Like many subjects, there's always supporters and naysayers – no difference here. Defusing this distraction of the blame game and focussing on being aware of the end game is a better idea.

Looking 260 million years ago to the most significant life extinction event ever on Earth gives an undeniable, chilling, fact-based awareness of humanity's current destiny.

CO2 excesses in the air/oceans lead to an ‘anoxic ocean event' (no dissolved oxygen in the oceans means stagnant). CO2 is the prime factor. When air/oceans became about four to five times pre-industrial revolution levels (about double now), the oceans will go anoxic, devoid of life, no icecaps, no ocean currents. The result then, 95 per cent of all living things (plants/animals) died out permanently. To compare to the dinosaur extinction, only 65 per cent of all life died out.

Mother Nature's solution then (a 250,000-year remedy) was to bury the CO2 back underground, mostly being today's oil/gas/shale reserves spread all over the planet. Now these are being feverishly burnt, returning all into the atmosphere/oceans again.

End result: humanity needs to understand what happened then and why, learn the obvious cause-effect, then choose to avoid repeating history again.

The current path is obvious; the result is known. Doing the same thing and expecting a better result is mindless folly!

I Stevenson, Tauranga (Abridged).