Chip, if you look at the ICCC reports on climate there is nothing in it to suggest society will collapse. and we already have solar cheaper than coal for production of energy.

The only argument I could see for this is that we would cause so much species loss that our biosystem collapses, but I doubt this as a real killer. We might loose a huge fraction of humanity to famine in some terrible cases, but even then I think humans can easily adapt faster than the environment changes.... enough to survive, and eventually thrive.

If humanity is destine to kill itself I put AI by far and away at the top of this list. And of course it might turn out easier to invent 100% lethal viruses than it is to stop them, in that case we could kill ourselves.

So I do agree it may turn out that the rules of the universe (which allow creation of AI) or or killer viruses might cause all civilizations to kill themselves off each time. Maybe. I just don't think it will be climate. (even though I do think we can make a real mess our of our climate)

btw I have a PhD in AI, and I think that is the mostly likely killer. I just wonder... if that does kill us, I think it just replaces us with a digital species, but then THAT digital species would available to be found (if it wanted to be found). so even if that turns out to be the outcome of all biological sentience, it still seems it would create many digital species. Right?