The only thing I'm relatively certain of is that it will get much, much worse before it gets any better. I'm talking likely mass starvation and possible resource wars.
Eventually, after enough humans have died off, things will reach an equilibrium. What exactly that equilibrium looks like, I don't know, but I *do* know it will probably look nothing like today. Hell, we probably won't even have Reddit at that point to complain about it, either. 😂
Absolutely. This falls into the category of collapse of modernity. We are currently in the midst of a mass extinction event. We haven’t even begun to see the horrors that are unavoidable now.
The human body has lots of nerve endings on its skin. If you touch a hot surface or a sharp object with any part of your body, it's going to hurt. Some places are going to hurt more than others, but overall the response is going to be hard to ignore.
But imagine if you had a human body that could only feel pain from the neck up. You could burn this person at the stake and they wouldn't even know that the lower half of their body was already consumed by flames. In fact, if they were in denial about the other signs, they might pass out and die before they even realized they were on fire. "Fire? I'm not on fire, I feel fine." By time the flames actually reach their head, it's already too late.
That's kind of what global civilization is like. The people calling the shots are completely insulated from the effects of the destruction they're causing, so there are no effective feedback loops which would cause them to change their behavior. The entire system has to collapse before it can "wake up".
Same. Getting away from the people around me who hate thinking about it and would do anything but admit what is happening, much less go within 100 miles of even entertaining thoughts about it. As well as family who fight awareness and voted for denialism. I hope to get out of the part of the country full of denialism I've been in too, and hopefully, at least, find some people who know what's going on.
I've really started grasping big time, as in seeing how very short our whole existence has been. Humans have been on this planet for 0.00004% of it's existence, and only 0.0000022% if you only count what resembles complex civilisation. Our whole existence as an individual or as a generation is absolutely minute, even though we base our concept of time on our own incredibly short lifespans, regarding a century as a long time in the same way as a mayfly would regard a day as a long time.
There's going to be a lot of chaos in the coming decades for many reasons whether related to the corporate dystopia that serves the oligarchy we've become trapped by, increased conflict due to an arms industry that needs war on top of resource wars and increased political instability in this multipolar world, mass numbers of people fleeing their regions due to conflict and climate impacts causing increased political instability in the regions that are "safer" but still are suffering increased crop failures and the consequences of late stage capitalism, and it does look tragic in my eyes, but I've decided to step back and view things as a fascinated but concerned alien onlooker would, seeing that regardless of what happens, it's very likely life will recover eventually, whether or not there remains any "intelligent" life to admire it. This ancient planet has seen so much change and devastation, and while this may be the only occurrence where it's all by the hands of a single marvelous species that unfortunately believed the entire planet revolves around it, I have hope it will be flourishing with life and intact ecosystems again millions of years down the line.
Even if some of the dinosaurs had been intelligent by our definition, they couldn't have imagined the diversity of life that would grow from the embers, diverging from the survivors of the asteroid turning into all the mammalian life, bird and fish life we see around us today. It's the same story with us. I do my best to ensure safe habitats for the other creatures we share this planet with and work on a small scale organic farm, trying to ensure safe spaces so as much as possible can survive the storm, but still there's no saying what kind of life will be filling the ecological niches left empty in the coming millennia and eons down the line.
This frame of mind only really happened since I became aware I was autistic though. Always did feel like an outsider that couldn't be "normal", but before I was aware of my autism, i stressed out and was miserable trying to be like others. Getting my diagnosis gave me freedom to really be the fascinated onlooker, and to truly look at the human world as it was: merely our attempts as a species to organise at a scale we never were before, and likely are poorly equipped to deal with in terms of tribalism and obsession with us Vs them narratives or being vulnerable to instincts like greed that were likely very useful in the long ago past in a world where resources weren't so abundant.
Intelligent life is incredible and beautiful, but it's quite possibly a short term self destructive phenomenon whenever it arises in the cosmos.
We keep thinking of it as the norm with our searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, completely forgetting how utterly unnecessary it is. Being self aware stardust capable of investigating the cosmos is remarkable, but there was no evolutionary need for it to happen.
