Given climate change and rising consumption, is there likely to be an environmental and/or economic collapse in the near future?

[DBT]

Given climate change and rising consumption, is there likely to be an environmental crisis and a related economic collapse in the near future if adequate steps are not taken? Let's say from 2050 to the end of the century. Please vote and give reasons for your option, if you like.

 

[bigfield]

Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene
Steffen et al, 2018
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252

We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.

Basically, we might be fucked if we don't do a lot more to prevent climate change.

This is a distant future catastrophe (everyone alive now will be dead by the time things get really bad) rather than something that will befall us in the near future, but the crisis is already upon us since we need to be greatly reducing emissions right now.

NB: I voted for "inevitable" but no-one can be that certain. I would instead say that it's probable.

 

[DBT]

That's fair. I wasn't thinking of an extinction event for the human race.

 

[Jokodo]

Missing option. I don't know, but certainly not because I don't care. The issue is too complex, with too many variables, many of which depend on what we do right now, to be a fruitful venue for armchair speculation.

What I do know is that throwing our collective hands in the air exclaiming it's inevitable isn't going to help. Neither is confusing real problems with imaginary ones, as that is likely to divert focus from the real problems that need fixing.

 

[DBT]

Missing option. I don't know, but certainly not because I don't care. The issue is too complex, with too many variables, many of which depend on what we do right now, to be a fruitful venue for armchair speculation.

What I do know is that throwing our collective hands in the air exclaiming it's inevitable isn't going to help. Neither is confusing real problems with imaginary ones, as that is likely to divert focus from the real problems that need fixing.

Anyone who votes has the option to state that they voted for 'I don't know' or 'I don't care' - not that it matters because the point of the poll was to see the distribution between the first two options. The rest is incidental....presumably if someone hasn't formed a view, they don't care much about the issue. If there is some other reason, that can be explained.

 

[Jokodo]

Missing option. I don't know, but certainly not because I don't care. The issue is too complex, with too many variables, many of which depend on what we do right now, to be a fruitful venue for armchair speculation.

What I do know is that throwing our collective hands in the air exclaiming it's inevitable isn't going to help. Neither is confusing real problems with imaginary ones, as that is likely to divert focus from the real problems that need fixing.

Anyone who votes has the option to state that they voted for 'I don't know' or 'I don't care' - not that it matters because the point of the poll was to see the distribution between the first two options. The rest is incidental....presumably if someone hasn't formed a view, they don't care much about the issue.

Watch your assumptions!

 

[DBT]

Missing option. I don't know, but certainly not because I don't care. The issue is too complex, with too many variables, many of which depend on what we do right now, to be a fruitful venue for armchair speculation.

What I do know is that throwing our collective hands in the air exclaiming it's inevitable isn't going to help. Neither is confusing real problems with imaginary ones, as that is likely to divert focus from the real problems that need fixing.

Anyone who votes has the option to state that they voted for 'I don't know' or 'I don't care' - not that it matters because the point of the poll was to see the distribution between the first two options. The rest is incidental....presumably if someone hasn't formed a view, they don't care much about the issue.

Watch your assumptions!

The poster is free to explain their own position, as I said.

 

[rousseau]

Based on what I've read I don't think anyone is certain at this point. That major environmental changes are occurring? Yes. That this is going to cause major upheaval in some regions of the world? Yes.

Collapse?

Maybe in some regions, but I think it's too early to tell exactly how the world economic system is going to be affected.

If I had my guess I'd say some regions will be hit the hardest and have major problems, and other regions that are less affected will experience a slow burn of changes in the near-term.

In the long-run.. 100 - 200, 1000 years? I think that's anyone's guess at this point.

 

[Jokodo]

Based on what I've read I don't think anyone is certain at this point. That major environmental changes are occurring? Yes. That this is going to cause major upheaval in some regions of the world? Yes.

Collapse?

Maybe in some regions, but I think it's too early to tell exactly how the world economic system is going to be affected.

If I had my guess I'd say some regions will be hit the hardest and have major problems, and other regions that are less affected will experience a slow burn of changes in the near-term.

In the long-run.. 100 - 200, 1000 years? I think that's anyone's guess at this point.

Quite the contrary. If we make it through this century, we're through the woods.

Now of course a random pandemic or dinosaur-killer can hit us anytime - and I doubt we'll be able to fully protect us against either in 2856 anymore than in 2019. That's not what the question is about, though. A self-inflicted collapse of civilization due to resource depletion and/or a consequent mass die-off of humans is either going to happen this century, or not at all: By the end of the century either the technologies to thrive in an altered environment are well underway, or we'll already be suffering the consequences. Also population is likely to be past peak by then.

