SGGeorwellWe don’t have room in the carbon budget for a world war.
Oh boy, I get to post my doom call!
If you live for another 50 years, you WILL witness the collapse of civilization. We have blown past every single warming-limit goal, and are not only continuing to warm the planet but are doing it at an accelerating pace.
Its getting warmer, and its getting warmer FASTER.
Very soon the major breadbaskets of the world will no longer be able to grow crops. As soon as the grain agricultural industry collapses, billions, with a B, will starve.
We are witnessing the end of modern civilization, which will end just as fast as it arrived.
That is just ONE thing that will collapse, not to mention the mid Atlantic ocean current that makes Europe liveable or the melting of the ice caps, raising sea level and stopping the circum polar current around Antarctica.
We are so irrevocably fucked. It is literally too late to do anything. Zero emissions from right now would still mean we are fucked.
How come the crops won’t grow?
Widespread drought, aridification caused by said droughts, and the average increase in temperatures will disproportionately affect those countries that are in sub tropical/super temperate zones. Those countries are where a vast majority of our grain staples are grown.
xepWe are witnessing the end of modern civilization, which will end just as fast as it arrived.
So it’ll take 10,000 years?
Civilizations and cultures survive the loss of >30% of their population all the time. The black death, the columbian disease exchange, the mongol empire, the collapse of the western roman empire, etc… Losing billions of people will be terrible, of course, but the billions that survive will still exist and work to survive, and they will be people worth fighting for.
Current food production is over 10 times what is necessary to feed everyone on the planet, with the vast majority of it being wasted on the meat and dairy industry that we can just stop. Food forests require more labor per calorie but are far more resilient to climate change and require far less land area, allowing the remaining agricultural land to rewild and act as a carbon sink.
The AMOC (atlantic current) is “making Europe livable” by making it warmer. Helpfully, climate change will do the same. In pessimistic scenarios, Europe returns to the current average temperature after a decade or two. Again, yes, in this scenario >90% of current human habitation would probably have to be abandoned and human population may dip below one billion, but those hundreds of millions of people still deserve the best chance we can give them.
If our best efforts mean we can only keep a billion people alive, it would be worth it.
If our best efforts mean we can only keep a million people alive, it would be worth it.
If our best efforts mean we can only keep ten thousand people alive, it would be worth it.
Every kiloton of CO2 we stop the emission of is a life saved, and the vast majority are emitted in the US, Europe, and China. If you live in any of these regions, there is so much you can do.
Doomerism like this is not healthy. Things are dire and will get worse for a long time, but the idea that civilisation is guaranteed to collapse is the kind of doom propaganda that fuels inaction. There is so much we can do, and the outcome for future generations better with every positive step we take. What we do does matter, and there’s a good chance our core societies will still be going strong in 50 years.
I agree but would add that collapse isn’t an absolute end in itself and to frame it that way is boss-level doomerism. Collapse is an unavoidable part of a natural cycle that signals the beginning of a new cycle. It is an opportunity to plant the seeds of something better and watch it grow. That’s not to say collapse will be easy, comfortable or harmless but we open ourselves to far greater harm by fearing collapse.
A ray of hope: Oil being expensive makes solar more attractive. Having an EV and home solar insulated my family against the daily hike in the price of a gallon of gas.
Yeah but only wealthy people like you can actually switch to EVs and solar. Most people can’t afford an EV, and if they can, most of the time they have no place to charge it as a lot of people live in rented apartments and not in their own houses. So the majority of people are powerless when the oil gets more expensive, as they literally don’t have an alternative and have to suffer the higher costs.
the kind of doom propaganda that fuels inaction
And worse, the destructive “we have to exploit everything because it doesn’t matter anyway” attitude.
Maybe we can hope for a mini-nuclear winter!?
Honestly the replies of “if we can save a single life, our struggle will be worth it” are nothing if not funny in the face of the horrors to come, especially as their coming so we can collectively shove just one more burger in our faces.
Every passing day I get one step closer to just saying “fuck it” and becoming a hedonist while watching 90% of the world seemingly not give a single fuck about the future.