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There is no salvation. Whatever was Earth before human civilization is in a death spiral. What comes next is anyone's guess. Elites are massing wealth to get of

There is no salvation. Whatever was Earth before human civilization is in a death spiral. What comes next is anyone's guess. Elites are massing wealth to get off planet, and when the mass migrations really start and mid income countries start becoming failed states on their path, I hope you are in a place that can hold you safe for the remainder of your time here.

Cryptonic 4y ago
I think it's a fantasy of the elites. There is no planet B. Not in the time frame we talk about. By far.
- bmitc 4y ago
  I agree that it's a fantasy. For one, I think Mars is just a power play by the likes of people like Musk and Bezos. It doesn't even make sense to view Mars as a backup for Earth because, at least currently, Earth is still alive and Mars is already completely dead. It's like saying "we're going to kill off the only planet that can sustain us to get to a planet that cannot sustain us". It's mind boggling that we can get people excited about electric cars and Mars but cannot get those same people to realize the reality that Earth is the only planet known to mankind that can sustain us.
  - hedora 4y ago
    As far as I can tell, humans can't survive for extended periods of time in gravity as low as it is on Mars. There's also the problem of surface radiation. Given that we can't figure out how to build subterranean cities at scale on earth, I'm not sure what the plan is for dealing with that. Honestly, a self sustaining space station seems easier to achieve than a self sustaining Mars base: You can spin the space station up to 1 G, park it behind a celestial body that acts as a radiation shield and power it with nuclear, or beamed solar power. Maybe I'm missing something obvious about the relative difficulty of the two problems.
    - bmitc 4y ago
      My general sentiment is that it seems much, much easier to just keep Earth sustainable rather than trying to make an unsustainable planet sustainable. It's sort of a paradox. If we can't keep a sustainable planet sustainable, how can we possibly make an unsustainable planet sustainable and keep it that way?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - inglor_cz 4y ago
        Because keeping the Earth sustainable means reaching consensus among 200 states and 8 billion people? That is a political/legal problem, and I am not sure why it should be "much, much easier" than first settlers terraforming an otherwise empty planet. It seems wrong even to compare those two tasks. They are so different that they don't seem to have a common metric. An analogy: is is easier to stop two spouses from quarreling or to write a SHA-256 implementation from scratch? How would that even be measured?
        raffraffraff 4y ago
        At least writing a SHA-256 implementation from scratch is theoretically possible. The point is, it is possible to keep Earth habitable, were just not doing that. But there is no plan B. In other words, we're fucked.
    - namaria 4y ago
      Look I get it, dismissing part of my comment on technicalities makes it seem less likely to play out. But the fact remains that we are clearly headed for disaster and rich people are clearly hoarding as much money as they can to prepare. To hyper focus on tearing apart just one outlandish way in which the elites might or might not seek safety is its on form of denial.
      - xeromal 4y ago
        I wouldn't get so annoyed by it. Nerds will nerd and pick apart trivialities. I get your point that the rich are planning for this. Whether they do it by building underground bunkers, space stations, or communities are mars is moot. I'll add though that I don't think it's worth concerning ourselves what the super rich are up to. The rich killed Rome too and they still ended up with no society.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    Bezos' space corporation, Blue Origin, hasn't yet reached the orbit - after 22 years of continuous work. So it seems safe to say that Bezos does not place much value on space colonization. Musk, on the other hand, seems to be obsessed by the Mars project.
- namaria 4y ago
  Yes it's a fantasy at this point, but a fantasy that a lot of very smart people and a lot of resources are pursuing. They might succeed. I won't make the call. But plan B clearly is some sort of Fortress Europe and god knows what cyberpunk western is in store for the US. It's plain to me the rich are bracing for disaster and see the rest of us as fodder. At this point the best we can do is pick a place least likely to be overrun in our lifetime. I'm thinking Norway or Switzerland.
- sillystuff 4y ago
  As long as the elites believe they have a plan B, whether it be New Zealand or Mars, they will not make the sacrifices necessary to avert disaster. The author writes on his experience with a group of elites who were seeking ways to protect their positions in the face of collapse (societal / ecological / etc.). Salvation will not come from the top. https://archive.ph/AABsP https://archive.ph/AABsP original: https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1 https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0...
  - raffraffraff 4y ago