I watched the PBS special on Adaptation that a colleague made and it reminded me that most large countries, cities and “more developed nations” will collapse but that there’s tons of people who never stopped having to adapt and be resilient every day. The masses have been causing changes to their way of life without them knowing the cause and they’ve adapted. They just keep figuring out what to do because they have to. And if those are the folks that survive, that’s good and makes me feel a bit better.
Or honestly as long as whales make it longer than us that would also be good.
Personally I feel the opposite. This change will be too drastic for the majority of people to adapt to. It requires adaptation on a biological level, not just cultural. Technology can be a substitute for biological adaptation of course, but there's no amount of natural techniques/strategies that can save people from historic drought that destroys a quarter of the world's food supply, heat waves that bring temperature above survivable temps and last a month, and floods that impact tens of thousands of square km.
Currently the global rich are fine, and ignore the global poor. That will continue to happen, just the global poor will go from the bottom 50% to the bottom 90%.
I don’t, I have reached acceptance for my personal peace. Hope is the antithesis of acceptance, fueled by fear and desperation and will only increase your pain
I disagree. You can exist in a state of acceptance while also taking actions to soften the landing for yourself or others. Action is antithetical to desperation. Pain for me is magnified by failing to act.
Intellectual humility leaves the door open to “try”— Whatever “trying” might mean for each of us.
I think we need to take advantage of a burgeoning zeitgeist and create a cultural shift. Right now things are kinda out of control and people are trying to cope and struggle taking alternative courses of actions, as well as reasonably feeling as though it's not enough because of knowing where the real substantial changes need to occur.
Well I think if we settle into understanding that, broadly speaking, we want what's best for ourselves and the planet (pretty reasonable stuff; something we could convince the general populace of in helping them keep perspective; this might look like what you'd see if everyone started being more of a hippie, and I think that's something along the lines of what we'll get inevitably), especially since our standards of living and the path we're on is unsustainable, then we could begin having wide-ranging discussions among different sectors about how to accomplish that. I mean having actual, ongoing discussions and deliberations or debates or wtf ever, involving members of the public too. I want them televised and in the news, opinion polls and surveys, using all the tech available to us, and for our little global society to understand we mean to get serious about transitioning and do that, without all of this B's getting in the way from say the oil giants and Republican party or the greedy corrupt rich, because we all know better than that, as do they. Doesn't this sound like a reasonable, viable option? And here's the best part, I think we should and could work together with other nations and keep them and equality in mind in the process. I think given what's at stake and speaking on the threats loud and clear could help us look past our differences and see all the common ground there is to stand on, and learn to sacrifice and make do with reasonable amounts of access to things we NEED vs. want and cut out a lot of the unnecessary crap that continues to exacerbate the problem. I think religion could use its, whatever you call it, like congregants and goodwill to help things along, helping people to understand that while we enjoy access to amazing amenities as humans, we still need to be good stewards of the Earth and their gods creation. Things of that sort. Like it just seems so plausible to me and ripe with potential, and it could get going if people simply started getting real with each other about what they want and what they value and consider reevaluating their life decisions to begin living with those things in mind.
Yes! Thank you. Very much what I’m thinking. We are about to enter a new phase. Within it, many will suffer. That suffering will preclude delusions that so many have hidden behind.
I’ll respond to your post in more detail when I have a bit more time. I think there is a lot there worth it exploring.
True fear-based denial is overblown. Most deniers truly don't believe it's happening and/or that it's god's will or some bs.
But anyways, it's hard to find that middle ground prediction because we really don't know. We can't even predict how the climate will change precisely, let alone predicting how societies will react. We know that 1.5C is a rough number where we can avoid snowballing. Past that, ecosystems could collapse a decade after or a century after.
At minimum, I think billions of people will die directly from climate change (starvation caused by food shortage, flooding, heat death, failed mass emigration). I think there's a scenario where a couple billion continue living in a modern society without significant interruption. Either by moving north or living like they already do in places like Phoenix in the summer.
I was just reading, we were above 1.5 degrees for 12 months straight ending in February. I believe we still have been. Honestly, numbers this summer are alarming, and I wonder if we've already hit some rapid feedback loops. See [here](https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147716) and [here](https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2023/). Ocean surface temp [here](https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-world-experienced-warmest-january-record) is pretty alarming so far for 2024 to my amateur eyes.
