People think that even though they are severely fucking the Earth up, that it will be resilient and things will one day, even if in a very long time, be healthy again.
But that is not really true. The window in Earth’s lifespan in which complex life such as humans can be supported will not last very long.
Anyone who is familiar with geological and biological time scales will know that a couple hundred million years isn’t very long. Well, multiplying those couple hundred million by several one comes up with the time span left for life on Earth. It is not very long actually:
In about 600 million years, the level of CO2 will fall below the level needed to sustain C3 carbon fixation photosynthesis used by trees. Some plants use the C4 carbon fixation method, allowing them to persist at CO2 concentrations as low as 10 parts per million. However, the long-term trend is for plant life to die off altogether. The extinction of plants will be the demise of almost all animal life, since plants are the base of the food chain on Earth.
In about 1.1 billion years, the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. This will cause the atmosphere to become a “moist greenhouse”, resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_the_Earth
also see “Date set for desert Earth“
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