Anthropocene extinction) and complex diverse life will recover with enough time. This is not a question of the world or even life surviving; there is no doubt about that. The difference this time is that we are causing the mass extinction event, rather than geological changes or extraterrestrial impacts, and are we ok with that? If we are not ok with that, can we collectively reverse it from where we are now even with all the good will that is out there? Even from a a selfish human perspective the millions of years of diversity that we are losing (particularly in places like the the forests of SEA or the Amazon) from a genetic and molecular organic compounds level is a tragedy when you look at the potential for things like medicines and advanced genetics.
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I agree that it is a tragedy... but I see a certain inevitability in the process thus far. I also believe that science will allow us to reverse declining biodiversity and species extinction at some point in the future. It's hard to imagine what will be possible in 50 years time. Now try and imagine what we could do in 500 years time at the current rate of technological growth. It would be unprecedented for sure.... and to the question of whether we would have annihilated ourselves by then... that's where my optimism about our species comes in.