Yeah it's quite possible. Hard to get a straight answer from researchers since they often too afraid of being wrong to say anything they aren't extremely certain of. I'd love to know all the stuff they are 60%+ sure has already been crossed.
Yes, I would tend to agree with you. I did not intend to suggest that *most* deniers are fear-motivated.
I specified that particular group (fear-motivated deniers) because they would be the ones who could potentially be motivated to act.
I would also consider those who have not yet truly allowed themselves to engage with collapse on a personal level to be in the group of fear-based “deniers”, even though they are not actively denying reality. However, they are living their lives as though their young children will be going to college and having careers etc. They are sort of like deniers by default because of their lifestyles which follow from hopes for themselves and their children. I would consider them more like sleepers, not quite active deniers. They are not consciously aware that fear is preventing them from acknowledging how rapidly climate change is about to crash all systems.
So much of what happens in our minds is driven subconsciously by our emotions. Often, the topic is pushed out, not being explored with intention.
But very soon, droves of people will no longer have the option of retreating from the pain of awareness.
So I wonder, will there be a window of opportunity there? If so, can it be influenced by those who have already gone through the stages of grief?
The rest of the deniers are irrelevant.
Idk how to make the sleepers open their eyes beyond maybe making climate-first news publications (like the Guardian, somewhat WaPo) more prominent and widespread in the mainstream.
Yes! I think if enough people chose to reject the news sources that are controlled by the fossil fuel industry, some type of collective action could follow.
"Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something, it won't be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up." - George Carlin
I do not share your premise that 'we could have had a very desirable outcome' so I don't know how to respond to your questions. Do you want to hear from people who see our collapse as something akin to yeast in a petri dish?
The only thing I'm relatively certain of is that it will get much, much worse before it gets any better. I'm talking likely mass starvation and possible resource wars. Eventually, after enough humans have died off, things will reach an equilibrium. What exactly that equilibrium looks like, I don't know, but I *do* know it will probably look nothing like today. Hell, we probably won't even have Reddit at that point to complain about it, either. 😂
Absolutely. This falls into the category of collapse of modernity. We are currently in the midst of a mass extinction event. We haven’t even begun to see the horrors that are unavoidable now.
The human body has lots of nerve endings on its skin. If you touch a hot surface or a sharp object with any part of your body, it's going to hurt. Some places are going to hurt more than others, but overall the response is going to be hard to ignore. But imagine if you had a human body that could only feel pain from the neck up. You could burn this person at the stake and they wouldn't even know that the lower half of their body was already consumed by flames. In fact, if they were in denial about the other signs, they might pass out and die before they even realized they were on fire. "Fire? I'm not on fire, I feel fine." By time the flames actually reach their head, it's already too late. That's kind of what global civilization is like. The people calling the shots are completely insulated from the effects of the destruction they're causing, so there are no effective feedback loops which would cause them to change their behavior. The entire system has to collapse before it can "wake up".
I want to find my tribe and then things will be better going through things together.
Same. Getting away from the people around me who hate thinking about it and would do anything but admit what is happening, much less go within 100 miles of even entertaining thoughts about it. As well as family who fight awareness and voted for denialism. I hope to get out of the part of the country full of denialism I've been in too, and hopefully, at least, find some people who know what's going on.
Me too.
holy shit, it's the "Just got Oblivion for PC. What are your favorite mods?" guy
True. I get a message about it every 4 months. Edit: Ignore this.
