JanetK:

The lost of biodiversity and the rate of extinction - ditto. We are going through a biological crisis. It is bad enough that a 'world economic collapse' might even be a blessing in the long term.

Setting aside the more complex issue of climate change for the moment, I'd like to comment specifically on this part. Frankly, it has always seemed to me that alarmism of this sort is based on widespread popular false beliefs and ideological delusions, and that people here are simply too knowledgeable and rational to fall for it.

When it comes to the "loss of biodiversity," I have never seen any coherent argument why the extinction of various species that nobody cares about is such a bad thing. What exact disaster is supposed to befall us if various exotic and obscure animals and plants that nobody cares about are exterminated? If a particular species is useful for some concrete purpose, then someone with deep enough pockets can easily be found who will invest into breeding it for profit. If not, who cares?

Regarding the preservation of wild nature in general, it seems to me that the modern fashionable views are based on some awfully biased and ignorant assumptions. People nowadays imagine that wild nature is some delicate and vulnerable system that will collapse like a house of cards as soon as humans touch it. Whereas in reality, wild nature is not only extremely resilient, but also tends to grow and spread extremely fast, and humans in fact have to constantly invest huge amounts of labor just to prevent it from reconquering the spaces they have cleared up to build civilization.