There are many ways to help. Most homes and buildings are way short on insulation and caulking. There are systems like geothermal heat pumps that cost a little more but show huge savings in energy use. Some of the things we do, like growing corn for auto fuel, don't work and never worked, but we have laws to force their use.

Probably one of the best ideas to come around is the plug in hybrid car. The car then runs on the more efficient power grid, not fossil fuel.

Ruth!

A simpler lifestyle NEEDS to include less electric power consumption... The combustion of fossil fuels(Coal) to generate power is no longer an option. A 500Megawatt power station consumes approx 3300 tons of coal a day.

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html
Burning coal is a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxics. In an average year, a typical coal plant generates:

3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary human cause of global warming--as much carbon dioxide as cutting down 161 million trees.

10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which causes acid rain that damages forests, lakes, and buildings, and forms small airborne particles that can penetrate deep into lungs.

500 tons of small airborne particles, which can cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility.

10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx), as much as would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which inflames the lungs, burning through lung tissue making people more susceptible to respiratory illness.

720 tons of carbon monoxide (CO), which causes headaches and place additional stress on people with heart disease.

220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone.

170 pounds of mercury, where just 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake can make the fish unsafe to eat.

225 pounds of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion.

114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.

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I slightly disagree with the poster above, Hybrids still rely on Lithium and petrol to fuel the lithium battery... a whole NEW problem of mining Lithium in massive quantities(very polluting) and disposing of the used up Lithium batteries(to prevent landfill contamination)

In the end, we're suffering a painful demise... Our oceans ARE dying
because we love our iPads/ipods etc.

Looks and brains. Excuse me while I go wipe up this drool.

Well, I rent an apartment, but I do know the county here is offering big rebates for homeowners who will make th kind of upgrades you are talking about to their homes.

We are doomed....The Dinosaurs where here stretching over half a billion years and weve been on this planet 5 minutes and its fooked my friend...The Meek shall inherit the earth...As for man,ha ha...Why do we need so many people on this planet,people should be bred for purpose and not churned out on the production line the way they are now...

From the October 2013 international meeting ...

http://www.stateoftheocean.org/pdfs/IPSO-Summary-Oct13-FINAL.pdf

The State of the Ocean 2013
: Perils, Prognoses and Proposals
Executive Summary

The scientific evidence that marine ecosystems are being degraded as a direct result of human activities is overwhelming; and the consequences both for the vital and valuable ocean goods and services we rely on,including for the maintenance of a healthy Earth system, are alarming. Recent assessments by the UN’s climate change panel the IPCC, for example, show that these changes are progressive and relentless: whilst terrestrial temperature increases may be experiencing a pause this is not true for the ocean, which
continues to warm regardless. For the most part,however,
the public and policymakers are failing to recognize or choosing to ignore the severity of the situation and are not taking the action necessary to address it.

The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) is publishing a set of five papers on ocean stresses, impacts and solutions by leading international experts to present the key findings of the workshops it held in 2011 and 2012 in partnership with IUCN and its World Commission on Protected Areas. The purpose of these workshops, and the papers published today, is to promote a holistic, integrated view of both the challenges faced and the actions needed to achieve a healthy global ocean for the future.The central messages from the workshops are that the risks to the ocean and the ecosystems it supports have been significantly underestimated; that the extent of marine degradation as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts; and that it is happening at a much faster rate than previously predicted. The 2012 workshop additionally reviewed new material and evidence, available since the workshop in 2011,and concluded that the threats to the ocean were even faster,bigger and closer than the first
workshop set out: faster with an accelerated rate of change, bigger in scale, and closer in time in terms of the impacts being felt.

Most of the oxygen is produced by oceans, and the rainforests. Since the oceans and rainforests are being destroyed we could expect the oxygen level in the atmosphere to continue dropping. At a certain point this would destroy the animal kingdom. Without the animal kingdom most of the plant kingdom will be destroyed. Extinctions in the past have never been this severe. It could be predicted that only bacteria, some fungi and a few plants would survive the impact of humanity.

is such a scenario realistic?

Is there any way to avoid it?

