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If the current situation wasn't so grim, I would chuckle at the magnitude of delusional thinking it must take to produce a post such as this, when the climate c

If the current situation wasn't so grim, I would chuckle at the magnitude of delusional thinking it must take to produce a post such as this, when the climate crisis has humanity paralyzed like deer caught in the headlights. We're destroying the earth and suffocating in our own waste, yet "there's a good chance of productivity explosion by 2100 which could quickly lead to what one might call a "technologically mature" civilization"

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
UnFleshedOne 5y ago
Right now climate situation is not scary enough even for activists in the area -- they spend their time mixing in unrelated social justice issues and protesting nuclear plants. Such frivolous notions will fall off once it becomes clear we actually need to solve concrete problems or die trying. It is possible for destruction to happen just fast enough for everybody to finally take notice, but not fast enough to preclude geoengineering solutions for good. That's one possible (if not pretty) path to get to a technologically mature stage. The risk is always that we wake up already in a boiling frog state, or that even when dangers become self-evident for everybody, we still spend time on power games instead of fixing the problems. In that case, well, we kinda deserve it...
thomashop 5y ago
The climate crisis will probably only wipe poor humans out. I'd also say that it is a rather new phenomenon (the last generation) where people have started worrying about climate change. We are starting to take action. The next generation could already be a lot more sustainable.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  Humans will wipe out plenty of animals and species on the way to that extinction though (also clearly plenty of other animals are suffering from climate change, see the estimated billion animals that died in Australian wildfires last year, or the baby birds that jumped to their deaths to escape the heat in the PNW heat dome this year, or the bleaching of coral reefs, or all sorts of other ways the climate is killing off animals). Sure there might be some life that survives the climate crisis after we're gone, but the planet is going to lose most of its biodiversity before then.
nostromo 5y ago
The fact that global warming is seen as our most dire emergency is a testament to how few crises we actually face now as a species.
- simiones 5y ago
  Ever since the earliest hunter-gatherer times, there has never been a crisis of this magnitude in the history of the human race, so I'm not sure what you're on about. Ever since we were more than a handful of people living in a single location, there has never before been a situation where, by our own actions, we were this likely to destroy our current way of life for the entirety of the human population.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
simiones 5y ago
The same magnitude of delusional thinking can be seen in the reactions to your post... Far too many are willing to believe that the climate crisis will be fixed by someone else in the future, and we'll all just forget about it as a minor blip (all the while, being entirely unwilling to accept even the slightest change that could affect economic growth).
sbierwagen 5y ago
>We're destroying the earth and suffocating in our own waste To be clear: Global warming is bad. It is going to kill tens of millions of people, drown a lot of cities, and render alarmingly large sections of the planet uninhabitable to unmodified humans. It does not actually pose an existential threat to technological civilization. Even 5C of warming would not kill all humans. The cities will just move north. We are not in danger of running out of oil or coal before transitioning to clean electricity. 2100 will look very different, (less international trade, almost certainly no unified global internet like we have now) but regular ole global capitalism will keep rolling along. Humanity is not dealing with global warming very effectively. But it won't kill 100% of all humans. It won't even kill 50%.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > The cities will just move north. We are not in danger of running out of oil or coal before transitioning to clean electricity. 2100 will look very different, (less international trade, almost certainly no unified global internet like we have now) but regular ole global capitalism will keep rolling along. You're greatly underestimating the societal impact that this will have. Cities don't 'just move' somewhere else in a few decades without causing massive turmoil. For one thing, the countries up north (or south) will not just accept (or be able to handle) a few hundred million immigrants. There will be global war, and it's hard to say what will be left at the end. At the very least, billions will die, not 'tens of millions'. Not to mention, we have no idea what impact this will have on global agriculture. Like it or not, we are not entirely separated from existing ecosystems, and the destruction of most land-dwelling animals living near the equator will not be a small thing.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

UnFleshedOne 5y ago

Right now climate situation is not scary enough even for activists in the area -- they spend their time mixing in unrelated social justice issues and protesting nuclear plants. Such frivolous notions will fall off once it becomes clear we actually need to solve concrete problems or die trying. It is possible for destruction to happen just fast enough for everybody to finally take notice, but not fast enough to preclude geoengineering solutions for good. That's one possible (if not pretty) path to get to a technologically mature stage. The risk is always that we wake up already in a boiling frog state, or that even when dangers become self-evident for everybody, we still spend time on power games instead of fixing the problems. In that case, well, we kinda deserve it...

thomashop 5y ago

The climate crisis will probably only wipe poor humans out. I'd also say that it is a rather new phenomenon (the last generation) where people have started worrying about climate change. We are starting to take action. The next generation could already be a lot more sustainable.

cableshaft 5y ago
Humans will wipe out plenty of animals and species on the way to that extinction though (also clearly plenty of other animals are suffering from climate change, see the estimated billion animals that died in Australian wildfires last year, or the baby birds that jumped to their deaths to escape the heat in the PNW heat dome this year, or the bleaching of coral reefs, or all sorts of other ways the climate is killing off animals). Sure there might be some life that survives the climate crisis after we're gone, but the planet is going to lose most of its biodiversity before then.

nostromo 5y ago

The fact that global warming is seen as our most dire emergency is a testament to how few crises we actually face now as a species.

simiones 5y ago
Ever since the earliest hunter-gatherer times, there has never been a crisis of this magnitude in the history of the human race, so I'm not sure what you're on about. Ever since we were more than a handful of people living in a single location, there has never before been a situation where, by our own actions, we were this likely to destroy our current way of life for the entirety of the human population.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

simiones 5y ago

The same magnitude of delusional thinking can be seen in the reactions to your post... Far too many are willing to believe that the climate crisis will be fixed by someone else in the future, and we'll all just forget about it as a minor blip (all the while, being entirely unwilling to accept even the slightest change that could affect economic growth).

sbierwagen 5y ago

>We're destroying the earth and suffocating in our own waste To be clear: Global warming is bad. It is going to kill tens of millions of people, drown a lot of cities, and render alarmingly large sections of the planet uninhabitable to unmodified humans. It does not actually pose an existential threat to technological civilization. Even 5C of warming would not kill all humans. The cities will just move north. We are not in danger of running out of oil or coal before transitioning to clean electricity. 2100 will look very different, (less international trade, almost certainly no unified global internet like we have now) but regular ole global capitalism will keep rolling along. Humanity is not dealing with global warming very effectively. But it won't kill 100% of all humans. It won't even kill 50%.

tsimionescu 5y ago
> The cities will just move north. We are not in danger of running out of oil or coal before transitioning to clean electricity. 2100 will look very different, (less international trade, almost certainly no unified global internet like we have now) but regular ole global capitalism will keep rolling along. You're greatly underestimating the societal impact that this will have. Cities don't 'just move' somewhere else in a few decades without causing massive turmoil. For one thing, the countries up north (or south) will not just accept (or be able to handle) a few hundred million immigrants. There will be global war, and it's hard to say what will be left at the end. At the very least, billions will die, not 'tens of millions'. Not to mention, we have no idea what impact this will have on global agriculture. Like it or not, we are not entirely separated from existing ecosystems, and the destruction of most land-dwelling animals living near the equator will not be a small thing.