 

[repoman]

What would any of us think if we were not in the mix of this situation - like an alien species just passing through. Our cognitive biases are working overtime to throw as many whatabouts as we can.

I think Derrick Jensen has an interesting take on this

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

For all of its existence the human species has simply gone about things as if the planet and its resources were infinite, that if something depleted locally we could get more somewhere else. There is a lot of selected-for bias and inertia to overcome given that history. Humanity isn't going to disappear. If that's the yardstick used to define catastrophe or not, then there will not be a catastrophe. But that's quite a simplistic yardstick.

It's really a matter of expectations. For those of us who desire sidewalks and air-conditioners maybe a crisis is not foreseen. For those of us who wish for wilderness, free-roaming animals, backcountry and wild biodiversity a catastrophe has been underway for decades at the very least.

 

[rousseau]

Based on what I've read I don't think anyone is certain at this point. That major environmental changes are occurring? Yes. That this is going to cause major upheaval in some regions of the world? Yes.

Collapse?

Maybe in some regions, but I think it's too early to tell exactly how the world economic system is going to be affected.

If I had my guess I'd say some regions will be hit the hardest and have major problems, and other regions that are less affected will experience a slow burn of changes in the near-term.

In the long-run.. 100 - 200, 1000 years? I think that's anyone's guess at this point.

Quite the contrary. If we make it through this century, we're through the woods.

Now of course a random pandemic or dinosaur-killer can hit us anytime - and I doubt we'll be able to fully protect us against either in 2856 anymore than in 2019. That's not what the question is about, though. A self-inflicted collapse of civilization due to resource depletion and/or a consequent mass die-off of humans is either going to happen this century, or not at all: By the end of the century either the technologies to thrive in an altered environment are well underway, or we'll already be suffering the consequences. Also population is likely to be past peak by then.

You're taking some leaps and over-estimating what we know at this point. The only thing that's really certain is that man-made climate change is happening and it's going to cause us serious problems. 'A self-inflicted collapse of civilization' tends toward the side of hyperbole, though, and is highly unlikely to happen, at least in the next few centuries. It's also a false dichotomy because climate change won't impact the world's regions equally.

Is it going to be pretty? Certainly not. Is it possible that things will be worse than we predicted? Yes, but this is still an unknown.

This report is pretty good.

 

[rousseau]

For all of its existence the human species has simply gone about things as if the planet and its resources were infinite, that if something depleted locally we could get more somewhere else. There is a lot of selected-for bias and inertia to overcome given that history. Humanity isn't going to disappear. If that's the yardstick used to define catastrophe or not, then there will not be a catastrophe. But that's quite a simplistic yardstick.

It's really a matter of expectations. For those of us who desire sidewalks and air-conditioners maybe a crisis is not foreseen. For those of us who wish for wilderness, free-roaming animals, backcountry and wild biodiversity a catastrophe has been underway for decades at the very least.

From my perspective the fallacy is that man is more than just another animal, with the ability to control it's own fate. To qualify that you'd need an essay, but needless to say the real forces at work in our history are mostly invisible to us, and can't really be harnessed.

Environmental catastrophes happen, and one is happening to us because an environmental catastrophe is a part of our history. And yet in 10 000, 50 000, 100 000 years it's just going to be a blip on the radar - and probably humans will still be here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's going to hurt in the modern world but we will be able to cope.

It's the third world areas that will really be in trouble. They won't have the money to deal with the damage.

 

[bilby]

Missing option. I don't know, but certainly not because I don't care. The issue is too complex, with too many variables, many of which depend on what we do right now, to be a fruitful venue for armchair speculation.

What I do know is that throwing our collective hands in the air exclaiming it's inevitable isn't going to help. Neither is confusing real problems with imaginary ones, as that is likely to divert focus from the real problems that need fixing.

There's a lot of confusing of real solutions with imaginary ones too.

The majority of the environmental left seems to have a completely faith based approach, wherein both the problems and the solutions are "feel-bad" statements of contrition and "feel-good" statements of hope, respectively, with little or no input from reason or observation.

Something must be done; Building wind farms is something; Therefore building wind farms must be done.

Apparently that's a compelling argument amongst those who haven't studied the actual problem.

Our energy issues are being decided upon by people who conflate energy and electricity; believe that energy (or electricity) are commodities; and have little grasp of non-domestic energy uses, either in terms of scale, importance, or technical requirements.

They don't know the difference between asynchronous and synchronous generation; Don't grasp the scale or importance of liquid fuel (oil) use at all; And are far too busy congratulating themselves on refusing a plastic straw at McDonalds to pull their heads out of their arses and look for ways to make VAST amounts of energy continuously available at a reasonable cost in money, materials, and land.

