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I'm tired of hearing this idea that this is some binary phenomenon of either saving the world or dooming it. Technological civilization is undergoing a chaotic

I'm tired of hearing this idea that this is some binary phenomenon of either saving the world or dooming it. Technological civilization is undergoing a chaotic growth and reshaping process that will end up thrashing the container it lives in to an unknown and catastrophic degree. There's no known ultimate boundary to this process. Or the only really known ultimate boundary, a completely dead planet, is very far away. We cannot know exactly what will happen but we have a lot of power to shape this process and limit the damages. The process will continue. There's no going back. There's no stopping. Only a multitude of ways to affect the outcome. Some of those ways can limit the destruction. Some of those ways can shape the process to something that can live and let live.

withinboredom 2y ago
Note that I mentioned nothing of saving it. We are well and fucked. How fucked? Couldn’t tell ya, what I can tell you, is that the river outside my house hasn’t frozen in nearly 20 years, and it had frozen every year before that in all of recorded history, some 900 or so years. There used to be annual ice skating races that now happen indoors. I’m not worried about science boundaries and all that. I’m worried about civilization going tits-up once some places get too affected. For example, we are probably less than a decade or so away from certain places with lots and lots of people living there becoming inhospitable. Either they will die, or run into some other country/region that can’t support them, or disperse around the world (most unlikely).