10 ms·

The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?

28 points by dnetesn 2y ago

PaulHoule 2y ago
As logical as it is, I think advocacy of “degrowth” is a sure formula to put the far right in the driver’s seat and anyone who is seriously concerned about survival as forming another ingroup-outgrouo thing needs and answer to that.
- Rhapso 2y ago
  "degrowth" is one of those things you don't actually need to believe in, the world will do it for us if we don't do it first. I just want to minimize the collateral damage. If folks refuse, so be it, I did my ethical duty in making sure they were well informed.
  - thefz 2y ago
    > "degrowth" is one of those things you don't actually need to believe in, the world will do it for us if we don't do it first. I just want to minimize the collateral damage. Worked in OT a long time, an old saying is that you either schedule downtime to perform maintenance or the hardware will gladly do that for you. It's the same with climate, we either suck the cost of rearranging how we live now or we are going to hit a wall with the foot still down on the gas, expecting constant growth.
- gmerc 2y ago
  They’re in the passenger seat holding a gun on everyone’s head. We are fucked either way
- subjectsigma 2y ago
  “De-growth”, like communism, is perfectly logical until you start talking about implementation. Then it starts sounding like A Modest Proposal. Who has to sacrifice? Who isn’t allowed to build, or have kids, or use specific technology? I have this funny suspicion it would end up being poor people
  - Earw0rm 2y ago
    And who ends up paying in a world that doesn't get its act together on sustainability? Hell, who's paying right now? Who's had their country invaded or their political system up-ended to keep cheap oil and cheap goods flowing to the West? I'm not saying degrowthers have all the answers, but any critique should be weighed even-handedly against a realistic view of the shortcomings of what we have now and where it's taking us.
    - corinroyal 2y ago
      Seriously. Poor people in Mexico and India are frying in their homes right now while monkeys drop out of trees.
  - pillefitz 2y ago
    Unlike communism, it's not a centrally enforced ideology, but something that either happens in a controlled or unontrolled fashion.
  - n4ture 2y ago
    Who talked about sacrifice? De-growth is not about sacrifice, it's about changing the perspective on what is considered "good" and "desirable". I don't know why people are always so scared of de-growth, what you are describing with sacrifices is about decolonialism and global equalization. Ultimately if you are against such changes, you should champion neo-colonialism and make sure to promote racism so that you don't have to sacrifice anything and continue living at the expense of the poorer parts of the world...
    - subjectsigma 2y ago
      When I think “de-growth”, one of the first things I think of is China’s One-Child Policy. 1. How does the OCP “stop” colonialism? 2. If what you mean by “changing the perspective on good and desirable” is restricting who can have children and who can’t, then obviously people are going to be upset with you?
      - 2y ago
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  Ok, try a different lens. "Optimise" is never a neutral verb, we always optimise /for/. Growth-above-all capitalists observe, correctly, the correlation between economic output and human wellbeing, and assume, incorrectly, a relationship that is both purely and directly causal and straight-up linear. What if we optimise for human wellbeing and build a society that works less like a Prescott Pentium 4 and more like an iPhone? Figure out what really matters and then set about doing more with less. (Answers that will be uncomfortably socialist for some - public-ish goods being more efficient in many cases than private everything, and uncomfortably technocratic for others, but tough...) Because doing more with more is running out of runway. And in this game, you can't just declare bankruptcy and start again. There's no second chances here.
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  the word "degrowth" isn't mentioned once in this interview fwiw. it's actually a rational take on resiliency in the face of an uncertain future, built upon the realities of biological change and history.
DoneWithAllThat 2y ago
Sundays on HN are a weird thing. It’s the only day of the week when I see the nutty anti-car takes, de-growth takes, climate doomerism, etc. Monday through Saturday, tech news (mostly). Sunday, unhinged nutballism.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  What about this is "nutballism"? Reducing dependency on cars and preventing climate disaster are objective goods.
  - subjectsigma 2y ago
    There is no objective proof “global society” will collapse by 2040 as the article claims.
    - pillefitz 2y ago
      There won't ever be, until it's too late. We're propped up by unsustainable tech, ocean temperatures are on the rise. So we ignore it and continue?
      - subjectsigma 2y ago
        No, we talk about the evidence we do have and use that to convince people. I’ve talked to a lot of climate deniers (unfortunately). These people may be saying and doing ignorant things but largely they are not stupid. They know when you make unfalsifiable claims, and that becomes part of their justification to ignore you.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - bluejekyll 2y ago
    People dependent on cars for nearly all their activities, find it very hard to imagine a world where they are not. Many of them have shaped their entire lives around cars. They live in places where the closest grocery store is 20 minutes away by car. Where it’s barely safe to cross the street in front of their house on foot. Folks in these situations think the idea of not using a car to get around is crazy, because in some ways it is. It’s not the majority of people though. In the US the majority of people, 70%, live within 2 miles of all their basic needs. That’s the distance that more than 25% of people living in Denmark choose to ride a bike for an errand rather than drive. https://www.visitdenmark.com/press/latest-news/facts-and-figures-cycling-denmark https://www.visitdenmark.com/press/latest-news/facts-and-fig...
emchammer 2y ago
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't think that apocalypse porn helps the situation. I don't feel a need to see that new Civil War movie.
- fifteen1506 2y ago
  I read the article yesterday but I found it insightful. Where is the Civil War part?
- yencabulator 2y ago
  Your average war movie is much more apocalypse porn than Civil War. Civil War was a "this would suck, seriously" experience, not fantasizing & idolizing which the word porn implies. Also, I need to immortalize a typo that I made writing the above paragraph: Civil Warn That's a good summary of the movie.
- redprince 2y ago