    Nobody is making it off earth. And it's not just elites, we're all shitting in the drinking water to some degree, and we're all stuck here. I don't know anybody (personally) who actually makes significant lifestyle sacrifices that curb their impact on climate change. My wife and I are vegetarian, have no kids, don't own a car, and haven't been on a plane for years. I don't know any other person in the "first world" who lives the way we do. I'm not saying this because I think I'm better than other people or because I'm some type of activists. Far from it. Our lifestyle choice is comfortable physically and is the only one that makes me comfortable psychologically. I rarely mention this stuff online, and I never bring it up with friends of family. But every person I know in my age group lives a "typical Western life". Cars. Kids. Meat-rich diet. Several flights a year. Plastic bullshit on their lawn at Halloween and Christmas. And yet they also demand to know what the elites and politicians are doing to save the planet. Because they sure as shit don't think it's their job. I'm not saying "this is your fault". But I think that these elites you want to blame are as clueless and selfish as every other person you know.
    - sillystuff 4y ago
      Vegan. Grow much of my own food (mill my own flour, etc.). I lived without electricity or running water for most of a decade '00s (and only added a small DC only solar system for electric lighting for the rest of that decade). I continue to maintain a small footprint, but electric lighting, refrigeration, heat in the winter and hot and cold running water are pretty great (hot and cold running water is fucking amazing!), and I don't want to give those up again. But, none of that matters as much as my being a US citizen. The US military has CO2 emissions larger than 140 countries combined. My share of those US military emissions made my carbon footprint very high throughout the 00's in spite of near zero personal emissions. Presently, the US pushing for sanctions on Russia, led to much higher carbon footprint LNG being shipped to Europe to replace Russian pipeline gas (US oligarchs are making a killing selling LNG, though). Etc. If everyone, in the developed world, made similar personal choices, to the two of us, things would be better, but it would still be insignificant compared to US policy decisions like the massive US military perpetually deployed across the world. And, if the entire world's population was able to share in hot and cold running water, heat in the winter, electric lighting, refrigeration, etc., much of those gains from personal choices of westerners would be negated. I don't know the answer. Yes, a lot of people need to reduce their waste, and share with the rest of humanity and non-human life. But, it will not be enough-- somehow we must change governmental and corporate policies. As things currently stand, the average American has near zero impact on policy decisions[1]. While our rich and powerful elites are driving us off a cliff. The change we need will not be led by them, but in the current climate, a revolution, in the US, is highly unlikely, and if it were to happen would likely result in an extreme far-right authoritarian/theocratic regime even more extreme than the individual enrichment at any cost, "drill baby drill," right to far-right regime that currently rules. And, the US currently controls much of the world (see all western nations observing US illegal sanctions against 1/4-1/3 of the worlds population and also providing support for recent US illegal wars of aggression). Maybe the rise of China will save us, if the US elites do not lash out in desperation to maintain power and e.g., cause a nuclear holocaust. But, pinning hopes of halting environmental destruction on China is a slim hope. It is difficult to not lose hope. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
bmitc 4y ago
I believe that if we acted today, that there could be salvation. Institute massive taxes against plastic use. Ban it for take-out food and other single-use instances. Start heavily taxing other wasteful areas. Heavily encourage if not enforce composting and recycling. Immediately start restoring mowed lawns with native plants. Ban the use of chemical fertilizers. It could be done, but we won't. Salvation is at our fingertips, but we close our fists.
- namaria 4y ago
  We can't design a solution for the problem of 'too many humans devouring Earth's resources'. Locusts can't make plans. Galaxies cannot deviate from collision. I don't understand why we harbor fantasies about being anything other than a natural process that will simply run its course.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    That's an interesting perspective. In many ways, it seems to me that evolution did not or cannot account for technological development. I have been trying to read more about what makes life go, and it seems it's highly related to thermodynamics and information theory. Are you proposing that any life will eventually discover technology (namely the ability to access and manipulate stored energy and also computation)? If so, it's possible that life is accounting for it in ways we don't understand yet.
    - namaria 4y ago
      Whatever we call technology is as natural a process as everything else systems in our Universe cobble together. I see no difference between termite mounds and the Internet. All is bound by the laws of physics. The same processes created complex monkey brains create datacenters. Physics is very clear: only things that are thermodinamically downhill can happen. Human civilization is just a natural, 4D phenomenon we get to see unfold. All in all it won't amount to more then any passing geological pattern on any planet before or since.
      - 4y ago
nathan_compton 4y ago
If elites think they can move off planet and somehow survive a total collapse of earth's ecosystems, they are in for a rude awakening. An independent colony able to maintain its inhabitants in any kind of comfort will be dependent on the earth for the foreseeable future. Its actually difficult for me to believe that any elite would be stupid enough to think they could survive an earth environmental catastrophe in space. I'm pretty sure at least some of them are dumb enough to think they can survive it on earth, though. And they might be right!
