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> resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite Human ingenuity is impressive, but not infinite. I recommend Collapse by Jared Diamond

> resources are indeed infinite, because the human ingenuity is infinite Human ingenuity is impressive, but not infinite. I recommend Collapse by Jared Diamond. It's a long read, but every single society he examines thought they were doing great but ended up eating each other (literally) within a couple of generations once some vital resource dried up. Human ingenuity failed all of them. I'll give you peak oil: our ingenuity is already finding viable alternative energy solutions. But climate change is going to destabilise so much more - food, water, land, security - that I'm pessimistic that our civilisation will last more than a few generations. So far we've only discovered more positive feedback (e.g. methane from melting Siberia), when we desperately need strong negative feedback. A bit like Covid, where everyone assumed the ingenious new vaccines would get us back to normal in a couple of months, but mutations, politics and social dynamics mean we're still very much on the back foot. But hey, I'm 60 and still a lefty so obviously no brain and just a bullshit doomer :) But do grab a copy of Collapse, there are a lot of "whoa!" insights and it's a fascinating read.

mythrwy 5y ago
I never accepted the premise of that book as being universally true. Societies have collapsed for reasons other then resource scarcity. In fact I'd say more often they collapse for reasons other then resource scarcity. I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. My guess? The professional political/priestly/mid-level manager class gaining self serving control and cannibalizing productive (and competitive) capacity is a very common cause of collapse. We see it on a smaller scale in companies real time.
- bmitc 5y ago
  > I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. Is this true? I thought it was drought and deforestation and over-farming that sped up the Mayan decline and that soil erosion and exhaustion and agricultural decline aided in the fall of Rome. https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/06oct_maya https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/0...
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    Rome got much (most?) of their grain from Egypt (which renews fertility due to annual flooding) and the cause of the Mayan collapse is unknown but I highly doubt it was primarily scarcity driven. Societies collapse from social factors, not just resource scarcity and social factors are in my opinion a more common cause. War, internal conflict, and political instability. And my favorite theory, the rise of parasitic and short sighted bureaucracies which snuff out the creative and competitive impulse of a culture.
    - bmitc 5y ago
      That link appears to disagree with you regarding the Mayans and even points out that ecological issues can fuel and exacerbate social, political, and cultural problems. Of course these things are multifaceted but it seems obvious that a multidimensional domino effect can occur when kick started by ecological issues. Look at what happened with COVID. Gun and ammunition purchases were off the charts, increases of homicidal crime, civil unrest, unemployment, etc. Such a "simple" thing as a virus destabilized society in multiple ways. Just imagine if it was food and resource scarcity.
  - wisty 5y ago
    One suggestion I heard was that the Mayans were a bunch of imperialist tax collectors and their "empire" simply started refusing to pay tax when the military advantages were no longer so important. You could probably say the same about Rome. Once everyone in the empire could out-Legionary the Romans (the provinces were the main source of military might anyway at this point), sending tribute suddenly became a bit of a waste of time. Any disruption can trigger a chain of revolts. A revolt could be armed, or a soft revolt where the locals start acting like feudal lords and claim it's necessary to keep the peace.
- rewgs 5y ago
  > Societies have collapsed for reasons other than resource scarcity. In fact I'd say more often they collapse for reasons other than resource scarcity. This is a bit moot, considering that resource scarcity is a very, very good reason for societal collapse, as well as potential a root cause of other reasons you cite for societal collapse, and resource scarcity is exactly what we are beginning to experience.
- drallison 5y ago
  Check out Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies. He looks at a large number of historical complex societies that collapsed and suggests that they collapsed when the cost of the complexity exceeded its utility. A very appealing concept. His arguments about why our society is not at risk were not convincing.
swader999 5y ago
Sure there will be weather events, but none of us will live to see anything climate related that causes an entire country to whither.
- c0nducktr 5y ago
  I'd take that bet.
  - premium-gecko 5y ago
    I wish we could actually bet on it. It's a funny thing about this alleged "crisis" -- it's a "crisis", but it's also so vague and slow that nobody's willing to place any bets that could actually be resolved in a reasonable amount of time. Actually, when you see rich people placing what you could consider private bets, they always seem to be betting against climate disaster, e.g., building airports in the Maldives, buying beachfront property on Martha's Vineyard, etc. Even poor people seem to bet against imminent climate disaster when they, e.g., pay back their student loans.
- s5300 5y ago
  Multiple countries have already began to buy foreign land because they know their entire country will wither because it will be underwater. Perhaps you should... fuck, I don't even know. All of this information is completely free and accessible and nobody gives a single fuck because they think they're smarter. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/24/kiribati-and-china-to-develop-former-climate-refuge-land-in-fiji https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/24/kiribati-and-c... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-maldives/we-cant-wait-maldives-desperate-for-funds-as-islands-risk-going-under-idUSKBN1ZG0XS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-maldives/w... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-maldives-environment/maldives-sends-climate-sos-with-undersea-cabinet-idUSTRE59G0P120091017 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-maldives-environment/mald...
- sgt101 5y ago
  I think that big diverse countries like the USA will be able to cope better than small countries. So places like Fiji are probably more exposed than many imagine.
jrsj 5y ago
Food/water/land can all be solved via war. Which is probably more concerning than rising costs of those things alone.