  Right. I'm also getting old and I've learned not to worry about things I can't change. If the world decides through inaction to find out about the veracity of current predictions where our path is taking us, I'll be along for the ride. Whether I want to or not.
paulbaumgart 2y ago
To anyone feeling anxious about the future after reading this article: We have the technology to pause the worst effects of climate change indefinitely for a few billion dollars a year: https://news.uchicago.edu/radical-solution-address-climate-change-david-keith https://news.uchicago.edu/radical-solution-address-climate-c... It’s far from a complete solution, but it works well enough that the future described in the article is much more a dark fantasy than a likely reality.
- croes 2y ago
  We had the technology to prevent climate change for a few billion dollar per year. Didn't happen.
  - paulbaumgart 2y ago
    Do you have any evidence to support this claim? The availability of economically competitive alternatives to fossil fuels (like cheap solar + batteries) is a very recent development.
    - croes 2y ago
      You are moving goal posts. We are talking about technology as such not necessarily economically competitive. I wouldn't consider the technology of solar engineering mentioned in your link economically competitive either. Doable but not cheap. The same is true for the technology to prevent climate change. It exists but it was expensive. Interestingly, it's still expensive now because even though the basic technology is cheaper, the timeframe is much shorter, so we have to achieve more in less time than if we had started earlier.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    as always, just follow the money… once effects of climate change become more expensive than solving the problem, the problem will be solved :)
    - janice1999 2y ago
BurningFrog 2y ago
I've made peace with the fact that a portion of humanity is always convinced the world will end soon. I guess it serves some evolutionary purpose, since it's so deeply ingrained. We've done quite well with these people among us so far, despite them always, since the dawn of humanity, being wrong.
- fifteen1506 2y ago
  Well, this time they have some proof. Also, the world is not ending. Just the way it has been working since the Industrial age.
- ffhhj 2y ago
  > being wrong The last collapse happended to the natives of a whole continent just a few centuries ago by new types of disease. I don't think they expected that, so they didn't need to be wrong, it just happened.
  - BurningFrog 2y ago
    I could make the (true) argument that while this almost (their descendants are still around) happened, all of humanity was not extinguished. But it's an interesting point. While the world never ends, entire peoples and nations do get extinguished with some regularity, and having people around who always look for ways this can happen could serve a credible evolutionary purpose, even though they're almost always wrong.
    - coffeebeqn 2y ago
      Their civilization did collapse though. There are different people living on all that land but I don’t think anyone seriously is worried about people or cockroaches going extinct
- olsonjeffery 2y ago
  The phrase “since the dawn of humanity” is doing a lot of work in this comment. On a long enough timeline, the “world has ended” multiple times. This isn’t doomerism, it’s a pragmatic view from a biologist’s perspective. Also as others pointed out, you misinterpret or misrepresent the interviewee’s words by placing “the end of the world” alongside TFA’s as though a thoughtful discussion with domain experts (in biology) is the same as the ravings of apocalyptic cranks. Do you have an argument besides the ad hominem directed at “these people among us”?
whobre 2y ago
The world is collapsing Around our ears I turned up the radio But I can't hear it
Rhapso 2y ago
"degrowth" is one of those things you don't actually need to believe in, the world will do it for us if we don't do it first. I just want to minimize the collateral damage. If folks refuse, so be it, I did my ethical duty in making sure they were well informed.
pillefitz 2y ago
For those interested in the topic, look into Deep Adaptation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Adaptation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Adaptation
Qem 2y ago
Ugo Bardi wrote a great book on this. Before the Collapse - A Guide to the Other Side of Growth. See https://terebess.hu/keletkultinfo/coll.pdf https://terebess.hu/keletkultinfo/coll.pdf
richrichie 2y ago
Second coming, rapture etc are not unique to religious nutcases. It appears to be a mental disease that afflicts the atheist PhDs and others alike. Over the last 100 years, average temperature (of whatever use this metric is) has gone up 1.5 deg C. Meanwhile life on this planet has flourished. Planet’s green cover has increased. Humans are better off on pretty much every metric.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  If you consider that transhumans or posthumans will so far exceed natural humans, and you have no choice but to ascend with them to a world of brilliance that we cannot imagine OR languish in some dingy naturalist backwater, then the story of the rapture is real! :D Those left behind are in hell.
- n4ture 2y ago
  You need to educate yourself some more my friend. You could start with the latest IPCC report's summary. Green cover won't tell you much about loss of insects, marine wildlife, microorganism in the soil, etc... Also I'd be interested in which specific metric you speak about when talking about humans being better off and which studies you are refering too. You'll reckon that if you don't even trust a widespread scientific consesus, I'll have a hard time trusting a random person on the interwebs.
  - richrichie 2y ago
    Let’s say there has indeed been loss of insect life for the sake of argument due to “climate change” on account of human activity and that the knob can be turned back by some magical calibration of human activity. As a chief beneficiary of such activity (clearly you are using a modern computing/communication device from a climate controlled space to access a frivolous internet chat forum), why don’t you take responsibility and the lead? Perhaps give up your computer(s), phone(s), automobile, refrigerator, television and quit commuting and vacationing away from your local park and live off the land by growing vegetables. You know you can show us the ropes and kick start a global movement that will turn the knob.
yencabulator 2y ago
Make note of the author. Peter Watts wrote Blindsight.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
On the contrary, the next generation could be the first to experience sustainable prosperity. https://www.nottheendoftheworld.co.uk/ https://www.nottheendoftheworld.co.uk/ Hannah Ritchie's book.
bjt1997 2y ago
Whenever I read a climate doomer article, I watch a couple of Al Gore videos from the 80s and then have a drink.
Borrible 2y ago
As long as there's a buck to be made.

