Can Life on Earth Take Care of Itself?

Here’s a reader with a distinctly negative reaction of climate activists.  She writes:

I want to stop being demonized by people with bad intent and too much time on their hands who use social media to scare people or point fingers or extort money or just generally monger fear. I am fed up with it. This happens to be a very nice planet, and I enjoy living here and actually deep down I think it and the life that animates it can take care of itself.

Well, your closing statement that the “life that animates (the planet) can take care of itself” is simply incorrect.  At least that’s the take-away of the many thousands of geologists, biologists, chemists and climate/atmospheric scientists whose life’s work is to study this matter.

I wouldn’t say I “demonize” people who don’t understand this.  There are billions of terrific people on Earth with no command of science whatsoever.   My 95-year-old mother and I often joke about how lost she gets in these subjects, but that doesn’t make her any less of a person.