99.9999% of the "existential catastrophes" predicted by "experts" never happened. Meanwhile, Black Death came out of nowhere and killed a third of humanity, just as it was recovering from the collapse of the Roman empire. Somebody assassinated some Duke in Serbia 100 years ago and 40 million people died -- about 10% of the population of Europe at the time. The loser of that war was punished so harshly, they came back 20 years later and another 85 million died. The Communist winners of that war went on to murder another 100 million just because they could, and then perched the world of the edge of total nuclear annihilation for the next 80 years.
Of all the things that has ever threatened mankind, CO2 levels as a side-effect of becoming wealthy beyond all our progenitor's imaginations doesn't come close to the level of threat represented by the shear stupidity of humankind -- or even the threat of China unleashing another engineered bug that doesn't merely kill old people.
The one thing that has ever solved an actual "existential threat" -- like STARVATION -- is getting wealthy and applying intelligence and technology to the problem. 8 billion souls owe their existence to the discovery of artificial fertilizers and mechanized farming. At least a billion of those also owe their life to the eradication of smallpox.
If CO2 someday actually threatens humanity, I am certain humanity can devise a solution that doesn't require 8 billion people to stop eating -- if we can somehow restrain ourselves from killing each other, just arguing about it.
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