28 points by dnetesn 2y ago

As logical as it is, I think advocacy of “degrowth” is a sure formula to put the far right in the driver’s seat and anyone who is seriously concerned about survival as forming another ingroup-outgrouo thing needs and answer to that.

Rhapso 2y ago
"degrowth" is one of those things you don't actually need to believe in, the world will do it for us if we don't do it first. I just want to minimize the collateral damage. If folks refuse, so be it, I did my ethical duty in making sure they were well informed.
- thefz 2y ago
  > "degrowth" is one of those things you don't actually need to believe in, the world will do it for us if we don't do it first. I just want to minimize the collateral damage. Worked in OT a long time, an old saying is that you either schedule downtime to perform maintenance or the hardware will gladly do that for you. It's the same with climate, we either suck the cost of rearranging how we live now or we are going to hit a wall with the foot still down on the gas, expecting constant growth.
gmerc 2y ago
They’re in the passenger seat holding a gun on everyone’s head. We are fucked either way
subjectsigma 2y ago
“De-growth”, like communism, is perfectly logical until you start talking about implementation. Then it starts sounding like A Modest Proposal. Who has to sacrifice? Who isn’t allowed to build, or have kids, or use specific technology? I have this funny suspicion it would end up being poor people
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  And who ends up paying in a world that doesn't get its act together on sustainability? Hell, who's paying right now? Who's had their country invaded or their political system up-ended to keep cheap oil and cheap goods flowing to the West? I'm not saying degrowthers have all the answers, but any critique should be weighed even-handedly against a realistic view of the shortcomings of what we have now and where it's taking us.
  - corinroyal 2y ago
    Seriously. Poor people in Mexico and India are frying in their homes right now while monkeys drop out of trees.
- pillefitz 2y ago
  Unlike communism, it's not a centrally enforced ideology, but something that either happens in a controlled or unontrolled fashion.
- n4ture 2y ago
  Who talked about sacrifice? De-growth is not about sacrifice, it's about changing the perspective on what is considered "good" and "desirable". I don't know why people are always so scared of de-growth, what you are describing with sacrifices is about decolonialism and global equalization. Ultimately if you are against such changes, you should champion neo-colonialism and make sure to promote racism so that you don't have to sacrifice anything and continue living at the expense of the poorer parts of the world...
  - subjectsigma 2y ago
    When I think “de-growth”, one of the first things I think of is China’s One-Child Policy. 1. How does the OCP “stop” colonialism? 2. If what you mean by “changing the perspective on good and desirable” is restricting who can have children and who can’t, then obviously people are going to be upset with you?
    - 2y ago
Earw0rm 2y ago
Ok, try a different lens. "Optimise" is never a neutral verb, we always optimise /for/. Growth-above-all capitalists observe, correctly, the correlation between economic output and human wellbeing, and assume, incorrectly, a relationship that is both purely and directly causal and straight-up linear. What if we optimise for human wellbeing and build a society that works less like a Prescott Pentium 4 and more like an iPhone? Figure out what really matters and then set about doing more with less. (Answers that will be uncomfortably socialist for some - public-ish goods being more efficient in many cases than private everything, and uncomfortably technocratic for others, but tough...) Because doing more with more is running out of runway. And in this game, you can't just declare bankruptcy and start again. There's no second chances here.
greenie_beans 2y ago
the word "degrowth" isn't mentioned once in this interview fwiw. it's actually a rational take on resiliency in the face of an uncertain future, built upon the realities of biological change and history.