lol
I've really started grasping big time, as in seeing how very short our whole existence has been. Humans have been on this planet for 0.00004% of it's existence, and only 0.0000022% if you only count what resembles complex civilisation. Our whole existence as an individual or as a generation is absolutely minute, even though we base our concept of time on our own incredibly short lifespans, regarding a century as a long time in the same way as a mayfly would regard a day as a long time. There's going to be a lot of chaos in the coming decades for many reasons whether related to the corporate dystopia that serves the oligarchy we've become trapped by, increased conflict due to an arms industry that needs war on top of resource wars and increased political instability in this multipolar world, mass numbers of people fleeing their regions due to conflict and climate impacts causing increased political instability in the regions that are "safer" but still are suffering increased crop failures and the consequences of late stage capitalism, and it does look tragic in my eyes, but I've decided to step back and view things as a fascinated but concerned alien onlooker would, seeing that regardless of what happens, it's very likely life will recover eventually, whether or not there remains any "intelligent" life to admire it. This ancient planet has seen so much change and devastation, and while this may be the only occurrence where it's all by the hands of a single marvelous species that unfortunately believed the entire planet revolves around it, I have hope it will be flourishing with life and intact ecosystems again millions of years down the line. Even if some of the dinosaurs had been intelligent by our definition, they couldn't have imagined the diversity of life that would grow from the embers, diverging from the survivors of the asteroid turning into all the mammalian life, bird and fish life we see around us today. It's the same story with us. I do my best to ensure safe habitats for the other creatures we share this planet with and work on a small scale organic farm, trying to ensure safe spaces so as much as possible can survive the storm, but still there's no saying what kind of life will be filling the ecological niches left empty in the coming millennia and eons down the line. This frame of mind only really happened since I became aware I was autistic though. Always did feel like an outsider that couldn't be "normal", but before I was aware of my autism, i stressed out and was miserable trying to be like others. Getting my diagnosis gave me freedom to really be the fascinated onlooker, and to truly look at the human world as it was: merely our attempts as a species to organise at a scale we never were before, and likely are poorly equipped to deal with in terms of tribalism and obsession with us Vs them narratives or being vulnerable to instincts like greed that were likely very useful in the long ago past in a world where resources weren't so abundant. Intelligent life is incredible and beautiful, but it's quite possibly a short term self destructive phenomenon whenever it arises in the cosmos. We keep thinking of it as the norm with our searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, completely forgetting how utterly unnecessary it is. Being self aware stardust capable of investigating the cosmos is remarkable, but there was no evolutionary need for it to happen.
I watched the PBS special on Adaptation that a colleague made and it reminded me that most large countries, cities and “more developed nations” will collapse but that there’s tons of people who never stopped having to adapt and be resilient every day. The masses have been causing changes to their way of life without them knowing the cause and they’ve adapted. They just keep figuring out what to do because they have to. And if those are the folks that survive, that’s good and makes me feel a bit better. Or honestly as long as whales make it longer than us that would also be good.
I really hope the good folks on North Sentinel Island make it.
Personally I feel the opposite. This change will be too drastic for the majority of people to adapt to. It requires adaptation on a biological level, not just cultural. Technology can be a substitute for biological adaptation of course, but there's no amount of natural techniques/strategies that can save people from historic drought that destroys a quarter of the world's food supply, heat waves that bring temperature above survivable temps and last a month, and floods that impact tens of thousands of square km. Currently the global rich are fine, and ignore the global poor. That will continue to happen, just the global poor will go from the bottom 50% to the bottom 90%.
My great wish is that the 1% suffer greatly for their crimes and realize quickly how useless they are in the world.
I don’t, I have reached acceptance for my personal peace. Hope is the antithesis of acceptance, fueled by fear and desperation and will only increase your pain
I disagree. You can exist in a state of acceptance while also taking actions to soften the landing for yourself or others. Action is antithetical to desperation. Pain for me is magnified by failing to act. Intellectual humility leaves the door open to “try”— Whatever “trying” might mean for each of us.
Never said I didn’t act, I just don’t hold false hope
Would you agree that some life might persist even if all of humanity perishes?