Hopefully, once the oxygen level dropped significantly, humans would wake up to the problem. It would not get so low as to only support bacteria and it has gotten really bad for different reasons in the past.

If the reason for the mass extinction is man, killing off man would eventually correct the problem.

In a landmark paper published in 1982, Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup identified five mass extinctions. They were originally identified as outliers to a general trend of decreasing extinction rates during the Phanerozoic,[4] but as more stringent statistical tests have been applied to the accumulating data, the "Big Five" cannot be so clearly defined, but rather appear to represent the largest (or some of the largest) of a relatively smooth continuum of extinction events.[4]

Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (End Cretaceous, K-T extinction, or K-Pg extinction): 66 Ma at the Cretaceous.Maastrichtian-Paleogene.Danian transition interval.[5] The K–T event is now officially called the Cretaceous–Paleogene (or K–Pg) extinction event in place of Cretaceous-Tertiary. About 17% of all families, 50% of all genera[6] and 75% of all species became extinct.[7] In the seas it reduced the percentage of sessile animals to about 33%. The majority of non-avian dinosaurs became extinct during that time.[8] The boundary event was severe with a significant amount of variability in the rate of extinction between and among different clades. Mammals and birds emerged as dominant land vertebrates in the age of new life.
Triassic–Jurassic extinction event (End Triassic): 200 Ma at the Triassic-Jurassic transition. About 23% of all families, 48% of all genera (20% of marine families and 55% of marine genera) and 70% to 75% of all species went extinct.[6] Most non-dinosaurian archosaurs, most therapsids, and most of the large amphibians were eliminated, leaving dinosaurs with little terrestrial competition. Non-dinosaurian archosaurs continued to dominate aquatic environments, while non-archosaurian diapsids continued to dominate marine environments. The Temnospondyl lineage of large amphibians also survived until the Cretaceous in Australia (e.g., Koolasuchus).
Permian–Triassic extinction event (End Permian): 251 Ma at the Permian-Triassic transition. Earth's largest extinction killed 57% of all families, 83% of all genera and 90% to 96% of all species.[6] (53% of marine families, 84% of marine genera, about 96% of all marine species and an estimated 70% of land species, including insects.[9] The evidence of plants is less clear, but new taxa became dominant after the extinction.[10] The "Great Dying" had enormous evolutionary significance: on land, it ended the primacy of mammal-like reptiles. The recovery of vertebrates took 30 million years,[11] but the vacant niches created the opportunity for archosaurs to become ascendant. In the seas, the percentage of animals that were sessile dropped from 67% to 50%. The whole late Permian was a difficult time for at least marine life, even before the "Great Dying".
Late Devonian extinction: 375–360 Ma near the Devonian-Carboniferous transition. At the end of the Frasnian Age in the later part(s) of the Devonian Period, a prolonged series of extinctions eliminated about 19% of all families, 50% of all genera[6] and 70% of all species.[citation needed] This extinction event lasted perhaps as long as 20 Ma, and there is evidence for a series of extinction pulses within this period.
Ordovician–Silurian extinction event (End Ordovician or O-S): 450–440 Ma at the Ordovician-Silurian transition. Two events occurred that killed off 27% of all families, 57% of all genera and 60% to 70% of all species.[6] Together they are ranked by many scientists as the second largest of the five major extinctions in Earth's history in terms of percentage of genera that went extinct.

what a highly detailed response.

Well, if killing off humanity would be the best way to solve this problem, what do you think the best strategy would be?

Perhaps if we funded a small team of genetic engineers they could say splice a successful flu virus to say the AIDS virus, or something really deadly. Yet typically a percentage survives diseases. It would be a start, yet what would be fully effective?

The fear of the loss of the human race is not from global warming, aids, or any other existing danger or disease. The wars for food and water may contribute, but the chances are, humans would survive. There is evidence that (I am going from memory) about ten thousand years ago, mankind was reduced to only about ten thousand members.

Sadly, the science and technology of gene manipulation is widespread. A greater threat exists that some lunatic, or government will modify a flu virus to be 100% deadly and highly contagious.