Scientists warn of 'societal collapse' on Earth with worsening climate situation

P_P@lemm.ee to World News@lemmy.world – 569 points –
Scientists warn of 'societal collapse' on Earth with worsening climate situation
irishstar.com
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We can't even figure out how to not have half our society be rasict, how the hell are we gonna save a whole planet from our fuckery?

We're not gonna be able to combat climate change under capitalism anyway. The number one thing we need to do is to produce less but that goes directly against what capitalism needs to function. Not to mention that governments are bribed by companies to make laws in their favour.

But hey, what's the point of saving our planet anyway if we can't maximize profits anymore?

Yep. And if you mention this, you're a commie and capitalism is the greatest thing ever and under socialism we will all starve and have nothing and it never worked look at Cuba.

Like capitalism works, and there are no imaginable alternatives.

Just don't use resources to produce that much useless crap to just dump it in a landfill or burn it? Is it so hard to understand?

It’s working great in cuba. Best health care in the world too.

The problems in Cuba are all tied directly to us sanctioning them to try and destroy their economy

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Bold of you to assume that most people even want that. From what I can tell...

There are a large number of people out there who seem to be deliberately making it worse - not even for profit, but just out of spite.

Tbf, I think a certain minimum amount of intelligence is required to even qualify for that statement, which I suspect disqualifies most... but yeah, underneath that, there do seem to be a few, like Jeff Bezos.

Though Donald Trump himself I see more like a monkey doing its thing, as much a symptom as a feed-forward cause of his own. I ain't saying that he's not "evil" in his own way, just that he lacks sufficient character for his brand of it to have had any effect at all, if it weren't for the fact that the systems were so broken to begin with. Money (his father's in his case) corrupts.

We cant even figure out how to make recycling work.

Recycling was never supposed to work alone. It was literally the last ditch effort after Reduce and Reuse.

Also, we already figured out how to make it work, but it isn't profitable when it works, so obviously we have to use the less effective methods so that a small handful of big wigs can milk the process for personal gain.

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Humanity is fucked. My sympathy lies with the animals.

I sympathize with the children that had nothing to do with it.

It’s why I’m not having kids.

So you won't feel guilty for not fighting for a better world?

That is such a needlessly abusive thing to say to a person.

Choosing not to have a child because you don't believe the problems you'd be subjecting them to are likely to be solved is a heavy choice to make, and says nothing about whether they're fighting climate change to whatever extent they're able

Please don't go around being a complete asshole for no reason. The space we have here in the fediverse is only as nice as we make it, and assuming the worst of people we've literally never met accomplishes less than nothing.

This was not an abusive statement, and I'm sorry if you feel that it was. I don't believe that choosing not to have children because of climate change was made with a lot of deliberation, but because it's the laziest choice. Children are tough. Fighting for change is tough. Convincing other to give a fuck about the environment is tough. It's easier just to keep on keeping on and when the world breaks at least I didn't create another soul who is going to go through pain.

This attitude doesn't help fix the current situation and I believe that the apathy such a decision makes encourages people to be inactive on climate change.

Not having children is one of the easiest ways to contribute to solving climate change, which is exactly why we should encourage it regardless of whether the person is also taking other steps to solve it (which we don’t know). Not having a child also saves 58 tons of CO2 emissions per year, so it’s one of the most effective things you can do to fight climate change too, so that simple action does a lot to fight for a better world.

Source: https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children

You don't know this person. And you don't know anything about what they're doing to combat climate change, or are capable of doing to contribute to combating climate change.

You don't even know whether this was the only consideration in choosing not to have kids.

You know nothing about them, but the way your comment reads suggests that you're essentially insinuating that their choice to not have kids is illegitimate by nature of the motives you presume they have (which isn't a kind thing to do) and also that they've made that choice out of laziness. All based on assumptions you've made from the single sentence comment they left on a Lemmy thread.

It's possible that was intended as a sincere question, but it reads as SUCH a heavily loaded question that it will be understood to be an accusation by pretty much anyone who reads it, which is why I call it abusive. And you can tell that that's what it's communicating by the fact that my comment saying as much has been upvoted repeatedly in the short period it's been up. The question mark reads as rhetorical, and even if you meant to ask in order to get them to reflect, it's unlikely you know them well enough or expressed that intention well enough for it to not just read as someone being a jerk on the internet

I can absolutely empathize with the idea that it is easier to check out and want to live small than to fight. And I can certainly understand wanting to fight back when you perceive that others are doing that, because our future is all on the line. I just left a long comment about it on another thread where I shared some quotes I found validating or poinant with respect to my struggle to keep fighting for things bigger than myself when I can barely function.

I get that it's important for people to fight, but what you said to them kinda sucks, and isn't a good way to engage with someone you don't know at all.

Edit: adjusted to reflect the fact I also made assumptions in the initial version of this comment. Apologies if parts feel out of sync, I'm editing this while fairly sleep deprived.

You're a good person who seems able to see both points of an argument. Thank you. You're right, I don't know the person who said they wouldn't have children. They had a quick quip and I had a quick quip too and didn't really want to get into my argument.

