It’s easy to be a doom-and-gloomer these days. But the glass-half-empty take on the world has always been an easy one to adopt. I mean, living in caves must have been hard. Later there were plagues. All those centuries with no TV. But Ted Turner did more than just dip a toe in the pessimistic water glass this week when he said global warming is apt to lead us to cannibalism.

On PBS’s Charlie Rose show, Turner said the planet will be scorching in 30-40 years if nothing’s done.

“Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals,” he said. “Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state — like Somalia or Sudan — and living conditions will be intolerable.”

(For the record, Neanderthals, who were 99.9 percent human , apparently turned to cannibalism when the climate got tough. Clearly, that’s a failed strategy.)

It’s tempting to jump on this “we’re all going to die” bandwagon, but that’d make life kinda pointless, no? Technology is on our side, if only we’d use it more effectively. Meanwhile, don’t discount the interconnected global problems we face, from (as I noted the other day) climate change to water shortages (the glass really is half empty on this front) and the sudden and dire food shortages that are already causing unrest and violence.

To his credit, let’s assume Turner is just sounding the alarm so we don’t end up like he threatens. And also some credit for having the bottom-line cause of all this right: “We’re too many people,” he said. It’s an amazing thought that the 6,658,984,843 (that’s 6 billion+) of us now (a number that went up 100 as I typed it!) compares to a mere 310 million just 1,000 years ago. Not sure exactly what we should do about that one…

(An aside, from AP: Turner, who once called Christianity a “religion for losers,” launched a $200 million partnership Tuesday with Lutherans and Methodists to fight malaria in Africa, apologizing for his past criticism of religion and calling faith a “bright spot” in the world.)