- blueprint 4y ago
  You're making claims discouraging people to seek a solution to a VERY important issue. Kindly show some substantial info demonstrating evidence humans would be reliant on Earth. The entire point of such a mission is not to be. And lots of materials exist elsewhere. Again kindly show us proof of your extremely dangerous claims.
- namaria 4y ago
  It's a catch all metaphor. Most likely we will see some version of fortress Europe and the US devolving to frontier economy. Frontex is already getting bigger budgets, more boots on the ground and better kit with each passing year.
- zeruch 4y ago
  "Its actually difficult for me to believe that any elite would be stupid enough to think they could survive an earth environmental catastrophe in space." You underestimate the raw power of untethered hubris, fueled by venality.
  - blueprint 4y ago
    Excuse me but humans have already made immense technological progress through science, creativity, effort, and not listening to doubters like you. What on earth are you talking about and how could you speak so carelessly about such a crucial issue? And where the hell is this bs narrative that it's just a bunch of elites who want to get off earth ? The issue is ensuring the survival of humanity in the current braindead situation that all our eggs are in one basket. Any basic strategy course will tell you this is a good way to lose all your progress after a few iterations. I'm starting to wonder if there's a campaign to discourage the mission to ensure humanity's safety. Hit me back in 3 years when this hits the news and thank me then but it will probably be too late.
bcrosby95 4y ago
I hate to break it to you, but Earth before humans has largely been dead for hundreds or thousands of years, depending upon the exact region you're talking about.
- namaria 4y ago
  lol talk about human centric dellusions and an example walks into the conversation
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- bmitc 4y ago
  I'm a bit confused on what you're getting at and your timelines. Earth was around for billions of years before humans and had life on it the entire time except possibly the first few hundred million years.
  - bcrosby95 4y ago
    "Earth before humans is in a death spiral" says to me they're talking about earth as it existed before humans, not life on earth at all. Earth before humans died with the rise of civilization, and especially global trade. We transformed large swathes of land into farmland and urban areas. We enabled the transfer of invasive species throughout the world. We redirected and sucked rivers dry for our own purposes. We dumped our garbage and literal shit in waterways. We destroyed the majority of natural habitats. And this all happened hundreds or thousands of years ago.
dilap 4y ago
If you watch high-altitude time-lapse photography, human settlements look exactly like a mold infestation. We spread as much as we can, and eventually we'll collapse as we exhaust resources. The earth won't "care", it'll just be another of the many boom-bust cycles in the history of nature. We're part of it. It's not going to be pleasant for the humans and animals that live through it, though! While we have enough individual intelligence to see this is coming, and wish to avoid it, I don't think we collectively have the intelligence to do so. A crowd of humans has its own dynamics and kind of thought, and so far, these crowds are very short-sighted and prone to all sorts of irrationalities and hysterias.
- taylodl 4y ago
  These crowds are being controlled by those benefitting from the status quo and the status quo, practically by definition, has its own momentum - "this is the way we've always done it." Many people legitimately don't understand how doing what we did in the past won't work or even cause harm going forward. That's the heart of the issue.
yamtaddle 4y ago
> Elites are massing wealth to get off planet Well... no. They're prepping to move to compounds in New Zealand. Even a global warming (and nuclear war, let's throw that on the pile!) ravaged Earth is vastly easier to live on than, say, Mars. Trying to escape that way would be a frying-pan-into-the-fire plan. > and when the mass migrations really start and mid income countries start becoming failed states on their path, I hope you are in a place that can hold you safe for the remainder of your time here. But yeah, that's basically the reason why, I reckon. Somewhere sufficiently stable and liberal that's also really, really hard to reach without a ship or airplane. Avoiding the various climate refugee crises and wars we're likely to see in the coming decades probably is their motivation. New Zealand's a clear front-runner in that race.
- namaria 4y ago
  The compounds in NZ, mountaintops, deserts, islands, they are the now. There is clearly a drive to get off planet. It will most likely fail but it's happening.
  - raffraffraff 4y ago
    Humans will never make it off earth. Perhaps we'll make extremely brief flights, like the flying fish.
    - namaria 4y ago
      Sad thing is, we're probably gonna repeat our horrible colonial history, but with space ships.
      - jhbadger 4y ago
        No, because there is literally no where to go. Mars is 100X harder to live in than Antarctica, which we still can't live without constant resupplies from developed areas of Earth. If those are gone, we can't live on Antarctica, let alone Mars or whatever (perhaps mythical) exoplanets we could only reach after hundreds or thousands of years on generation ships (which we also don't have the technology to make anytime soon)

