"We can imagine that our civilization might blow itself up—and the prospect of its suicide has a certain illicit appeal, since at least it satisfies the starved sense of an ending—but we cannot imagine that it might die a natural death, like the great civilizations of the past." -"The True and Only Heaven"

There is growing evidence that the 20th century was the crest of a wave of progress in Western [now global?] civilization. Humans will most likely survive as they have in past periods of descent, but perhaps in greatly reduced population. Human solidarity, in the sense the article describes, may unfortunately amount to little more than a passing concern of developed nations as the gravity of this situation plays out.

My question, as a twenty-something grad student, is, will my generation be the adult generation of the beginning of the great descent? What do any of the lessons of our parents' or grandparents' amount to if society has made a fundamental shift from progress to descent? Where do we find answers for a long drawn out decline of civilization as we know it, and how soon do we abandon--fundamentally unsustainable--notions of progress (including "green capitalism," and "sustainable development")?

It has always seemed to me that buying carbon credits to offset one's own generation of carbon made about as much sense as being overweight and then paying someone else to go on a diet.

I can't think of any time in history where a well entrenched elite has voluntarily given up some of its privileges for the common good.

The truth looks to be that the earth can probably only sustain a population of less than 2 billion people at the living standard enjoyed by the developed countries. How we get there is anyone's guess.

I wholeheartedly agree with many of the points made in this article and am interested to learn about the rest of them. Utopian thinking, from political leaders to middle class westerners poses its own grave dangers to managing global warming.

However, I do take issue with the idea that seeking as a nation to make choices about and manage immigration - particularly on a mass scale, is just bigotry. To imagine that it's possible to absorb all the world's poor and disenfranchised who would like to move to the attractive west is another form of Utopian thinking, and just as dangerous.

The immigration debate, like the birth rate debate, is one we have to have. Cool heads and imaginative solutions are needed. And to divide it into those are 'for' and those who are 'against' won't help anything.

Re: "In a devastating global climate of our own making, how will humans survive?"

Has it occurred to anyone that, over the next 75 years, likely they won't?

It seems to me that even at the 'height' of western civilisation - or at least, good living conditions for western civilisation, any 'lessons' would have been pretty much the same: be prepared to move if necessary; be prepared to fight. Be grateful if you currently have to do neither of these things.

Who needs Revelations when you've got the lovely specter of global warming?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...Rapture?

Of course the difference is that environmentalists think there's something concrete and somewhat measurable you can do about it: reduce carbon emissions. (Unless you want to do it with nuclear power, that is. There is only one true path to God...er, I mean, Green...and it's not the Evil Atom.)

Look, I'm a yellow dog Democrat. Obama's got my vote. (Though it won't make a damn bit of difference in Texas.) And it won't be despite his stances on clean coal and biofuels. If anything it's because of them. The man's a realist. There's just certain things you must do to be elected, and some genuflecting to the powers that be is one of them. It's all well and good to demand he be principled and stand up for what's right, but that simply won't get him elected, and we need that to happen if we're to get out of the mess we're in. (Especially, in my opinion, if he's in the pocket of the nuclear industry. That's what I'm hoping for.)

There's a time for ideological purity, and a time for practical action. We've seen over the past eight years what ideological purity has gotten us. (Best epitomized by Nader saying Bush and Gore were just the same. See where that got us? And I even voted for the fool.) Time to vote for real action, people.

Ignorant=good, stupid=virtous, and anybody who might have actually studied a given subject is instantly disqualified from commenting on it.

Thus economists don't know much about economics, climate scientists know nothing about the climate, biologists know nothing about biology and actually being bright is a flaw in any given political candidate.

We have the rise of the idiot and this is causing us massive amounts of harm - just like it did in Europe before the Great Plague, and thanks to improved technology, the consequences of this idiocy are coming to bear just that much faster and they will hit that much harder.

We need to accept that there isn't a world conspiracy of smart people out to take away your SUV. We need to accept that people who spread this sort of conspiracy theory should be treated like idiots, nuts and conmen.

We need to start talking straight about issues of education and its place in America's psyche.

Because until we do that, we are going to have yet another Mr Bean presidency in America, and nothing being done about anything of real importance.

The Democrats tried your strategy.

Gore in 2000, and just like Kerry in 2004. Even Clinton's reign saw "Centrist" Democrats lose out to Republican extremists in the Senate and Congress.

Had Gore run in 2000 the way he ran his lectures on environmental change, he would have won the election in a landslide. Instead he played it safe and to the centre, which left him getting crucified on his few stands because he was seen as a jellyfish.

Kerry had the same problem, which is why the Republicans managed to paint him as being a flip-flopper. By refusing to actually go out and fight the campaign and argue for his issues, he doomed himself to being seen as milquetoast and unserious about his policies.

Obama is doing the same thing now and if he loses this election it will not be due to his race, but rather due to him becoming the precise sort of spineless weasel that doesn't inspire "the centre" with any sort of belief in his seriousness.