Comments like "That's why I'm not having children" get positive upvote and attention, but it could have been "And that's why I'm ready to fight for climate change so that there's a future for humanity". To me it is a statement of surrender and being proud of essentially waiting for the end of the world, which tells me a bit more about the person making the statement.

Anyway, I didn't realize my initial comment would come off that negatively and I'll try to be more respectful.

Thank you for being willing to consider my perspective, I appreciate it :)

And I can understand the frustration. I try really hard to make choices, even when small, that support the issues I care about. I have a lot of friends that think those issues matter, but won't make changes to support the changes they wanna see in the world, and it definitely frustrates me sometimes, though I choose not to be overly judgey about it because I think it's counterproductive.

I have a friend who is extremely politically minded and further left than I am on many issues, but she still insists on using twitter, a platform who's value is derived from everyone using it, and who's owner is bankrolling the election of a fascist to the highest elected office in the US. Even if she doesn't wanna use Mastodon, like bluesky is RIGHT there 😅. I can't say I really understand, but then again, she's a different person from me with a different perspective, and the cost benefit analysis for her must be different.

Its frustrating to feel like people won't make choices to support the things we wish were better about the world.

Regardless, I hope you have a good day today, take care :)

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You're a moron if you think bringing more people into the world is fighting for a better world

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That's all of us unless you're an executive in a multinational corp, or work for the oil and gas industry.

We've all been ramrodded into this reality by a handful of giant Corporations, over the last 100 years.

Yeah I agree. But I could have chosen more fuel efficient cars when I was younger. Bought less shit I didn't need. I could've done more. Yeah it's not entirely my fault, we've been thrown into the gauntlet, what can you do if you wanna live? But the children born now, or God forbid even later are going to find themselves in a hellscape of an economy and ecosystem. And my heart goes out to them because they'll get less than I had, less freedom, less upward mobility, less drinkable water, less food, less breathable air, and be more fucked by everything. The longer we push it, the worse it gets for the people who had less to do with it.

If it helps to assuage your guilt at all, we have been living, inundated with corporate propaganda, for all our lives.

"Carbon footprint" is a great example; it's a Corporate guilt trip.

https://interestingengineering.com/culture/carbon-footprint-coined-by-big-oil-to-blame-you-for-climate-change

Oh absolutely. The carbon footprint was bullshit from the oil companies to put the onus on individuals to fix it while not giving people any options. It was all bullshit. That being said, I do have some guilt. Or at least feel it. Less because I was making bad decisions and more of a "survivors guilt" kind of thing. That's not the right term, cause I'm going to die before the younger generations. But I feel guilt just because my child and millions of others will get a worse and worse end of the stick than I got just because of when they were born. This is why I argue with boomers about the difference between generations.

Like, you had the American dream fucking handed to you. Do you not feel some kind of guilt for getting a degree for $8k, a house for $35k, and a top of the line vette costing $4.5k? Even at the lower rates of pay, that's a fraction of the budget compared to today. If I had it that easy, I would absolutely feel bad for people coming up behind me. And yet, VERY few boomers acknowledge this, and that is why I'm so hostile to them.

"Generation Me" will never cop to their culpability. They're narcissists, ie to admit being wrong now would absolutely crumple their sense of identity. And we all know Boomers #1 rule is looking out for numero uno.

I'm not saying all Boomers are Captain Planet villains...but all Captain Planet villains were definitely Boomers.

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Respectfully, carbon footprint as a measure is just a measurement and is really useful in the right context. It's important to remember that it's the misapplication to individuals that is a con game.

When Rees and Wackernagel came up with ecological footprint as a measure, it introduced a systems analysis to human activity that we really needed. Carbon footprint is just a subset of that and ignoring it is futile. Just apply the analysis where it matters: militaries, mining, transport, energy, civil engineering, etc etc.

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Animals are fucked! We decimated 75% of wildlife in 50 years, and it is still growing

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societal collapse

Ah yes, that thing that has us laboring to chase meaningless plastic crap we're brainwashed into needing instead of growing our own food and maintaining our own shelters as small, purposeful communities, all so the owners of this society can siphon our energy while poisoning the earth, all to live like wannabe gods above us.

No more penis Space tourist rockets? What a loss...

I dont think you would like what comes after societal collapse. It's easy to pin society as just capitalism, but collapse will mean more than just the economic system. Democracies will collapse and entire regions will cease to exist. Food scarcity and mass migration will result in extreme regimes that will defend their territory, and a bunch of nomads who have to live with the constant worry of where the next food and freshwater source is. Not to mention the constant fighting over geopolitical issues (imagine current day scaled up exponentially)

Yes, we should fix our economic system, but societal collapse is not an end result we ever want.

You know what would be useful in a societal collapse? Electric vehicles and solar panels.

Hopefully peppers aren’t building zombie busses because they’ll be useless in 6 months after the oil stops flowing.

An ev with a charger panel and bicycles will be useful indefinitely.

Solar panels and batteries require massive supply chains. They require our rarest minerals and highest tech, with highly educated workers to develop and produce and state of the art clean rooms and factories.

