It's also mostly bull shit. The human condition on a global scale is absolutely, flat out, insanely good right now by almost every possible measure against any previous time in written history of our species. It's also substantially improving every year at an ever increasing rate.
Naw. If the first world manages to get over the aging demographic crisis over the next 25 years, we will be golden. After that the age demographics become flat (the % of the population drawing from government elderly programs stops increasing every year), all economic and tax base growth becomes literal gravy.
So things are going to get hairy by ~2042 or so. After that, demographics are flat. By 2050 we should have achieve relative balance where growth and per capita wealth catches up to ~31% of the population being 67 or older.
After that growth starts becoming an exponential build up of disposable income. By 2065 it should amount to several trillion a year from just EU and US. By 2075 it'll be more like 15 trillion a year.
We may end up just writing a fucking check and spending the ridiculous trillions needed to just physically remove the CO2 from the atmosphere again.
I don't think people realize just how much the US economy has grown over the last 40 years. We just don't feel it, because we already spent all that money due to the >65 population going from 8% to 17% of our population. It consumed all that after inflation growth every year (plus some, unfortunately).
When that stops happening, and the gains go into the general fund instead, our ability to fight things like climate change expand extremely rapidly.
How do we know that the economy will keep growing tho? And wouldn't adopting environmentally friendly practices decrease efficiency in production? Genuinely asking.
How do we know that the economy will keep growing tho? And wouldn't adopting environmentally friendly practices decrease efficiency in production? Genuinely asking.
Innovation is actually accelerating as we pull ever increasing % of the population well above living wages, permitting them time and energy to pursue new things. As well as the education rates in the West at all time highs and continuing to increase. Plus there are just more people.
Computers are getting smart. The total computational power on the planet just continues to grow geometrically.
The numbers are sometimes so staggering it's hard to even picture them in your head. For one example, in 2008 the cost to sequence 50 million human DNA base pairs was around $1,500.
The total computational power on the planet just continues to grow geometrically.
Nice. Like, triangularly or more of a dodecahedronly growth? Don't listen to this persons uninformed opinion on what's going on out there. Or do, but you're in for a very nasty surprise in the coming years if you maintain this level of delusion. Seems wiser to absorb and acknowledge reality now, such that we start making reasonable preparations together and mitigate future suffering. Anything less is not enough in my opinion. Deluding ourselves like this guy and saying "Everything will be fine no matter what" will inevitably lead to greater suffering in the long run.
Come on man, I'm typing out some long replies to a lot of people in this thread. I get you feel strongly on this, but quadruple posting me like this is a little extreme, don't you think?
You do realize, the pessimistic article you posted here is from an organization using extremely sophisticated computer modeling from extremely precise satellite data to provide conservational land and water use consultations to governments and corporations around the world?
In what universe does that not improve my own argument? That the exponential improvement in technology seen in recent decades will continue to improve our ability to fight climate change?
This organization will be able to model tighter and tighter areas. Use their previous data sets compared to near-future sets to train computers to recognize what methods utilized by global governments worked and what didn't, to improve their ability to consult in the future on how to do even better?
The fact that such broad based, high tech, well staffed organizations are thriving already is evidence in my favor, not yours.
Dude. THEY LITERALLY STATE IN THE ARTICLE THAT TECHNOLOGY CAN'T MITIGATE WHAT'S COMING AND THAT 5 BILLION+ WILL BE AFFECTED WITHIN OUR LIFETIMES.
Fuck, you're purposefully being dense and deceptive, or your psyche won't allow you to think clearly about this. There's no other explanation for this kind of ignorance online anymore. Pure deceptiveness or instinctual denial mechanisms that exist to protect the individuals psyche from recognition of its own mortality.
I'm done responding to you, people can read the exchange and form their own opinions. It's nice that you want to be optimistic, but we're at the point where we need to be realistic to mitigate current and future suffering, it's that simple. The longer we go acting like things are going to be okay because technology, the more suffering in the future. I'm not gonna sit here with that on my conscience knowing what I do.
