3.9 billion years ago, the first undeniable living thing, a protoprokaryote, appeared on Earth. It did all the things living things do. Among them, it ingested water and carbon dioxide and produced oxygen as a waste. That protoprokaryote did not die; it simply regenerated itself by dividing into two cells identical to the original, as did the two cells and their offspring. For the next two billion years, the prokaryotes, and their mutations, that covered the Earth. By then, they had produced so much waste (oxygen) that the original life-forms began to find themselves restricted to ever more remote and diminished regions as their oxygen-breathing mutants began to take over. Today, the original forms are limited to environments such as pond scum and garbage dumps.
The original protoprokaryote was the ancestor of all plants and animals (all of which have a common genetic language). Now it seems humans are going the same route as the prokaryotes. Our survival is put in peril by our own wastes. We may be at, or very near, the pinnacle of evolution. What follows us may be a devolution to a time when the prokayotes, or some mutations, rule the Earth. People cannot adapt to anywhere near the environmental conditions that bacteria can. Sadly, our imminent extinction will demonstrate that we are no brighter but a great deal more fragile than a simple bacterium.

What's with the snarky "Oakland of all places" comment at the end of the segment about the guy trying to run his coffee shop sustainably? I've lived in Palo Alto and I've lived in Oakland, and believe me, I found a lot more serious and innovative thinking about climate change in Oakland than in P.A. And as to per capita emissions of greenhouse gases, counting consumption, travel, and everything else, I'll bet you and your Stanford colleagues put out about six times as much as the average Oaklander.

Climate Change in my view is a moral issue.
1. Descriptive Definitions of ?morality?: source :http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/
?Morality? is an unusual word. It is not used very much, at least not without some qualification. People do sometimes talk about Christian morality, Nazi morality, or about the morality of the Greeks, but they seldom talk simply about morality all by itself. Consistent with this way of talking, many anthropologists used to claim that morality, like law, applies only within a society. They claimed that ?morality? refers to that code of conduct that is put forward by a society. However, even in small homogeneous societies that have no written language, distinctions are sometimes made among morality, etiquette, law, and religion. So, even for these anthropologists ?morality? does not often refer to every code of conduct put forward by a society.
礼仪有时被纳入道德的一部分，但它适用于那些被认为不那么严重的规范，而那些行为规范在基本意义上是道德的一部分。霍布斯在讨论礼仪时表达了标准的观点。我这里所说的礼仪并不是指行为举止的得体，如一个人如何向另一个人致意，一个人如何在众人面前刷牙剔牙，以及诸如此类的小道德，而是指关系到人类和平统一地生活在一起的那些品质。(Leviathan, Chapter XI, paragraph 1)
Law or a legal system is distinguished from morality or a moral system by having explicit written rules, penalties, and officials who interpret the laws and apply the penalties. Although there is often considerable overlap in the conduct governed by morality and that governed by law, laws are often evaluated on moral grounds. Moral criticism is often used to support a change in the law. Some have even maintained that the interpretation of law must make use of morality (Dworkin).
Religion differs from morality or a moral system in that it includes stories about events in the past, usually about supernatural beings, that are used to explain or justify the behavior that it prohibits or requires. Sometimes there is no distinction made between a moral code and a code of conduct put forward by a religion, and there is often a considerable overlap in the conduct prohibited or required by religion and that prohibited or required by morality. But religions may prohibit or require more than is prohibited or required by guides to behavior that are explicitly labeled as moral guides, and may allow some behavior that is prohibited by morality. Sometimes morality is regarded as the code of conduct that is put forward by religion, but even when this is not the case, morality is thought by many to need some religious explanation and justification. However, just as with law, some religious practices and precepts are criticized on moral grounds, e.g., discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Morality is only a guide to conduct, whereas religion is always more than this.
When ?morality? is used simply to refer to a code of conduct put forward by any actual group, including a society, whether it is distinguished from etiquette, law, and religion, then it is being used in a descriptive sense. It is also being used in the descriptive sense when it refers to important attitudes of individuals. Just as one can refer to the morality of the Greeks, so one can refer to the morality of a particular person. This descriptive use of ?morality? is now becoming more prominent because of the work of psychologists (Haidt) who have been influenced by the views of David Hume, who tried to present a naturalistic account of moral judgments. In the 20th century, R.M. Hare, in his earlier books (The Language of Morals, Freedom and Reason) regarded moral judgments as those judgments that override all nonmoral judgments and that the person would universalize. This account of moral judgments naturally leads to a view of morality as being concerned with behavior that a person regards as most important and as a guide to conduct that he wants everyone to adopt. All guides to behavior that are normally regarded as moralities involve avoiding and preventing harm to others, but all of them involve other matters as well. Hare's view of morality as that which is most important allows that these other features of morality may be more important than avoiding and preventing harm to others. This view of morality as concerning that which is most important allows those features related to religious practices and precepts, or those features related to customs and traditions, e.g., purity and sanctity, to be more important than avoiding and preventing harm.

