http://www.history.com/minisites/life_after_people

The program describes how our civilization crumbles after humankind disappears. What they neglected to mention is that our civilization would crumble in a similar manner even if humankind does not disappear.

Our civilization is already crumbling and it will end, soon. Climate Change isn’t a threat to our civilization (our civilization is dying and would die on its own even if there was no climate change) but it is a threat to our species’ survival.

I’m just guessing or speaking intuitively, but I think it safe to say that the Homo sapiens will be extinct within a geologically trivial length of time. Nature will survive, though, as she has always survived.

However, as unlikely as it is to happen, I think that individual sacrifices making a difference is even less likely. This brings to mind what Václav Havel wrote about hope in Disturbing the Peace (1986):

‘Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. …’

He goes on to talk about how people eventually affect their government, even though government is set up to be insulated from the people:

‘I have never fixed my hopes there [in the sphere of power]; I’ve always been more interested in what was happening “below,” in what could be expected from “below,” what could be won there, and what defended. All power is power over someone, and it always somehow responds, usually unwittingly rather than deliberately, to the state of mind and the behavior of those it rules over. One can always find in the behavior of power, a reflection of what is going on “below.”’

Sounds like a motto for bloggers…

The most important thing you can do is help elect politicians in your country that will steer a course to zero/negative GHG emissions.

And for the record, I take sacrificial changes to my carbon lifestyle very seriously. But given that even with the changes we’ve already made, a more than 66% reduction is still needed (and given there are a great number of people who have done almost nothing) I can’t see that it can be done.