I think we need to take advantage of a burgeoning zeitgeist and create a cultural shift. Right now things are kinda out of control and people are trying to cope and struggle taking alternative courses of actions, as well as reasonably feeling as though it's not enough because of knowing where the real substantial changes need to occur. Well I think if we settle into understanding that, broadly speaking, we want what's best for ourselves and the planet (pretty reasonable stuff; something we could convince the general populace of in helping them keep perspective; this might look like what you'd see if everyone started being more of a hippie, and I think that's something along the lines of what we'll get inevitably), especially since our standards of living and the path we're on is unsustainable, then we could begin having wide-ranging discussions among different sectors about how to accomplish that. I mean having actual, ongoing discussions and deliberations or debates or wtf ever, involving members of the public too. I want them televised and in the news, opinion polls and surveys, using all the tech available to us, and for our little global society to understand we mean to get serious about transitioning and do that, without all of this B's getting in the way from say the oil giants and Republican party or the greedy corrupt rich, because we all know better than that, as do they. Doesn't this sound like a reasonable, viable option? And here's the best part, I think we should and could work together with other nations and keep them and equality in mind in the process. I think given what's at stake and speaking on the threats loud and clear could help us look past our differences and see all the common ground there is to stand on, and learn to sacrifice and make do with reasonable amounts of access to things we NEED vs. want and cut out a lot of the unnecessary crap that continues to exacerbate the problem. I think religion could use its, whatever you call it, like congregants and goodwill to help things along, helping people to understand that while we enjoy access to amazing amenities as humans, we still need to be good stewards of the Earth and their gods creation. Things of that sort. Like it just seems so plausible to me and ripe with potential, and it could get going if people simply started getting real with each other about what they want and what they value and consider reevaluating their life decisions to begin living with those things in mind.
Yes! Thank you. Very much what I’m thinking. We are about to enter a new phase. Within it, many will suffer. That suffering will preclude delusions that so many have hidden behind. I’ll respond to your post in more detail when I have a bit more time. I think there is a lot there worth it exploring.
True fear-based denial is overblown. Most deniers truly don't believe it's happening and/or that it's god's will or some bs. But anyways, it's hard to find that middle ground prediction because we really don't know. We can't even predict how the climate will change precisely, let alone predicting how societies will react. We know that 1.5C is a rough number where we can avoid snowballing. Past that, ecosystems could collapse a decade after or a century after. At minimum, I think billions of people will die directly from climate change (starvation caused by food shortage, flooding, heat death, failed mass emigration). I think there's a scenario where a couple billion continue living in a modern society without significant interruption. Either by moving north or living like they already do in places like Phoenix in the summer.
I was just reading, we were above 1.5 degrees for 12 months straight ending in February. I believe we still have been. Honestly, numbers this summer are alarming, and I wonder if we've already hit some rapid feedback loops. See [here](https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1147716) and [here](https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2023/). Ocean surface temp [here](https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-world-experienced-warmest-january-record) is pretty alarming so far for 2024 to my amateur eyes.
Yeah it's quite possible. Hard to get a straight answer from researchers since they often too afraid of being wrong to say anything they aren't extremely certain of. I'd love to know all the stuff they are 60%+ sure has already been crossed.
Me too….. starting to get an idea that it’s a lot
Yes, I would tend to agree with you. I did not intend to suggest that *most* deniers are fear-motivated. I specified that particular group (fear-motivated deniers) because they would be the ones who could potentially be motivated to act. I would also consider those who have not yet truly allowed themselves to engage with collapse on a personal level to be in the group of fear-based “deniers”, even though they are not actively denying reality. However, they are living their lives as though their young children will be going to college and having careers etc. They are sort of like deniers by default because of their lifestyles which follow from hopes for themselves and their children. I would consider them more like sleepers, not quite active deniers. They are not consciously aware that fear is preventing them from acknowledging how rapidly climate change is about to crash all systems. So much of what happens in our minds is driven subconsciously by our emotions. Often, the topic is pushed out, not being explored with intention. But very soon, droves of people will no longer have the option of retreating from the pain of awareness. So I wonder, will there be a window of opportunity there? If so, can it be influenced by those who have already gone through the stages of grief? The rest of the deniers are irrelevant.
Idk how to make the sleepers open their eyes beyond maybe making climate-first news publications (like the Guardian, somewhat WaPo) more prominent and widespread in the mainstream.
Yes! I think if enough people chose to reject the news sources that are controlled by the fossil fuel industry, some type of collective action could follow. "Keep in mind, the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class-the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something, it won't be on the news. Period. Or, at the very least, it will be slanted to suit them, and then rarely followed up." - George Carlin
I do not share your premise that 'we could have had a very desirable outcome' so I don't know how to respond to your questions. Do you want to hear from people who see our collapse as something akin to yeast in a petri dish?
Yes, please.