Or just things that have improved human life without looking at the environmental destruction that occurred over the past few decades.
If we decide to do massive geo-engineering, it's not going to take 100,000 years to accomplish whatever goal we set. With nothing but pure hubirs to back me up, I'd say it will take 500 years, but more like 100.
We're very smart over a long enough time scale and we will likely live in harmony with the Earth, at least asymptotically so. It'll never be perfect, but it will get close.
How are we going to achieve what is necessary to turn things around when governments and people are asleep at the wheel and just continue business as usual.
Are people willing to change their destructive habits, i.e. willing to drastically reduce their meat & dairy intake?
Are organisations willing to become more sustainable rapidly and not just do drip feed changes over the next 30+ years.
Though not like a Kurzweilian Singularity, we all see a climate change cliff out there in (most of) our lifetimes. We all know that the future is not going to resemble the present, and that's anxiety producing.
I'd argue that from Dr. Rosling's data, it will be a much better world. But even his stats and monte-carlo show us that it'll be different. Pax Americana is ending, clearly, but what comes next with all those missles we have chained up in those silos, that's reasonably terrifying.
The world has never been more 'up for grabs'. It's exciting to me, but it can reasonably be very anxious to others whose livlihoods depend on stability.