Collapse
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This is the place for discussing the potential collapse of modern civilization and the environment.
Collapse, in this context, refers to the significant loss of an established level or complexity towards a much simpler state. It can occur differently within many areas, orderly or chaotically, and be willing or unwilling. It does not necessarily imply human extinction or a singular, global event. Although, the longer the duration, the more it resembles a ‘decline’ instead of collapse.
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Even if ALL human sourced carbon emissions ended today, the global warming feedback loops already in motion will end most life. Fossil records show that it has happened before.
The thing about unsustainable systems is that they are by definition unsustainable. Humanity has fucked around and now we are finding out.
fossil record show rich life at higher temps . alligators in wyoming and palm trees in canada
rich life at higher temps
Until it goes even higher. The release of sub-permafrost and continental slope methane deposits will push it way past the balmy arctic stage before the feedback ends and equilibrium is regained.
IIRC, there was a time period when tropical forests were found as far north as North Dakota in the Americas, and there was deciduous forest within the Arctic Circle. That gives some idea of what the biota would be like in a warmed world, about 1 million years from now that is. A big bottleneck awaits us though and I'm thinking that also includes enough scarcity to mean famine will be thing on the far end of declining net energy, maybe as soon as later this century (though earlier for low income nations).
Interesting essay but it makes a lot of presuppositions about human nature from a very anglo-centric perspective steeped in capitalist realism.
This sort of doomerism is terribly counterproductive and ironically idealistic.
A better world is possible.
Having a high-tech society is a one time offer in any intelligent species life. Something which is bound to have a beginning, a high point and an end, as resources run out and pollution takes over. Without accepting this simple fact of life we are preparing our children for a future which is physically impossible to bring about.
And therein lies the flaw. The whole piece is built on an assumption that the author takes as an absolute and dismisses any potential to challenge.
Maybe he's right but maybe he's not.
The Roman fallacy is a good example. Roman society went into decline but civilization did not collapse. The idea that the dark ages were an age of decline is overdone; some things went backwards but others pushed forwards. New civilizations were built in Europe. It wasn't an extinction event.
Meanwhile the Mayan collapse was also not a collapse. We don't know why their society changed so much but the Yucatan region thrived and gave birth to new cultures and civilization.
The idea that our own civilization is on an inevitable path to collapse is a misreading of history. We have never reached this level of technological achievement - how can we say this is a "one time" thing, and also how can we know where it will end?
It is very easy to doomsay but actually there is a tremendous amount of cognitive bias about how bad things are. Poverty is down globally, deaths from disasters and wars are down globally, deaths from.disease are down globally. These have been continuous trends over the last 100 years.
As bad as 2 degrees climate change is, there was a time when we were headed for 5. We can and must do more, but the idea that nothing is happening or changing is a fallacy. Things are changing and can be changed.
I don't disagree with the author that we should open our minds to the idea of decline and death. But I do disagree that civilizations decline is inevitable or that it is even declining despite the challenges we now face. Our species has faced challenges continuously for all of history. Yet over 40000 years we have emerged from a nomadic agregarian society to a global civilization.
And the idea this is a "one time" thing is based on zero evidence. In fact every civilization that has "collapsed" in history has been eventually replaced by one that has progressed even further - ours.
It is not a hypothesis without merit. Those civilizations were not built on the meteoric extraction and burning of fossil fuels, which will not be replenished for millions of years, if that. If we exhaust those fuels, or any resource really, at a global-industrial scale, it becomes dubious whether or not a follow-up civilization will be able to leverage those resources for their own advancement.