专注于一个问题的麻烦在于它会导致还原论。想想当一件东西变得稀少时它的价值，它会导致灭绝(一件东西越少，它的购买成本就越高)。

让事物生长或保持不变(被保留)，最好在没有太多外部干扰的情况下做到这一点。就像银行里的钱一样。如果我们把它留在那里，忘记它，兴趣就会增长。我们是否应该一直专注于我们所拥有的东西，担心我们可能会失去它，并在同等程度上产生消费它的欲望。恐慌和欲望导致资源被浪费，而不是被保存。

mirugal, your input has greatly enriched the topic. I tend to concur with Jacob and Patricia that human extinction will not occur in one great dying off; there will be a recovery of sorts, how far it gets depends upon several factors and is a matter of speculation for another time.
You questioned the matter of consciousness in an evolutionary context, and while I am somewhat out of my tree addressing such a topic, I will offer some speculations.
I would guess that the protoprokaryote and its progeny were ruled by natural (physical-chemical) laws of nature, and though they had the means of locomotion, they lacked any of the self-awareness needed for conscious reactions. After the protoprokaryote, the trail of human lineage becomes fuzzy until the appearance of the "roundish flatworm" about 3 billion years later. Though only a thirty-secondth of an inch long, it had animal features such as a gut and a hydrostatic skeletal system. At this point, rather than speculating on the consciousness from this ancestor onward, it seems desirable to condense 900 million years of evolution into 9 months by considering Ernst Haeckel's theory of recapitulation, which holds that the human embryo repeats the entire course of evolution during its nine months of development.
新受精的人类卵子，或合子，实际上是对低等原核生物的巨大进步。然而，受精卵在开始时也没有自我意识、环境意识或是非意识。随着胚胎的大脑和神经系统的发育，胚胎获得了无意识，也许后来还在子宫里的时候，意识的零星闪现。意识主要在出生后发展，分为三个阶段:自我意识、环境意识和对与错的意识(尽管自然界没有什么东西是如此有序和整齐)。Nevertheless, this is still the way a naive person might address moral issues:
首先，它对我有什么影响?
第二，它是如何影响每个人和其他事物的?
Third, how does it fit in with universal principles and values (or, perhaps, religious ordinances)?

弗雷德，我得质疑你对道德的解读。如果我对你的理解正确的话，你对道德的“直觉主义”解释意味着(a)接受外部权威作为一个人可以和应该正确做什么的仲裁者，以及(b)权威要求什么概念。但是，正如牛津大学(Oxford)的亨利•西吉威克(Henry Sidgwick)在一个多世纪前指出的那样，道德决定更为复杂，人们会以三种不同的方式做出决定(我在之前的评论中提到过)。除了权威的范式要求之外，我们忽视对道德的功利主义解释和西吉威克所说的“利己主义”解释(你实际上用它来争论“我们和世界上的其他人应该能够浪费我们想要的所有能量，唯一的限制因素是我们愿意为它付出多少”)是不应该的。功利主义者可能会反对，这样的方法不能为大多数人带来最大的幸福;直觉主义者可能会回答说，你完全忽略了这样的政策对后代的影响。
事实证明，实践道德是非常易于讨论的;但问题是，什么样的讨论?我建议谈判比辩论好。辩论的结果是赢家和输家，或者平局，但不一定有任何真正的进展;另一方面，谈判允许从每个立场中获得最佳结果，以得到最优解决方案。

I was using a rather older definition of Intuitionism which "regards as the practically ultimate end of moral actions their conformity to certain rules or dictates of Duty unconditionally prescribed." Thus, "discerned directly" means that, to the Intuitionist, actions are right or wrong without consideration of their consequences.
For sure, when Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, he didn't expect debate about them from anyone. That was the point of the whole exercise. That is why the laws of Sumer, the world's first civilization, allegedly came from a Supreme God, and why the laws that Hammurabi presented to Babylon, the world's first empire, also allegedly originated with the Highest God. Because the laws of Sumer, Babylon and Moses allegedly came from a supreme (divine) authority, they were unexceptionable, inviolable, and unalterable. But, even so .....
考虑十诫中的一条，第七诫:“不可奸淫。”这条戒律在《申命记》22:22中以详细的形式重申，从一开始，这条戒律就被理解为适用于已婚妇女与丈夫以外的男人发生关系的所有情况，包括在任何情况下的强奸。没过多久，一些知名人士就意识到，让一个麻烦的妻子被强奸并被石头砸死，比经历一场混乱的离婚诉讼要方便得多。当这些不幸妇女的尸体开始堆积在城门外时，一场公开的抗议出现了，以至于拉比们不得不重新阅读他们的经文，他们注意到申命记22:22没有特别提到强奸。因此，他们能够把强奸已婚妇女和强奸订婚的处女等同起来。(申命记22:23-27)这无疑拯救了一些已婚妇女，虽然可能不是很多，因为任何一个有能力的强奸危机咨询师可能会告诉你，申命记的律法揭示了对强奸心理的极度无知。
On your final point, I am reminded of the environmentalist, Aldo Leopold, who, many decades ago, accused all world leaders, whatever their professed religion, of worshipping at the altar of Technology. It is true that the modern world is sustained by technological progress winning over imminent catastrophe; but, it is a race we must eventually lose. Our only hope is to extricate ourselves from the race and find a rational basis for a moral and sustainable future. (But, I am with you asregards space colonization.)

When we harm the planet we harm ourselves.
It is not so much a question of morality but rather simply and unquestionably a matter of self-abuse.
Be one.
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I missed the Eco Conference in my town this week. There were other priorities. I also missed seeing Carlos Santana, many years ago. Again, there were other priorities. Life often gets in the way of growth. The next world eco conference will be in France in more years than I care to think about. Oh---well. Life has been fun. E.O. Wilson was here, I am told---sorry I missed him.