To Philosophize is to Learn to Die

Roy Scranton quotes Montaigne in the book Learning to Die in the Anthropocene and regarding climate change, concludes that "the problem is that the problem is too big" for humans to solve.

It may be that we have crossed the summit of our knowledge and power, and the brief explosion of human life in the Holocene will turn out to have been as transient as an algae bloom.

 And over at Collapse of Industrial Civilization, a recognition of the irony.

For those who come to understand modern man’s predicament, it can either be the ultimate mind fuck or an epiphany that helps a person appreciate the fragility of life, the urgency of living in the here and now, and the grand cosmic joke of a global, hi-tech civilization that arose from the burning of ancient fossil remains only to have those fumes become a deadly curse, extinguishing any trace of our lofty accomplishments…