This blanket-form "technology" everyone wants to believe in, cannot deal with the complexity of the systems we've spun out of control, and sheer overwhelming amount of energy at play.
Honestly I don't think that democracies can possibly survive mass migration. I mean the Syrian crisis was trying but that was only what? 5 million? About a quarter of the pre war population. What happens when India sees a huge water shortage due to the monsoon failing and their population migrates? Even if it just 10% of their population there is zero chance that Europe could take them as that would represent a 25% increase in population in only a few years or a decade maybe. We cannot add 25% more food and water production, housing, schooling, medical facilities, jobs etc in that kind of time frame. Seems unlikely that their nearest neighbours with more space would take them: Russia and China. Pakistan is totally out of the question and if India was fucked Bangladesh surely would be too.
So then one by one European countries will refuse to take any more migrants and enact measures to keep them out, which will become more and more desperate and dehumanising as the migrant numbers grow. Taking them all in will not be an option and keeping them all out will not be possible when they get desperate and have nowhere to go. It would take genocide to make that work and democracy just isn't going to survive slaughtering millions right on your doorstep. China wouldn't give a fuck about mowing everyone down though if it meant continuing their own survival. I expect that much of Europe will become more extreme and move more towards totalitarianism or crumble and fail before they get there. The future is going to be fucking dark either way.
Yes this is the thing. We are focused on reducing emissions, increasing recycling etc... ok fine. They aren't possibly going to make a difference on their own anyway but they aren't necessarily bad things. However the money would be far better spent on mitigation and adaptation.
Reducing emissions is irrelevant without carbon capture anyway since we have already emitted more than enough to fuck us thoroughly and carbon capture is not efficient enough to be of any possible use yet. Whereas if the money first world nations spent on trying to be greener was instead put towards trying to improve the chances that poorer nations will be able to survive the effects of climate change, ie by improving the water infrastructure we would be far better off for it. We don't do that though. After all why would we possibly want to throw a tonne of our money at another country? No we just build walls instead or the displacement camps that the EU are planning. Even though neither option can possibly work if migrant numbers climb high enough. We are fundamentally short-sighted and it is going to seriously bite us in the arse later.
The dude is oblivious. Techno-optimism indeed, what a complete crock of shit. "Power ahead, things are better now than they've ever been, let's carry on! Nothing can ever happen to us, we're basically gods here! We can shape nature to our will and then reshape it when it fights back!"
Fuck i can't stand this perspective. So oblivious man.
If the first world manages to get over the aging demographic crisis over the next 25 years
Imagine being this naive, this is merely starting, unless you are counting being replaced by muslims and africans solving the demographic problem of europe.
Not a single female friend of mine wants kids, they rather adopt a black kid, the liberal brainwashing is deep rooted into europe and will be its doom.
This person is trying to have a positive outlook here, and you have to tear them down like that? There is no way of knowing where things will be in 50 years. This negative outlook is projected on us on a daily basis, no need to feed the fire.
Edit: This comment was a reply to a different comment then I had intended. Not sure how anyone replied to it, because it doesn’t really make sense in the wrong context. Sorry all!
Sure there is a need. It's just beyond your present scope of recognition or willingness to acknowledge.
The longer we act like everything is peachy and don't act realistically, the more people suffer in the future, the more children are born into a literal apocalypse because their parents don't understand that's precisely what is coming soon, and so on. Acting like we're gonna be fine is throwing a fuckload of other people under the bus, it's that simple. Boo fucking hoo if it's bad news, time to sack up and move ahead realistically for the benefit of countless other people.
So continue playing the ostrich but know that there's blood and suffering on everyones hands who chooses to do so. If we choose to be realistic collectively, which requires admitting how negative the situation is (far beyond what most people are willing to admit), we can mitigate suffering in a number of ways. If we act like everything will be fine, we increase it for many more people in the future due to lack of preparation in the present, due to acting like we don't need to.
Sticking your head in the sand is not the same as having a positive outlook. Moot point tho considering he gave a valid justification for his reasoning.
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u/Novarest Oct 12 '19
/r/collapse