A fifty-fifty bet

Context: ""

I'm a little more optimistic about the future.

Sure, we're going to have to abandon many or most coastal cities over, say, the next five hundred years. (We should have begun decommissioning New Orleans the moment Katrina was over. Miami, you are next.)

And yes, we are seriously overdue for war/plague/famine/pestilence to reduce our number from eight billion to, say, one billion.

And yes, if industrial civilization fails to keep up its energy flow (petroleum, I am thinking of you), re-starting industry will be difficult to impossible — limiting us to medieval-scale technologies for the remainder of human existence.

And, finally, yes, we could die out entirely.

If I were a betting man, I'd give you three to one against human extinction. Then again, we do have a large number of nuclear weapons, and God only know what kind of viruses and bacteria and chemical weapons, and it seems that every weapon gets used sooner or later.

Okay, maybe human extinction is a fifty-fifty bet.

• Comment @ Facebook (16 March 2026)