As may be inevitable these days, when you're talking with friends, especially ones you haven't seen for a long time, politics and climate come up. The friend I was staying with was an entrepreneur, and I suspect that his politics are generally more conservative than mine. Though we're largely in agreement about our current trajectory, and our views are mostly in sympathy with one another.

With regard to climate change, it hasn't been a topic he's followed closely. He has other activities he's passionate about that consume a majority of his time, and I commend him for that. Envy him a bit, too. So he was interested to hear my thoughts, but I think at the end he rather regretted hearing them.

The second night I was there, two more of our classmates joined us. One was a retired Air Force E-9 who'd worked in meteorology his whole career. The other is a highly trained engineer. Climate came up again, this time from the engineer. He's convinced we can solve the crisis. Our host told him not to ask me, because he wouldn't like the answer. But our Air Force friend was in my camp. It was interesting to me to listen to his take. Our views differ somewhat, but our conclusions are the same. It's too late to avert a general collapse of civilization, likely before this century is out.

But we do have to try. We could be wrong. If we're so smart, why aren't we rich? But moreover, we owe it to everyone we share this planet with to try, especially the children being born today and those that will continue to be born in the future. We can't just go, "Oh, well... Sorry about that." I should note that our Air Force friend is childless, the rest of us all have kids.

The engineer is convinced solar shading, fusion, hydrogen fuel, etc will save us. But the atmosphere is already filled with an amount of carbon dioxide unseen in hundreds of millennia. Even if we could achieve zero carbon emissions today, it will be decades and possibly centuries before the climate reaches an equilibrium state. Until then, we'll be experiencing unprecedented weather extremes that will disrupt this highly inter-connected, highly optimized advanced technological civilization responsible for supporting the lives of eight billion people.

It's already begun, we just have to watch the news. The point is, it's only going to get worse. We can try to adapt, and we have to; but the scope of the problem is too great. Billions will die, and many of them will not go quietly. What we must do is work together, the best that we can, to alleviate suffering wherever we can, as much as we can. Like it or not, we are all in this together. We in the west are largely responsible for it, and we should accept that responsibility and act accordingly. We must avoid a nuclear exchange, and as much deliberate destruction as possible.

Maybe, if we can manage the collapse (perhaps an impossible task), the survivors will be left with a world and enough remnants of this civilization to begin a new one, a sustainable one. The fact that we will have exhausted most of the readily accessible fossil fuels will be something of an advantage in that regard, retarding the pace of growth and development, giving the natural world a chance to recover, and compelling a focus on sustainable existence, and not exclusively on "growth."

Anyway, that's what four old white guys talked about sitting around the kitchen table over beers.

Not exactly what I expected when I was a young man, but here we are.