Cryptonic 4y ago

I think it's a fantasy of the elites. There is no planet B. Not in the time frame we talk about. By far.

bmitc 4y ago
I agree that it's a fantasy. For one, I think Mars is just a power play by the likes of people like Musk and Bezos. It doesn't even make sense to view Mars as a backup for Earth because, at least currently, Earth is still alive and Mars is already completely dead. It's like saying "we're going to kill off the only planet that can sustain us to get to a planet that cannot sustain us". It's mind boggling that we can get people excited about electric cars and Mars but cannot get those same people to realize the reality that Earth is the only planet known to mankind that can sustain us.
- hedora 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, humans can't survive for extended periods of time in gravity as low as it is on Mars. There's also the problem of surface radiation. Given that we can't figure out how to build subterranean cities at scale on earth, I'm not sure what the plan is for dealing with that. Honestly, a self sustaining space station seems easier to achieve than a self sustaining Mars base: You can spin the space station up to 1 G, park it behind a celestial body that acts as a radiation shield and power it with nuclear, or beamed solar power. Maybe I'm missing something obvious about the relative difficulty of the two problems.
  - bmitc 4y ago
    My general sentiment is that it seems much, much easier to just keep Earth sustainable rather than trying to make an unsustainable planet sustainable. It's sort of a paradox. If we can't keep a sustainable planet sustainable, how can we possibly make an unsustainable planet sustainable and keep it that way?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      Because keeping the Earth sustainable means reaching consensus among 200 states and 8 billion people? That is a political/legal problem, and I am not sure why it should be "much, much easier" than first settlers terraforming an otherwise empty planet. It seems wrong even to compare those two tasks. They are so different that they don't seem to have a common metric. An analogy: is is easier to stop two spouses from quarreling or to write a SHA-256 implementation from scratch? How would that even be measured?
      - raffraffraff 4y ago
        At least writing a SHA-256 implementation from scratch is theoretically possible. The point is, it is possible to keep Earth habitable, were just not doing that. But there is no plan B. In other words, we're fucked.
  - namaria 4y ago
    Look I get it, dismissing part of my comment on technicalities makes it seem less likely to play out. But the fact remains that we are clearly headed for disaster and rich people are clearly hoarding as much money as they can to prepare. To hyper focus on tearing apart just one outlandish way in which the elites might or might not seek safety is its on form of denial.
    - xeromal 4y ago
      I wouldn't get so annoyed by it. Nerds will nerd and pick apart trivialities. I get your point that the rich are planning for this. Whether they do it by building underground bunkers, space stations, or communities are mars is moot. I'll add though that I don't think it's worth concerning ourselves what the super rich are up to. The rich killed Rome too and they still ended up with no society.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Bezos' space corporation, Blue Origin, hasn't yet reached the orbit - after 22 years of continuous work. So it seems safe to say that Bezos does not place much value on space colonization. Musk, on the other hand, seems to be obsessed by the Mars project.
namaria 4y ago
Yes it's a fantasy at this point, but a fantasy that a lot of very smart people and a lot of resources are pursuing. They might succeed. I won't make the call. But plan B clearly is some sort of Fortress Europe and god knows what cyberpunk western is in store for the US. It's plain to me the rich are bracing for disaster and see the rest of us as fodder. At this point the best we can do is pick a place least likely to be overrun in our lifetime. I'm thinking Norway or Switzerland.
sillystuff 4y ago
As long as the elites believe they have a plan B, whether it be New Zealand or Mars, they will not make the sacrifices necessary to avert disaster. The author writes on his experience with a group of elites who were seeking ways to protect their positions in the face of collapse (societal / ecological / etc.). Salvation will not come from the top. https://archive.ph/AABsP https://archive.ph/AABsP original: https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1 https://onezero.medium.com/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0...
- raffraffraff 4y ago
  Nobody is making it off earth. And it's not just elites, we're all shitting in the drinking water to some degree, and we're all stuck here. I don't know anybody (personally) who actually makes significant lifestyle sacrifices that curb their impact on climate change. My wife and I are vegetarian, have no kids, don't own a car, and haven't been on a plane for years. I don't know any other person in the "first world" who lives the way we do. I'm not saying this because I think I'm better than other people or because I'm some type of activists. Far from it. Our lifestyle choice is comfortable physically and is the only one that makes me comfortable psychologically. I rarely mention this stuff online, and I never bring it up with friends of family. But every person I know in my age group lives a "typical Western life". Cars. Kids. Meat-rich diet. Several flights a year. Plastic bullshit on their lawn at Halloween and Christmas. And yet they also demand to know what the elites and politicians are doing to save the planet. Because they sure as shit don't think it's their job. I'm not saying "this is your fault". But I think that these elites you want to blame are as clueless and selfish as every other person you know.
  - sillystuff 4y ago
    Vegan. Grow much of my own food (mill my own flour, etc.). I lived without electricity or running water for most of a decade '00s (and only added a small DC only solar system for electric lighting for the rest of that decade). I continue to maintain a small footprint, but electric lighting, refrigeration, heat in the winter and hot and cold running water are pretty great (hot and cold running water is fucking amazing!), and I don't want to give those up again. But, none of that matters as much as my being a US citizen. The US military has CO2 emissions larger than 140 countries combined. My share of those US military emissions made my carbon footprint very high throughout the 00's in spite of near zero personal emissions. Presently, the US pushing for sanctions on Russia, led to much higher carbon footprint LNG being shipped to Europe to replace Russian pipeline gas (US oligarchs are making a killing selling LNG, though). Etc. If everyone, in the developed world, made similar personal choices, to the two of us, things would be better, but it would still be insignificant compared to US policy decisions like the massive US military perpetually deployed across the world. And, if the entire world's population was able to share in hot and cold running water, heat in the winter, electric lighting, refrigeration, etc., much of those gains from personal choices of westerners would be negated. I don't know the answer. Yes, a lot of people need to reduce their waste, and share with the rest of humanity and non-human life. But, it will not be enough-- somehow we must change governmental and corporate policies. As things currently stand, the average American has near zero impact on policy decisions[1]. While our rich and powerful elites are driving us off a cliff. The change we need will not be led by them, but in the current climate, a revolution, in the US, is highly unlikely, and if it were to happen would likely result in an extreme far-right authoritarian/theocratic regime even more extreme than the individual enrichment at any cost, "drill baby drill," right to far-right regime that currently rules. And, the US currently controls much of the world (see all western nations observing US illegal sanctions against 1/4-1/3 of the worlds population and also providing support for recent US illegal wars of aggression). Maybe the rise of China will save us, if the US elites do not lash out in desperation to maintain power and e.g., cause a nuclear holocaust. But, pinning hopes of halting environmental destruction on China is a slim hope. It is difficult to not lose hope. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

