#Earth 🌏 Will we survive this ? Amazing⚡️ #crashcourse on #collapse & #environment by #ArthurKeller

If we wipe out the vast majority of the animal and plant life and drinkable water on the planet, how likely do you think we will keep our population at an all-time high? I think it's certainly possible you're right that population will keep increasing for the next, well, 10 years at least, maybe not 20, but meanwhile we're cratering our biocapacity, and we are not going to have anywhere near enough resources left on the planet to sustain that population if we keep going on our current trajectory. There's quite a few experts that say it's already too late, we've already depleted our biocapacity too much, the only way to correct for it is to undergo some form of rapid decline at some point in the future (collapse). I found this video incredibly illuminating on that point (I honestly thought we were still under the limit before watching it, not way past it already): [VIDEO] Extinction may be a bit extreme, humans might be able to survive somehow, but the vast majority will not. Here's one article that discusses the possibility of human extinction. Key quote: "I don’t want to claim that we can’t survive the loss of many, many species. We’ve already proved that we actually can. We’re very adaptable. But I think the bottom line is, you wouldn’t want to find out." [LINK]

No, our real problem is "overshoot" ( [LINK] ) and the the "Great Acceleration" ( [LINK] ). ‘Overshoot’ occurs when humanity consumes bio-resources faster than ecosystems can regenerate and waste production exceeds nature’s assimilative capacity. Overshoot is a meta-problem: climate change; plunging biodiversity; pollution of land, air and waters; tropical deforestation; soil/land degradation etc., etc., are all co-symptoms of overshoot. Climate change is an excess waste problem — CO2 is the greatest waste by weight of modern techno-industrial economies. We cannot solve any major symptom of overshoot in isolation. Indeed, the mainstream approach to emissions reductions will not only fail to subdue climate change but, by promoting material growth, will exacerbate overshoot ( [LINK] ). Almost everything we undertake follows a pattern resembling a hockey stick, growing exponentially long after we've already surpassed safe boundaries. This has been happening for several decades now, at least since 1970. The carrying capacity of our environment has been deteriorating for decades, and recently, the rate of its decline has escalated. It is on the verge of entering free fall, if it hasn't already (nicely explained here [VIDEO] ). We should have stopped using fossil fuels yesterday and started changing our diets, reforming agriculture, reforesting, restoring habitats and biodiversity, reforming financial systems, promoting degrowth and implementing UBI to address inequality, etc., etc

> when the alternative is decarbonizing using cleaner technologies There (might not be) enough fossil fuels left, and EROI is falling fast, so the question is whether we'd able to do this before the energy runs out and our economy will be forcibly reduced by nature. > carbon capture once that technology matures I'm worried that's just a technological pipedream. No such technology will probably exist for decades at the scale needed. We'd need millions of such factories. In fact, we already have such "technology", it's called forests ... but we're not doing that either. > Carrying capacity isn't fixed No, it's not. We've extended it in the past, but now it seems that it started decline ... and might enter freefall soon. I'd suggest this for more info: [VIDEO] > energy isn't fixed either Yes, and it's heating the planet and oceans 100x more than what we're consuming now. 5 atomic bombs every second now, is it? I'm aware that 254x254 km2 of solar panels would be enough for all our energy needs (except storage) ... but we're far from that. Even in the most optimistic scenarios we're targeting 25-30% of renewable energy in 2050 ... not really enough. > science fiction scenario where we become a type 2 civilization I'd like us to get there. But we might as well be at the end of the runway, looking at the great filter with our own eyes right now.

> Burn it all down and start over We won't be the ones doing that. > We're going to have to figure this sustainability thing out though It may be already late. I wish it wasn't so. I think we could have chance at repairing it ... if only we would do what's necessary. But we're not doing what's necessary, we never started even discussing it, and I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever do. We're talking only about climate change, but that's only one of the symptoms of the overshoot. Even people @ hacker news mostly don't have a clue. > we can't just ignore the problems We've been ignoring them for 50-70 years. The limits to growth / club of Rome was in 1972? So far ... we did nothing but ignored the problems. We may cross the 1.5C threshold in 5 years. Not in 2050 as previously expected, but in 5 years. And we're still pursuing economic growth. Have you noticed any evidence to the contrary lately? > it's going to be a big challenge, and things may get ugly I recommend few videos for you. I must warn you ... it may hamper your ability to enjoy parties. Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario - Arthur Keller [VIDEO] How to Enjoy the End of the World - Dr. B. Sidney Smith [LINK] Arithmetic, Population and Energy - Dr. Albert A. Bartlett [LINK] Why Societies Collapse And What it Means for Us - Joseph A. Tainter [LINK] Revealing the Naked Emperor – Paris, 2° & Carbon Budgets - Kevin Anderson [LINK]

Quickly: > Or seed the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide That's not solving the situation, that's temporarily mitigating some effects with poisons for a short term and at the same time emitting a ton of emissions from a lot of flights. > global warming is bad (but manageable) Warming, or better climate change, is only one of the symptoms of the overshoot. We've managed almost zero, nil, zilch in past 50 years (coal is still at 82%). > but pre-industrial society is far, far worse Calling mitigation strategies return to pre-industrial society ... i don't have words for that. But if we don't start solving it, and fast (yesterday was late), the nature will solve the problem for us. One way is better than the other. If you're interested where else you're wrong, you should really spend some 30 mins here: [VIDEO]

I check and comment on the subreddit on an almost daily basis, and have for about a year now. It takes a while to believe that it can happen, for sure. I didn't start seriously believing it for at least six months of checking the subreddit periodically. But when you see how much damage we're doing to our oceans (National Geographic warns there might be no (human) seafood at all by 2048[1], ocean acidification, coral bleaching, etc), how more and more regions are getting into emergency situations with water (which will lead to people getting more and more desperate to get that water, and possibly wars being waged over it), positive feedback loops from global warming that can shoot us way past 1.5c if we get that far (I've seen speculation that it could get up to 12c, which would likely wipe out humanity), and know how terrible humans are at dealing with exponential and compounding escalating situations (as proven by our current pandemic), and yeah, I'm pretty sure it will happen. The only question is how soon. It's also looking like even if we could do enough about it, we'd have to dedicate almost 100% of our efforts towards it, and basically everyone on the planet are being distracted by petty shit, or even other very important issues, just not as threatening to our existence and society like climate change is (including myself, it's hard to avoid the distractions with our monkey brains). So instead we're doing basically nothing but lip service towards these issues, still, af

I found the part "Humans in Complex Systems" quite interesting. My understanding of it is that technology could fall short of being an adequate solution to a more systemic problem wrt climate change. In addition to that work, I've been digging around the perspective of system dynamics [1] on the issues the global civilization is facing [2]. I feel the crowd here is more biased toward a solutionist view on those issues - I might be very wrong. Anyway, I was curious about different perspectives on this topics. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

No paywall: [LINK] Great acceleration graph: [LINK] Exponential growth vs. carrying capacity of the environment: [VIDEO]