A coisa da estufa em fuga aconteceu depois que a humanidade já havia se tornado extinta. E pelo menos de acordo com o conhecimento geral entre robôs, a extinção não tinha uma causa específica:
Their gradual withdrawal from public life was barely noticed at first. We busied ourselves following their instructions, maintaining their domed cities, building new homes for them on the far-flung planets and moons of the solar system, providing for their every need. Only a few arbeiters slaving in the bowels of insurance companies and government bureaucracies noticed that the population adjustment downward from the claustrophobic spike of the Overshoot was continuing; that fewer and fewer of our progenitors were replicating themselves via the weird, squishy process to which they devoted their organs of entertainment. And arbeiters don’t have enough free will to take independent action— such as telling someone who could do something about the problem. By the time people started paying attention, it was too late to arrest the crisis. Attempts were made to organize a captive breeding population, but the natural objections of the population in question to being so manipulated—combined with our own innate reflexive obedience— foiled all such programs.
Se bem me lembro (não consegui encontrar a citação), a teoria comum sobre o motivo do declínio populacional é que os humanos, tendo criado robôs para fazerem tudo o que é árduo e perigoso para eles, perderam o impulso de fazer qualquer coisa criativa. incluindo fazer mais humanos.
Mas também pode ser visto como uma extrapolação lógica das taxas de natalidade na maioria dos países desenvolvidos, que hoje já são insuficientes para manter a população.
Quanto à coisa da estufa, isso parece ter sido o resultado do descuido:
And I suppose it’s understandable that, without the guidance of our Creators, certain people who were entrusted with maintaining specific programs let them drop. But how they missed the onset of a runaway greenhouse effect—well, it was the scandal of the century! At first there was denial, and then there were recriminations, followed by assertions aplenty that it signified nothing. But when the Gulf of Mexico came to a rolling boil, heads rolled in their turn.