I just conducted a completely unscientific survey on Twitter, asking whether we human beings have a livable future here on earth. The polling lasted twenty-four hours. Sixty-two people weighed in.

Here are the results, for your consideration.

The results were undoubtedly skewed by the way I worded the question and by the kind of people who follow me on Twitter and who are drawn to these issues. I’d put the question this way in an earlier exchange about the livable human future with Professor Sarah Lilly Heidt, and when creating the survey I didn’t fuss over it too much. I really just wanted to get a rough sense of the mood out there, and I figured the three choices (no hope, we’ll manage, and we will thrive) would do the trick.

Of course, if I could do the whole thing over — which I would love to do, on a much grander scale — I wouldn’t frame the issue in terms of despair, and I would like to drill down a little further to get at attitudes behind the answers.