"Hundred year <weather>"

... many of those periods outside of, if I'm not mistaken, not only the couple million year history of animals much like humans, but even outside the longer history of complex organisms much like any close ancestors of humans. And of many organisms humans are biologically adapted to eat. And so on.

Not like we absolutely won't be able to adapt (I hope we can, as it's not like there's much choice). Just that the known history of the earth doesn't offer much in the way of comforting precedents for us to point to.

In other words, there have been some past examples of us recognizing an instance of crummy stewardship and having the sense to knock it off.

Those could be regarded as comforting precedents, especially if we can manage once again to show that kind of sense.

 

Don't delude yourself; we've done a lot of good work in the last 50 years or so.

 

You can focus on the mistakes, not the successes, but deluding yourself is not helpful to the cause.

 

Certainly, the last 50 years or so have seen humanity learn quite a lot about stewardship, and apply that knowledge, in a number of areas, to improve our overall stewardship record.

"The last 50 years or so" does also, roughly, coincide with a mighty heavy lobbying effort by a particular influential industry to make sure that we don't also apply what we've learned to correct another ongoing problem in our stewardship. That delay has, regrettably, put us in a bit of a situation.

 

we've been phasing out R134a, although that could change i suppose

 

Simply rectifying the bad the human race has done, does not show good stewardship, it just says we can at least see when we really stuff up....... if the human species had never evolved into the users and wreckers they are, absolutely none of that reclamation work would have been required. If we had learnt burning coal and other fossil fuels was bad for the planet, and rather used our knowledge to make synthetic fuels, or never developed the internal combustion engine at all, and stayed with steam and electrical powered propulsion and engines to power factories, we wouldn't be in the mess we are now ....

The ecological cycle tends to wipe out the inferior version and replace it with one that has learnt to adapt and work better within the basic frame work to keep everything balanced.
For instance, if all the animals can only eat vegetation up to 1 mtr off the ground, that food source dries up quickly and all the species start to compete for the same food ..... then one mutation in a group grows a longer neck .... they now have access to a whole untouched food source ..... that mutation will survive where the others of the same breed starve ... Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Why has the human race taken so long to evolve? We still destroy the only place we have to live ....

The human race might end up going through the same flushing of the gene pool, the greedy money hungry group that cares little for the planet's future, and only for what they can get right now, may eventually die out, much like the wealthy Pharaohs, Roman Emperors, Mayen empire ..... the list goes on ...... the egotistical elites may become a dying breed, replaced by those that can think ahead and protect the planet we live on ...... if the human race discovers how to live for 200yrs instead of reaching 60 yrs old being a major achievement around the time of the industrial revolution, destroying the very planet we live on for short term gain will be a poor choice and we would take better care of the only place we have to live ...... at the moment, we don't have a plan B, and plan A certainly isn't really the smartest plan ......

T1 Terry