This is the conclusion of a scientific research paper published in 2020. The scholarly language tends to soften the message somewhat, but if you look carefully at what they're saying — yikes! 😧
Our model shows that a catastrophic collapse in human population due to resource consumption is the most likely scenario of the dynamical evolution based on current parameters. Adopting a combined deterministic and stochastic model, we conclude from a statistical point of view that the probability that our civilization survives itself is less than 10% in the most optimistic scenario.
Calculations show that maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization. Making the situation even worse, we stress once again that it is unrealistic to think that the decline of the population in a situation of strong environmental degradation would be a non-chaotic and well-ordered decline.
"Less than 10% in the most optimistic scenario" ... Holy hell.
@breadandcircuses Okay having had time to read it, that's one seriously whacky paper.
Essentially it assumes that:
Carrying capacity for people is proportional to the amount of forest remaining
Forest declines proportionately to the amount of forest times the population times a technological constant (a0)
Once technology reaches the level where it uses a Dyson sphere amount of energy, we no longer need to depend on terrestrial forest.
Hence it's a race between the collapse of civilisation due to deforestation, versus technology reaching that point.
The short answer is it's longtermist crap disguised by maths that ignores the main questions. It also doesn't explain those assumptions until you've waded through a bunch of stochastic PDEs.
Why is a0 a constant? That means it a) doesn't take into account economic growth except as an escape mechanism and b) doesn't try to model decoupling, even as a target.
The latter I can understand. Decoupling hasn't happened fast enough. It'd be nice to have a model showing how fast decoupling has to happen though.
Of course, maybe you could see it as a critique of longtermism. However the fact that a0 doesn't change means it's not a very convincing model.
@breadandcircuses@matthewtoad43 Are there any social science papers that create models on crisis development & how humankind reacts to crisis & catastrophies?