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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

The Arctic may be ice-free by the summer of 2040. Polar bears are toast. Coral reefs are bleaching and dying. Our engines of progress are exhaling CO2 faster than the surrounding greenery can absorb it. All this is good news for humans.

No, we can’t expect an endless tropical sailing vacation, a.k.a. Waterworld, nor a frosty winter wonderland, as in The Day After Tomorrow. Much better, global warming will train us for a brilliant future in space.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts severe hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, flooding and wildfires in the next few years, plus large-scale food and water shortages, not to mention an end-of-days scenario for a heck of a lot of wildlife.

You’ve heard the old adage: Throw a frog into boiling water, and it’ll jump out. But bring the water slowly to a boil, and the frog, never noticing, will allow itself to be cooked.

Who needs frogs anyway? The point is, as our planet becomes slowly more hostile to life, we’ll develop new technologies to survive. Human ingenuity has never failed us. By the time some neophyte Noah raises his head and yells, “Ark!” our civilization will have invented all the tools we need to live on Venus.

Right, Venus went through its own run-away greenhouse effect some time back. Its atmosphere is now 96% carbon dioxide, and its surface temperatures can reach 477 degrees Celsius. The pressure and gravity are pretty extravagant, too. But we’ll be ready.

Or there’s Mars with 95% carbon dioxide. Its atmosphere is too thin for a greenhouse effect, so we can look forward to cool fresh evenings, down to -80 degrees Celsius. Ahhh. Mars also has global dust storms and corrosive snow. No problem. Bring it on!

When the moment arrives for earthlings to take the next Giant Leap, we won’t need to search for Class M planets. Our own eco-crash will have prepped us for the most adverse climes. No planets will be uninhabitable, not for us. We’ll set up shop on every barren rock and gas ball. We are homo sapiens. We thrive.

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M.M. Buckner

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