So after this weekends Kinetic festivities and my own automotive troubles, I feel it's appropriate to take note, again, of the hard facts facing humanity.

Things are going to be different. The price of gasoline is not going to reverse its trend this year, or the next. The rate of CO2 saturation in the atmosphere is also not going to turn itself around for some time, even under ideal circumstances. Things will change.

And we'll deal with it. That's the main thing to keep in perspective. The world will not end. Humanity will not be extinguished. Our particular configuration of civilizations cannot persist indefinitely, but it's not as though we're doomed as a species.

Rocks from space could come close to wiping us out -- real mass-extinction events do happen -- but even in that kind of case it seems highly unlikely to me that humanity (let alone life) would go into the wings.

It's important to resist apoclyptic thinking. This is something that's wired into us as people, a weakness for believing the end is nigh. It's an idea that pops up throughout history, and it's never correct. Which is not to say that terrible tragic things don't happen, but that the rapture never comes, and even sweeping watershed changes take time.

And even better is remembering that dealing with it can be fun. Like these biodiesel cats in Colorado who cut a deal w/New Belgium Brewery:

New Belgium is one of Sears´s favorite places to unwind after an 80-hour workweek, so it´s fitting that he decided to bring the brewery on board as a key part of Solix´s future plans. As with a coal-fired utility, carbon dioxide is a copious by-product of the brewing process. Except, unlike a utility´s, New Belgium´s CO2 is nearly pure, perfect for injecting into the test reactor that Solix plans to build on an empty stretch of New Belgium land. If all goes as planned, within the next year New Belgium will begin to feed gas directly into the plastic baggies, nourishing the fatty algae as it multiplies. It´s a testbed, a proof of concept for the partnerships that Solix is negotiating with power plants.

We've got all we need to make it a fantastic 21st century for Humanity. It's going to mean lots of mistakes along the way, and tragedies aplenty for sure, but fear and dispair are what the fatbacks want you to feel. It's much more effective to smile, joke, work hard, stay sexy, and stay about the business of making it happen.