DoneWithAllThat 2y ago

Sundays on HN are a weird thing. It’s the only day of the week when I see the nutty anti-car takes, de-growth takes, climate doomerism, etc. Monday through Saturday, tech news (mostly). Sunday, unhinged nutballism.

HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
What about this is "nutballism"? Reducing dependency on cars and preventing climate disaster are objective goods.
- subjectsigma 2y ago
  There is no objective proof “global society” will collapse by 2040 as the article claims.
  - pillefitz 2y ago
    There won't ever be, until it's too late. We're propped up by unsustainable tech, ocean temperatures are on the rise. So we ignore it and continue?
    - subjectsigma 2y ago
      No, we talk about the evidence we do have and use that to convince people. I’ve talked to a lot of climate deniers (unfortunately). These people may be saying and doing ignorant things but largely they are not stupid. They know when you make unfalsifiable claims, and that becomes part of their justification to ignore you.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- bluejekyll 2y ago
  People dependent on cars for nearly all their activities, find it very hard to imagine a world where they are not. Many of them have shaped their entire lives around cars. They live in places where the closest grocery store is 20 minutes away by car. Where it’s barely safe to cross the street in front of their house on foot. Folks in these situations think the idea of not using a car to get around is crazy, because in some ways it is. It’s not the majority of people though. In the US the majority of people, 70%, live within 2 miles of all their basic needs. That’s the distance that more than 25% of people living in Denmark choose to ride a bike for an errand rather than drive. https://www.visitdenmark.com/press/latest-news/facts-and-figures-cycling-denmark https://www.visitdenmark.com/press/latest-news/facts-and-fig...

emchammer 2y ago

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't think that apocalypse porn helps the situation. I don't feel a need to see that new Civil War movie.

fifteen1506 2y ago
I read the article yesterday but I found it insightful. Where is the Civil War part?
yencabulator 2y ago
Your average war movie is much more apocalypse porn than Civil War. Civil War was a "this would suck, seriously" experience, not fantasizing & idolizing which the word porn implies. Also, I need to immortalize a typo that I made writing the above paragraph: Civil Warn That's a good summary of the movie.
redprince 2y ago
Right. I'm also getting old and I've learned not to worry about things I can't change. If the world decides through inaction to find out about the veracity of current predictions where our path is taking us, I'll be along for the ride. Whether I want to or not.

paulbaumgart 2y ago

To anyone feeling anxious about the future after reading this article: We have the technology to pause the worst effects of climate change indefinitely for a few billion dollars a year: https://news.uchicago.edu/radical-solution-address-climate-change-david-keith https://news.uchicago.edu/radical-solution-address-climate-c... It’s far from a complete solution, but it works well enough that the future described in the article is much more a dark fantasy than a likely reality.

croes 2y ago
We had the technology to prevent climate change for a few billion dollar per year. Didn't happen.
- paulbaumgart 2y ago
  Do you have any evidence to support this claim? The availability of economically competitive alternatives to fossil fuels (like cheap solar + batteries) is a very recent development.
  - croes 2y ago
    You are moving goal posts. We are talking about technology as such not necessarily economically competitive. I wouldn't consider the technology of solar engineering mentioned in your link economically competitive either. Doable but not cheap. The same is true for the technology to prevent climate change. It exists but it was expensive. Interestingly, it's still expensive now because even though the basic technology is cheaper, the timeframe is much shorter, so we have to achieve more in less time than if we had started earlier.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  as always, just follow the money… once effects of climate change become more expensive than solving the problem, the problem will be solved :)
  - janice1999 2y ago