bmitc 4y ago

I believe that if we acted today, that there could be salvation. Institute massive taxes against plastic use. Ban it for take-out food and other single-use instances. Start heavily taxing other wasteful areas. Heavily encourage if not enforce composting and recycling. Immediately start restoring mowed lawns with native plants. Ban the use of chemical fertilizers. It could be done, but we won't. Salvation is at our fingertips, but we close our fists.

namaria 4y ago
We can't design a solution for the problem of 'too many humans devouring Earth's resources'. Locusts can't make plans. Galaxies cannot deviate from collision. I don't understand why we harbor fantasies about being anything other than a natural process that will simply run its course.
- bmitc 4y ago
  That's an interesting perspective. In many ways, it seems to me that evolution did not or cannot account for technological development. I have been trying to read more about what makes life go, and it seems it's highly related to thermodynamics and information theory. Are you proposing that any life will eventually discover technology (namely the ability to access and manipulate stored energy and also computation)? If so, it's possible that life is accounting for it in ways we don't understand yet.
  - namaria 4y ago
    Whatever we call technology is as natural a process as everything else systems in our Universe cobble together. I see no difference between termite mounds and the Internet. All is bound by the laws of physics. The same processes created complex monkey brains create datacenters. Physics is very clear: only things that are thermodinamically downhill can happen. Human civilization is just a natural, 4D phenomenon we get to see unfold. All in all it won't amount to more then any passing geological pattern on any planet before or since.
    - 4y ago

nathan_compton 4y ago

If elites think they can move off planet and somehow survive a total collapse of earth's ecosystems, they are in for a rude awakening. An independent colony able to maintain its inhabitants in any kind of comfort will be dependent on the earth for the foreseeable future. Its actually difficult for me to believe that any elite would be stupid enough to think they could survive an earth environmental catastrophe in space. I'm pretty sure at least some of them are dumb enough to think they can survive it on earth, though. And they might be right!

