James Lovelock of the Gaia hypothesis fame believes that more than six billion people will perish within a few generations. Climate change is irreversible, he claims, and there is nothing we can do about it any longer. Besides, it will become ever more dramatic as years go by. The drama will reach its peak by the end of the century. At eighty-eight, he is optimistic, though. Those who survive, and he surmises that half-a-billion people might, will be among the best and the brightest for a new beginning. This has happened with every bottleneck in human development, he claims. His optimism is catching, I must confess. Ever since I have stumbled upon his musings, I feel elated by the bottleneck hypothesis. If everything goes as it might, the human species will get it right after a number of bottlenecks ahead. Three, four, five… But it simply must.

Addendum (July 19, 2016)

As I read this piece, which I came across on one of my uncharted journeys through my writings, I cannot but shake my head in awe. Lovelock’s optimism bamboozles me time and again. And so does my own, I hasten to add. Just like his bottleneck hypothesis, my return-to-tribal-life hypothesis is optimistic past compare. No surprise that my book about climate change, What Is to Be Done? (2014), is dedicated to no-one else but Lovelock. And the only explanation for the optimism we share that readily comes to my mind is that we were both born only a year after a world war (“Indomitable Optimism,” July 7, 2015). Respectively, 1919 and 1946. We both grew up when human suffering was considered to be a thing of the past, that is. Let us call it the post-world-war-optimism hypothesis.