I am certainly among those concerned about our human impacts but on a geological time scale, will we be noticed in tens of millions of years? What scars will remain in the Earth's history to show what we created - and destroyed?
On climate change, the widely held view by global scientists is that to prevent unstoppable and irreversible environmental consequences we are already seeing like severe droughts, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and extreme storm events, we need to "keep the coal in the hole" - we have to stay under a temperature increase of two degrees. We can't afford to burn the stores of fossil fuels we have access to if we want to keep this planet going.
Well that's not entirely true, the planet will keep going - it just won't be terribly hospitable and not just our low-lying Pacific and South-East Asian neighbours - models show Australia will become unbearably hot and many of NZ's coastal communities will be cut off or inundated.
Now I don't mention this as a way of signalling it's all too hard so we can't do anything - in fact, the opposite. We still have a window of opportunity to ensure our marks on the record of time are not an outrageous bleep where we got it all wrong. We are meant to be an intelligent species, highly social, able to work together for the common good - and there were positive and much-needed signs this week.
The Dunedin City Council voted against investing in fossil fuel extraction joining Christchurch City Holdings, Victoria University and the Anglican Church of Aotearoa who have already committed to divest of fossil fuels.
We've had the Green Party crowd-source climate-change questions to ask in Parliament this week, showing how Kiwis are engaged in this critical issue and believe the Government has a part to play. Search online if you want to see the intelligent questions - and the less-satisfactory answers.
President Barack Obama got serious on climate change at the annual White House correspondents' dinner last weekend, using humour to get his message across. With the support of a comedian acting as his "anger translator", he slammed climate-change deniers, escalating brilliantly until he did not need his anger translator any more, describing the situation as "stupid, shortsighted, irresponsible, bull".
Even the Pope is getting in on the act with a gathering in Rome this week entitled Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity, examining the moral dimensions of climate change.
At a personal level, I have started Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, a book about the connections between climate change and capitalism. It's a surprisingly good read, not too heavy and well written so I'm enjoying it - no earnest exercise here. Plus the book has answers on how we can take back control of our future. As Klein illustrates, we do have solutions but it means change. We need to avoid dinosaur thinking of the past and follow the routes that lead to better and fairer outcomes for all in a stable climate.
-Nicola Young has worked in the government and private sectors in Australia and NZ and now works from home in Taranaki for a national charitable foundation. Educated at Wanganui Girls' College, she has a science degree and is the mother of two boys.
