It's like, global warming, isn't it. Isn't it though.

Ben Miller talks global warming:
"... let’s face it, the planet is not in any danger from global warming, or global cooling, or global stay-the-same-ing for that matter. The planet is a lump of rock — 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tonnes’ worth to be precise — which started life as a molten fireball so hot that even after hurtling through space for the past 4.5 billion years, it hasn’t properly cooled down. It has, at times, almost completely frozen over or basked in temperatures so sweltering that the polar ice melted and crocodiles swam at the North Pole. A few greenhouse gases and a rise of a couple of degrees in global temperatures isn’t even going to touch the sides.

What we really mean by “saving the planet”, of course, is “saving the humans”. I’m not sure we deserve it. For a start, we did the damage in the first place. And what’s so great about us anyway? Sure, we made it to the top of the food chain. But we did it, basically, by learning to gang up on rival species and one another. You don’t see many Neanderthals out shopping for precisely that reason. Now we have finally come up against a challenge that can only be bested by all of our tribes acting together in our common interest. I don’t want to appear cynical, but I don’t think we’ve got a hope. In short, there’s a theory for what happens next, and it’s one of those which does exactly what it says on the tin — catastrophic die-off.

You may be thinking: perhaps it’s for the best. Perhaps humanity has gone as far as it can go, and it’s time to hand the baton over to some more highly developed beings with a more self-aware intelligence that respects the environment.

Well, forget it. There’s no guarantee that the species that takes our place will be any less selfish, belligerent and short-termist than we are. Evolution (and the planet for that matter) doesn’t care. There’s only one quality our successors will almost certainly possess — a liking for a hot bath in highly carbonated water. Who knows, millions of years after we are extinct, some future species may industrialise, overpopulate and make exactly the same mistakes all over again. The ultimate irony is that we will just be lumps of fossil fuel for those numpties to burn."

And who is Ben Miller? He's one of these chaps, like only if you don't know already: