The world survived for billions of years before Steve came along, and it will be around for billions of years after.
It will be around but will we be able to live on it?
“The world survived for billions of years before Steve came along, and it will be around for billions of years after.”
Absolutely true. Hawking is concerned about the state of us humans, though, whether we’ll be here and/or have a civilization.
Ice Age, comet strike, new virus, old politics, war, you name it, Earth is not necessarily a friendly place to live. Look at all the underwater ruins in the Mediterranean, and consider the now-drowned Doggerland north of England, that was a nice place for people to live. The deep valley between Long Island and the mainland is now underwater. The Chesapeake Bay is an old asteroid strike crater...
Yes but will it be around in a way we can live on it. Things bad for human civilization happen to the planet all the time (on a geological time scale). There will be another ice age that puts significant portions of the planet under miles of ice, there will be an asteroid crashing down with massive force and all the fire and clouds that implies, there will be polar reversals, and some day the sun is turning off. These things are inevitable, and if we don’t have a self sustaining section of ourselves elsewhere when they happen nothing else we did matters.
There's some conjecture that the Carrington Event wasn't the maximum solar flare that could happen. Most folks don't think about the fact the Sun revolves around the galactic center while Earth revolves around the Sun. A galactic year is about 225 to 250 million years.
We haven't been around long enough to know what the solar system will encounter all of the way around. I suspect some of the geologic evidence may at some point give us clues.