Intermittent, low power density solutions aren't solutions, and never can be. The laws of thermodynamics cannot be handwaved away in favour of an ideology, no matter how earnest and well-intentioned.

There's only one way to provide sufficient energy density to support eight to ten billion humans in middle-class, high-tech lifestyles, without burning fossil fuels and fucking up the atmosphere.

But half the population think it's unnecessary, because burning coal was good enough for grandad. And the other half think it's evil, because they are the victims of a massive sixty year long propaganda campaign.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

... the real forces at work in our history are mostly invisible to us, and can't really be harnessed.

What do you mean here?

 

[Jokodo]

Based on what I've read I don't think anyone is certain at this point. That major environmental changes are occurring? Yes. That this is going to cause major upheaval in some regions of the world? Yes.

Collapse?

Maybe in some regions, but I think it's too early to tell exactly how the world economic system is going to be affected.

If I had my guess I'd say some regions will be hit the hardest and have major problems, and other regions that are less affected will experience a slow burn of changes in the near-term.

In the long-run.. 100 - 200, 1000 years? I think that's anyone's guess at this point.

Quite the contrary. If we make it through this century, we're through the woods.

Now of course a random pandemic or dinosaur-killer can hit us anytime - and I doubt we'll be able to fully protect us against either in 2856 anymore than in 2019. That's not what the question is about, though. A self-inflicted collapse of civilization due to resource depletion and/or a consequent mass die-off of humans is either going to happen this century, or not at all: By the end of the century either the technologies to thrive in an altered environment are well underway, or we'll already be suffering the consequences. Also population is likely to be past peak by then.

You're taking some leaps and over-estimating what we know at this point. The only thing that's really certain is that man-made climate change is happening and it's going to cause us serious problems. 'A self-inflicted collapse of civilization' tends toward the side of hyperbole, though, and is highly unlikely to happen, at least in the next few centuries.

I agree it ishighly unlikely to happen in the next few centuries. It might in this.

It's also a false dichotomy because climate change won't impact the world's regions equally.

Is it going to be pretty? Certainly not.

It doesn't have to be ugly. It really is up to us, today.

Is it possible that things will be worse than we predicted? [/URL]

Possible. Again though, this is up to us. No point waiting for Zeus or Thor

 

[steve_bank]

The modern western economy is based mostly on consumer confidence leading to a wiling less to spend more money than save. We produce far more than basic needs, consumerism keeps people employed.

We are seeing right now how fragile the economy is. It can tank very quickly. That is why 'circuit breakers' were imposed on the stock markets. If a panic sell of occurs that gets out of control trading automatically stops.

 

[rousseau]

... the real forces at work in our history are mostly invisible to us, and can't really be harnessed.

What do you mean here?

It's hard to answer and be concise, but my point is that many of us suffer from the illusion that our history is intentional, and directional, and that there are smart people crunching numbers in a room somewhere, keeping us safe. IOW that man is the master of nature and not the reverse - that human history is a subset of ecological history.

I could write an essay, but suffice to say up until literally the past few decades we have been both so collectively unaware that sustainability was even a question, and powerless to create any other type of global economy, that what we have now is what we've got. It's not the product of intentional choices, but instead one of an animal that's attempted to create stable enough conditions to stimulate population growth in the short-term. The outcome chose itself, at best we connected the dots, at worst we connected the dots poorly.

It's only because we're now recognizing that climate change might actually impact our future short-term livelihood that we're considering taking it seriously, and even then a response has to come from within the quagmire of human systems and competing bodies, that we also have no control over. And somehow we have to do this while maintaining the quality of life of the very people who are driving climate change.

So there is the ideal - let's act, let's do something - but there are also the invisible forces - that are ulterior to a real response, and may constrain us from actually acting meaningfully. They're not actually invisible, just invisible to most of us.

What's worse is that there is also the danger of us overreacting to climate change - having the mistaken belief that we know what we're doing, making a huge mistake, and the cure being worse than the disease.

All of this is to say that we're not really a rational species, and the arc of our history has never been rational or directional in any meaningful sense. We can try, and we certainly should try to change that, but I'm not convinced that these invisible forces, or constraints, aren't too big for us to seriously deal with the problem.

So that sucks, but in another light this is just how the world works. Civilization as we know it may not be as permanent as we think, but our species is also probably much less transient than we believe too. It's going to be difficult to extinguish billions of us.

 

[steve_bank]

Good point. The conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to oppose any direction imposed by the collective society on economics or climate.

They belie the economy mist always run by supply and demand. If it leads over a cliff so be it. The economy goes where it will to maximize profits.