the bright side of collapse

I read a super-scary article on the Grist today about the inevitability of climate change. It's by Ross Gelbspan, the author of The Heat is On and Boiling Point. A few er, highlights (or lowlights?):

"The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem. We can't. We have failed to meet nature's deadline."

"The IPCC...recently stated that it is 'very unlikely' that we will avoid the coming era of 'dangerous climate change.'"

He has little hope to offer. The closest he comes to a bright side is this:

"The key to our survival as a civil species during an era of profound natural upheaval lies in an enhanced sense of community. If we maintain the fiction that we can thrive as isolated individuals, we will find ourselves at the same emotional dead end as the current crop of survivalists: an existence marked by defensiveness, mistrust, suspicion, and fear.
As nature washes away our resources, overwhelms our infrastructures, and splinters our political alignments, our survival will depend increasingly on our willingness to join together as a global community."

Well, it's nice to imagine that we'll still have the capacity for a global community post-peak oil and post-climate change, but I'm not entirely sure we will. At the very least, though, we will always have the ability to join together as a local community. And that will always be a bright side--not just to the environmental challenges facing us, but to the societal problems we've already seen the effects of. Real community is the thing that's been missing for a long time from our society. The good part about difficulties is that they remind us how much we need each other.