People, people people!

It is arrogant of us to think that we could have such a dramatic direct impact on the function of this planet short of global thermonuclear war. Even at that, life goes on. It melts, it freezes, it melts again; this is nothing new or unusual.

Change is inevitable. There's nothing we can do to stop it, and foolish of us to try. That's not to say we should disregard unnecessary risk and just be fools about the situation. Rather, we should look at the real cause and effect, and decide how we as a race intend to respond to the inevitability of change.

Ours is the first generation ever to actually have the ability to avoid, prevent, or mitigate natural catastrophe, and yes also to generate one ourselves. We are on a threshold of mankind's existence, if we dare to make use of the gift we've been given. The greatest asset any of us has is our ability to think, to reason, to solve the problem, and the next is hope. Now that we've advanced our technology sufficiently, we can choose to work with nature to adapt to the changes, or we can rage against the night.

Yes, it is a good thing that we can finally recognize that our world is a dynamic, evolving repository of life, with limited resources working to balance the equation constantly. If we aren't intelligent and reasonable about how we respond, we can only make matters worse for ourselves, thus letting the next species to have a whack at it millenia from now, probably some form of insect to be sure.