Trying, failing, and many of us dying are also on the table. There's no target number where climate change will magically be solved, and our population has been doubling roughly every 25 years. Unfortunately we're starting to see other demands for our attention. The next billion people might all be climate scientists, who knows, but they just as well might all end up fighting over constrained resources instead.
My point with the "mass extinction aren't a human event" comment is that the Earth does not privilege us in the slightest. Exponential growth is not natural. Extinction events are natural.
Well, I was assuming we were talking about situations where we don't all die. Your comment is correct in a technical sense, but I think that's not a good attitude to have. If we have the ability to help species not go extinct, we should do so where we can.
> If we have the ability to help species not go extinct, we should do so where we can.
Entirely agree! I don't want to give the impression I'm assuming we're doomed. I'm not. I'd put true of a true existential threat to humanity at near zero. However, I'd put the probability of a major impact to our current standard of living to be somewhat higher, where my kids and grandkids are forced to live very different lives than my own. Maybe WWIII, maybe just mass migrations, maybe we see a few nukes go off. These are all very possible futures. Far from certain, but also far from impossible.
In the face of this, I'm not discouraged. I think we should do what we can to protect ourselves against such threats, and I think we've been doing a pretty good job! But I also think we should not be entirely surprised when faced with drastic shifts in birthrates and geopolitics. We're no longer in an era where infinite growth seems sustainable, and people and nations are starting to realize this.
My point with the "mass extinction aren't a human event" comment is that the Earth does not privilege us in the slightest. Exponential growth is not natural. Extinction events are natural.