It has been established that the historical approach to world energy forecasting can yield useful results at time horizons with a depth of several decades. The genetic forecast supposes reaching a plateau of global energy consumption at the level of 30 billion tons of coal equivalent and an increase in the carbon dioxide concentration almost to 500 parts per million by the end of the century against the background of a continuing decrease in sulfur dioxide emission. From the historical point of view, the implementation of the most aggressive scenarios of human impact on the atmosphere and climate seems very unlikely.