Will climate change leave a bleak future for humanity?

In the immediate future, he says, humanity’s destiny depends on whether the climate change crisis can be minimized — whether the world can “transition to a carbon-free economy” — or whether rampant global warming will turn Earth into a hell-hole.

Sea-level rise could destroy teeming shorelines and coastal cities housing hundreds of millions of people. Ever-worse hurricanes, twisters and floods — along with droughts, wildfires and tropical diseases — could inflict enough damage to cripple the economy.

“There is a severe risk civilization will collapse, leaving our descendants with few resources to deal with the unbearable environment we will have bequeathed them,” the Oxford don wrote.

The world must stop burning fossil fuels that cause the planetary heat-up, and switch instead to wind and solar power that doesn’t form a greenhouse layer in the sky. Opposition to this course is ironic, he said, because “We’re going to run out anyway, and will need to learn to do without fossil fuels, so why not get weaned early, before we’ve trashed the climate?”

Dr. Pierrehumbert was among authors who published a study titled “Consequences of 21st Century Policy for Multi-Millennial Climate and Sea-Level Change.” A summary concluded:

“Humans have been burning fossil fuels for only about 150 years, yet that has started a cascade of profound changes that at their current pace will still be felt 10,000 years from now.”

Nobody can guess humanity’s future, but far-seeing people should try to save their grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren from a potential nightmare.