blueprint 4y ago
You're making claims discouraging people to seek a solution to a VERY important issue. Kindly show some substantial info demonstrating evidence humans would be reliant on Earth. The entire point of such a mission is not to be. And lots of materials exist elsewhere. Again kindly show us proof of your extremely dangerous claims.
namaria 4y ago
It's a catch all metaphor. Most likely we will see some version of fortress Europe and the US devolving to frontier economy. Frontex is already getting bigger budgets, more boots on the ground and better kit with each passing year.
zeruch 4y ago
"Its actually difficult for me to believe that any elite would be stupid enough to think they could survive an earth environmental catastrophe in space." You underestimate the raw power of untethered hubris, fueled by venality.
- blueprint 4y ago
  Excuse me but humans have already made immense technological progress through science, creativity, effort, and not listening to doubters like you. What on earth are you talking about and how could you speak so carelessly about such a crucial issue? And where the hell is this bs narrative that it's just a bunch of elites who want to get off earth ? The issue is ensuring the survival of humanity in the current braindead situation that all our eggs are in one basket. Any basic strategy course will tell you this is a good way to lose all your progress after a few iterations. I'm starting to wonder if there's a campaign to discourage the mission to ensure humanity's safety. Hit me back in 3 years when this hits the news and thank me then but it will probably be too late.

bcrosby95 4y ago

I hate to break it to you, but Earth before humans has largely been dead for hundreds or thousands of years, depending upon the exact region you're talking about.

namaria 4y ago
lol talk about human centric dellusions and an example walks into the conversation
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bmitc 4y ago
I'm a bit confused on what you're getting at and your timelines. Earth was around for billions of years before humans and had life on it the entire time except possibly the first few hundred million years.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  "Earth before humans is in a death spiral" says to me they're talking about earth as it existed before humans, not life on earth at all. Earth before humans died with the rise of civilization, and especially global trade. We transformed large swathes of land into farmland and urban areas. We enabled the transfer of invasive species throughout the world. We redirected and sucked rivers dry for our own purposes. We dumped our garbage and literal shit in waterways. We destroyed the majority of natural habitats. And this all happened hundreds or thousands of years ago.

dilap 4y ago

If you watch high-altitude time-lapse photography, human settlements look exactly like a mold infestation. We spread as much as we can, and eventually we'll collapse as we exhaust resources. The earth won't "care", it'll just be another of the many boom-bust cycles in the history of nature. We're part of it. It's not going to be pleasant for the humans and animals that live through it, though! While we have enough individual intelligence to see this is coming, and wish to avoid it, I don't think we collectively have the intelligence to do so. A crowd of humans has its own dynamics and kind of thought, and so far, these crowds are very short-sighted and prone to all sorts of irrationalities and hysterias.

taylodl 4y ago
These crowds are being controlled by those benefitting from the status quo and the status quo, practically by definition, has its own momentum - "this is the way we've always done it." Many people legitimately don't understand how doing what we did in the past won't work or even cause harm going forward. That's the heart of the issue.

yamtaddle 4y ago

> Elites are massing wealth to get off planet Well... no. They're prepping to move to compounds in New Zealand. Even a global warming (and nuclear war, let's throw that on the pile!) ravaged Earth is vastly easier to live on than, say, Mars. Trying to escape that way would be a frying-pan-into-the-fire plan. > and when the mass migrations really start and mid income countries start becoming failed states on their path, I hope you are in a place that can hold you safe for the remainder of your time here. But yeah, that's basically the reason why, I reckon. Somewhere sufficiently stable and liberal that's also really, really hard to reach without a ship or airplane. Avoiding the various climate refugee crises and wars we're likely to see in the coming decades probably is their motivation. New Zealand's a clear front-runner in that race.

namaria 4y ago
The compounds in NZ, mountaintops, deserts, islands, they are the now. There is clearly a drive to get off planet. It will most likely fail but it's happening.
- raffraffraff 4y ago
  Humans will never make it off earth. Perhaps we'll make extremely brief flights, like the flying fish.
  - namaria 4y ago
    Sad thing is, we're probably gonna repeat our horrible colonial history, but with space ships.
    - jhbadger 4y ago
      No, because there is literally no where to go. Mars is 100X harder to live in than Antarctica, which we still can't live without constant resupplies from developed areas of Earth. If those are gone, we can't live on Antarctica, let alone Mars or whatever (perhaps mythical) exoplanets we could only reach after hundreds or thousands of years on generation ships (which we also don't have the technology to make anytime soon)