mythrwy 5y ago

I never accepted the premise of that book as being universally true. Societies have collapsed for reasons other then resource scarcity. In fact I'd say more often they collapse for reasons other then resource scarcity. I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. My guess? The professional political/priestly/mid-level manager class gaining self serving control and cannibalizing productive (and competitive) capacity is a very common cause of collapse. We see it on a smaller scale in companies real time.

bmitc 5y ago
> I don't think the Mayans ran out of anything. Neither do I believe the Romans ran out of anything. Is this true? I thought it was drought and deforestation and over-farming that sped up the Mayan decline and that soil erosion and exhaustion and agricultural decline aided in the fall of Rome. https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/06oct_maya https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/0...
- mythrwy 5y ago
  Rome got much (most?) of their grain from Egypt (which renews fertility due to annual flooding) and the cause of the Mayan collapse is unknown but I highly doubt it was primarily scarcity driven. Societies collapse from social factors, not just resource scarcity and social factors are in my opinion a more common cause. War, internal conflict, and political instability. And my favorite theory, the rise of parasitic and short sighted bureaucracies which snuff out the creative and competitive impulse of a culture.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    That link appears to disagree with you regarding the Mayans and even points out that ecological issues can fuel and exacerbate social, political, and cultural problems. Of course these things are multifaceted but it seems obvious that a multidimensional domino effect can occur when kick started by ecological issues. Look at what happened with COVID. Gun and ammunition purchases were off the charts, increases of homicidal crime, civil unrest, unemployment, etc. Such a "simple" thing as a virus destabilized society in multiple ways. Just imagine if it was food and resource scarcity.
- wisty 5y ago
  One suggestion I heard was that the Mayans were a bunch of imperialist tax collectors and their "empire" simply started refusing to pay tax when the military advantages were no longer so important. You could probably say the same about Rome. Once everyone in the empire could out-Legionary the Romans (the provinces were the main source of military might anyway at this point), sending tribute suddenly became a bit of a waste of time. Any disruption can trigger a chain of revolts. A revolt could be armed, or a soft revolt where the locals start acting like feudal lords and claim it's necessary to keep the peace.
rewgs 5y ago
> Societies have collapsed for reasons other than resource scarcity. In fact I'd say more often they collapse for reasons other than resource scarcity. This is a bit moot, considering that resource scarcity is a very, very good reason for societal collapse, as well as potential a root cause of other reasons you cite for societal collapse, and resource scarcity is exactly what we are beginning to experience.
drallison 5y ago
Check out Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies. He looks at a large number of historical complex societies that collapsed and suggests that they collapsed when the cost of the complexity exceeded its utility. A very appealing concept. His arguments about why our society is not at risk were not convincing.

swader999 5y ago

Sure there will be weather events, but none of us will live to see anything climate related that causes an entire country to whither.

c0nducktr 5y ago
I'd take that bet.
- premium-gecko 5y ago
  I wish we could actually bet on it. It's a funny thing about this alleged "crisis" -- it's a "crisis", but it's also so vague and slow that nobody's willing to place any bets that could actually be resolved in a reasonable amount of time. Actually, when you see rich people placing what you could consider private bets, they always seem to be betting against climate disaster, e.g., building airports in the Maldives, buying beachfront property on Martha's Vineyard, etc. Even poor people seem to bet against imminent climate disaster when they, e.g., pay back their student loans.
s5300 5y ago
Multiple countries have already began to buy foreign land because they know their entire country will wither because it will be underwater. Perhaps you should... fuck, I don't even know. All of this information is completely free and accessible and nobody gives a single fuck because they think they're smarter. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/24/kiribati-and-china-to-develop-former-climate-refuge-land-in-fiji https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/24/kiribati-and-c... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-maldives/we-cant-wait-maldives-desperate-for-funds-as-islands-risk-going-under-idUSKBN1ZG0XS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-maldives/w... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-maldives-environment/maldives-sends-climate-sos-with-undersea-cabinet-idUSTRE59G0P120091017 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-maldives-environment/mald...
sgt101 5y ago
I think that big diverse countries like the USA will be able to cope better than small countries. So places like Fiji are probably more exposed than many imagine.

jrsj 5y ago

Food/water/land can all be solved via war. Which is probably more concerning than rising costs of those things alone.