“In the end, a relentless campaign to extend political control over the world’s energy use is likely to fail, in part because, even if severe climate change is in our future, most people intuitively recognize that rhetoric about “the end of civilization as we know it” is inconsistent with human experience. Our distant ancestors survived an ice age with little more than animal skins, crude tools, and open fire pits. For all the talk of science and progress, the global-warming alarmists betray an astonishing lack of confidence in human creativity and resiliency. It’s almost as if the scientific community had abandoned the idea of evolution.”
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Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
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The 2003 European heatwave, the experience in the Sahel, and Katrina show humans as masters of climate. We’ve got it licked after all that evolution we’ve experienced. No problemo.
“or all the talk of science and progress, the global-warming alarmists betray an astonishing lack of confidence in human creativity and resiliency. It’s almost as if the scientific community had abandoned the idea of evolution.”
On the contrary I am sure the remaining humans will adapt quite well.
I must disagree.
“[T]he end of civilization as we know it” is *very* consistent with human experience. If history and paleontology teach anything, the end of civilization “as we know it” is the quintessential human experience.
Didn’t Ice Age civilizations as we knew them disappear? The same with the stone and bronze age civilizations? And on and on…
But this merely underscores Hayward’s point.
Well, if we define “civilisation as we know it” to include linving with “animal skins, crude tools, and open fire pits” then of course, there is no threat to civilisation as we know it. But that is a remarkably lame argument.
Steven Hayward knows of no instances in human history of civilisations collapsing?? A fine illustration of the quality of argument one gets from ideologically driven think tanks.
Like The Australia Institute Coby ?
Could be. Do they publish things as shallow as this Steven Hayward quote?
Yep – and every bit as zealous, earnest and preachy.
What civilization has ever had to adapt through a population reduction to who knows where (some suggest 2 billion) from 6.5 billion now we have eclipsed the world’s ability to provide cheap and abundant energy, metals and food/fibre commodities? There is a fine line between civilization and anarchy is today’s globalised world.
Perhaps Steven Hayward could tell which civilisation hasn’t eventually succumbed to nature, its own decay or been destroyed by outside forces.
This guy seems to have the historical knowledge of a gnat. I can see why an Institute of Public Affairs equivalent employed him.