BurningFrog 2y ago

I've made peace with the fact that a portion of humanity is always convinced the world will end soon. I guess it serves some evolutionary purpose, since it's so deeply ingrained. We've done quite well with these people among us so far, despite them always, since the dawn of humanity, being wrong.

fifteen1506 2y ago
Well, this time they have some proof. Also, the world is not ending. Just the way it has been working since the Industrial age.
ffhhj 2y ago
> being wrong The last collapse happended to the natives of a whole continent just a few centuries ago by new types of disease. I don't think they expected that, so they didn't need to be wrong, it just happened.
- BurningFrog 2y ago
  I could make the (true) argument that while this almost (their descendants are still around) happened, all of humanity was not extinguished. But it's an interesting point. While the world never ends, entire peoples and nations do get extinguished with some regularity, and having people around who always look for ways this can happen could serve a credible evolutionary purpose, even though they're almost always wrong.
  - coffeebeqn 2y ago
    Their civilization did collapse though. There are different people living on all that land but I don’t think anyone seriously is worried about people or cockroaches going extinct
olsonjeffery 2y ago
The phrase “since the dawn of humanity” is doing a lot of work in this comment. On a long enough timeline, the “world has ended” multiple times. This isn’t doomerism, it’s a pragmatic view from a biologist’s perspective. Also as others pointed out, you misinterpret or misrepresent the interviewee’s words by placing “the end of the world” alongside TFA’s as though a thoughtful discussion with domain experts (in biology) is the same as the ravings of apocalyptic cranks. Do you have an argument besides the ad hominem directed at “these people among us”?

whobre 2y ago

The world is collapsing Around our ears I turned up the radio But I can't hear it

Rhapso 2y ago

"degrowth" is one of those things you don't actually need to believe in, the world will do it for us if we don't do it first. I just want to minimize the collateral damage. If folks refuse, so be it, I did my ethical duty in making sure they were well informed.

pillefitz 2y ago

For those interested in the topic, look into Deep Adaptation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Adaptation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Adaptation

Qem 2y ago

Ugo Bardi wrote a great book on this. Before the Collapse - A Guide to the Other Side of Growth. See https://terebess.hu/keletkultinfo/coll.pdf https://terebess.hu/keletkultinfo/coll.pdf

richrichie 2y ago

Second coming, rapture etc are not unique to religious nutcases. It appears to be a mental disease that afflicts the atheist PhDs and others alike. Over the last 100 years, average temperature (of whatever use this metric is) has gone up 1.5 deg C. Meanwhile life on this planet has flourished. Planet’s green cover has increased. Humans are better off on pretty much every metric.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
If you consider that transhumans or posthumans will so far exceed natural humans, and you have no choice but to ascend with them to a world of brilliance that we cannot imagine OR languish in some dingy naturalist backwater, then the story of the rapture is real! :D Those left behind are in hell.
n4ture 2y ago
You need to educate yourself some more my friend. You could start with the latest IPCC report's summary. Green cover won't tell you much about loss of insects, marine wildlife, microorganism in the soil, etc... Also I'd be interested in which specific metric you speak about when talking about humans being better off and which studies you are refering too. You'll reckon that if you don't even trust a widespread scientific consesus, I'll have a hard time trusting a random person on the interwebs.
- richrichie 2y ago
  Let’s say there has indeed been loss of insect life for the sake of argument due to “climate change” on account of human activity and that the knob can be turned back by some magical calibration of human activity. As a chief beneficiary of such activity (clearly you are using a modern computing/communication device from a climate controlled space to access a frivolous internet chat forum), why don’t you take responsibility and the lead? Perhaps give up your computer(s), phone(s), automobile, refrigerator, television and quit commuting and vacationing away from your local park and live off the land by growing vegetables. You know you can show us the ropes and kick start a global movement that will turn the knob.

yencabulator 2y ago

Make note of the author. Peter Watts wrote Blindsight.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

On the contrary, the next generation could be the first to experience sustainable prosperity. https://www.nottheendoftheworld.co.uk/ https://www.nottheendoftheworld.co.uk/ Hannah Ritchie's book.

bjt1997 2y ago

Whenever I read a climate doomer article, I watch a couple of Al Gore videos from the 80s and then have a drink.

Borrible 2y ago

As long as there's a buck to be made.