Below are some excerpts from a recent article by Alan Urban that discusses this. I'd be interested in your thoughts.
Also, for those who (predictably) are going to yell at me for being a 'doomer', my next couple of posts will be about solutions, changes we must make soon if we're aiming for a slightly less dire future.
If you’re collapse-aware, it means you’ve learned enough about climate change, pollution, resource depletion, and biodiversity loss to conclude that civilization is unsustainable and will eventually collapse.
Whether the collapse happens suddenly or takes several decades, and whether it happens soon or in the distant future, is up for debate. But the end result is the same: a pre-industrial world with a much smaller population.
It could be a world where nearly everyone works from sunup to sundown to put food on the table. It could be a world where people have to hunt and gather for survival, constantly moving in search of food and resources. Or it could be a world where humans, along with most other creatures, have gone extinct.
Before 2020, I was a techno-optimist. I believed advances in technology would allow us to overcome our problems and create a world where everyone was free to pursue their interests and lead a happy life. Goddamn was I naive.
In the fall of that year, I learned that the problem was much worse than I had thought. Climate change wasn’t the main problem. In fact, climate change — along with pollution, resource depletion, and biodiversity loss — were merely symptoms of a much bigger problem: overshoot.
For those who don’t know, overshoot is when a species exceeds the carrying capacity of its ecosystem. As a result, the ecosystem is unable to produce enough food for the species, and the population collapses. Once a species goes into overshoot, collapse is inevitable. There’s no way out.
According to the Global Footprint Network, humans exceeded the carrying capacity of planet Earth over 50 years ago. That means it’s only a matter of time before the human population collapses. The only question is when.
@breadandcircuses Thanks.
For me, being collapse-aware also means trying to shape that future, trying to make it easier for survivors, I mean.
Leaving something behind rural communities can build on – be it knowledge of what happens to their regional climate in a collapse scenario #RCPcollapse, or the knowledge of where and how long for freshwater won't be pottable due to industrial run-offs or radiation contamination downwind from nuclear reactors in meltdown, or encouraging the growth of solidarity networks, including curating knowledge in paper books.
There IS going to be a human future after the collapse. Life, laughter, and love. But not a "natural" future in which survivors might simply regroup on a medieval tech level (quickly re-learned out of thin air?). Climate and biosphere will also run amok for a while.
Making it easier for survivors for the first 50 years after the collapse is our job as collapse-aware people, me thinks.
@breadandcircuses Thank you for the link. I can understand the deep grief expressed in the text. I too have children.
I cannot help but notice the immense privilege and historical ignorance in all of it. It's nice to have believed that one would die in a comfortable bed with the best care surrounded by your loved ones, after a long life of consuming riches unimaginable to previous generations, but there was never a solid reason for that. The majority of humans have never had that. It's just luck of being born in the right place at the right time.
Don't people know that (yes, even today) millions of humans don't know whether they'll live to next year? That's nothing new. We just mostly weren't looking.
It's extremely sad that many amazing advances made during the last decades will likely be lost. But it's tasteless to pretend that "humanity" had it all and that things are just starting to change now.
By all means grieve as long and as much as you need. That's not negotiable and cannot be hurried. But please take a look around.
I don't find these particular scenarios convincing (though I've only read the excerpts, not yet the article).
I think the fact that humans are so numerous and widespread and adaptable, combined with the fact that collapse will happen in different ways, at different speeds, in different places, will enable the preservation of much of the best of civilisation.
I am, I guess, both pessimist and optimist: pessimist in that I believe there will be collapse, and that it will entail massive suffering and death - and not just for humans - but at the same time, I believe as people see things getting worse and worse, they will, finally, take appropriate action.
I maintain that... the number of people is not the problem, but their luxury and prosperity, as well as the lack of sustainability in consumption and production.
The elites have been trying for decades to present methods of eugenics and population reduction as socially acceptable, but their goal is always to maintain their own lifestyle. However, climate development also requires you to minimize their lifestyle!
@breadandcircuses there is no doubt that popultion correction will happen. In quite a few places it is already happening quite naturally. More challenges people face due of various systems struggling, less inclined they are to have more than one kid or even not caring about it at all. We expect Africa to have growth for some time but that's about it.
However question even with projected peak is that sustainable. I am growing increasingly skeptical.
@breadandcircuses
climate collapse is happening right before the eyes of the unwilling to come to grips with consequences. I find the evidence to be overwhelmingly convincing. "to deny is to die ..." Aldous Huxster
@breadandcircuses I appreciate their willingness to lay it all out there. It’s good to have company! I’ll throw another item onto the list: seeing roadkill has changed the way you drive, because you are hyper aware of the risk.
I’m not gonna be that person who tone-polices some much-needed catharsis, but maybe later we can also talk about how, in the face of all this, do we live?
@breadandcircuses
I think you are right. I have a son, I doubt he will marry or have children. He simply can't afford to. I'm an optimist but think things simply cannot go on as they are. I'm old now, I hope things will be OK until I die. I hope my son finds a way through.