If we stop producing them, the current stock will be useful for like 50 years tops. Then it's back to fossil fuels, I'm afraid. Diesel generators last for a long time, and they're easier to maintain and produce.

I remember i read a doomer theory stating we should be stockpiling coal for the humans that remain to rebuild society since there is nothing we can do at this point and fossil fuels is the only thing that will outlast the collapse. I'm not that pessimistic, but i can see what they mean.

Lol, Diesel can on average only be stored for 6 to 12 months before degrading. Good luck with that.

If a collapse ever happens I'd rather have solar panels and an EV. Fuel production and transport would instantly grind to a halt and the existing fuel goes bad soon after.

Yeah, it's true diesel degrades quickly, but oil does not. Depending on where you live, you could more quickly set up a low scale refinery than a solar panel manufacturing workshop. Most likely, people would use coal in most places without access to oil in short distance since it's more widely available and simpler to use.

Mate, we are talking about a societal collapse. You won't have oil available and you won't be able to refine your own diesel at home (especially without energy).

Your argument about solar panels being difficult to produce is utterly out of place. Your diesel generator and your car are more difficult to produce, but you already own them from before the downfall. So if you own an EV and you own solar panels then it doesn't matter how difficult those are to produce when you're just using them.

I wasn't talking about making diesel at home. That's pretty much the immediate aftermath of a collapse.

In the case of a societal collapse, eventually, new city states will be formed using salvaged technology and eventually technology produced of their own. My argument stands that to restart civilization, you will more quickly go back to fossil fuels, which are simpler to salvage, manufacture and utilize than high tech solar panels and batteries.

This includes gas vehicles. It's just a fact that electric vehicles and semiconductor technology are luxuries of the modern era and not long term post apocalyptic tools of survival due to their manufacturing difficulties, durability and maintenance necessities. Just as an example you have Toyotas from the 60s that can still work just fine and i guarantee you a Tesla made today won't work in 60 years, unless you replace nearly every electronic component of which it depends.

I'm all for renewables and sustainability and ditching fossel fuels, but from an engineering point of view, i just don't think I'd be trusting in electrical vehicles and semiconductor tech in a post apocalyptic scenario. The reliability just isn't there.

And diesel generators/fuel refining is most definitely not more difficult to manufacture than semiconductors. Just to make a simple silicon wafer you need more tech than to make a piston engine. Let alone doping it to produce enough photoelectric effect to power stuff with. There's a reason we more quickly figured out diesel/gasoline engines than semiconductors. You need clean rooms, high tech engineers and a lot of robotics for things we can't do with enough precision with our big clunky hands at the nano scale. With piston engines a workshop will do and fuel refining is just basic fractional distillation. As a side note, i could most definitely refine diesel at home. I've distilled things more complicated than diesel. But that's beside the point. I understand you meant the average person with no training wouldn't be able to do it and i understand and agree.

Gas only lasts like 6 months before expiring. It can be stabilized to last a couple of years, but within 3-5 years all existing gas would be unusable (as far as I understand it).

Running a solar system past its ideal life when it holds even 20% of a charge and has lower efficiency is better than nothing.

The doomer theory variation I read is that we’ve played out most of the accessible fossil fuels. If society has to rebuild, they have no way to get past the stage of fossil fuel use, because advanced extraction like fracking would not be possible. The very things that made our society possible, are bridges were burning as soon as we cross them. There is no rebuilding

"We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky..."

you would get murdered for those rather quickly, i'd imagine. what would be useful is to get far away from strangers somewhere defendable near fresh water.

That would be only one of the many competing reasons for my murder.

I do have camping gear, woodworking hand tools, a good bike, I know how to shoot and clean fish+game and cook, and I have knowledge of some remote areas with sparse populations including their flora.

On paper it all sounds good, but I would likely die miserably in the first Canadian winter.

Even if you did everything right there isn't that much wildlife to live off of. A single human requires a vast healthy wilderness to live off of foraging only.

Yeah, I watch Alone and I’ve seen Outlast. No way are 99% of people going to be able to live like that. Even the contestants who prep and practice and research only last a few weeks in the winter.

You would need a small community, agriculture and to store your food for winter, and livestock for reliable protein. Even then there’s a good chance you get wiped out by diseases unless you’re making soap and prepping food and water safely.

But once you’ve figured out a way to store food and resources, then you’re a target. You can’t easily defend against bands of looters with tons of weapons and nothing to lose

I generally never last very long in a playthrough of The Long Dark

Maybe. I’ve wondered about that. It’s easy to imagine a Mad Max scenario with bands of raiders looting all potentially useful technological remains, but does solar change that? You can’t as easily steal that without destroying it. You can’t just put it to use without some technical knowledge. It’s not immediately useful to loot.

Destroy, sure.

That's why Musk is backing Trump and Putin and trying to turn the world into Thunderdome. EVs will reign supreme.

Pretty sure Thunderdome itself hit the nail on the head with Methane cars, easier and more sustainable than either EG or ICE.

Don't worry, we'll fix climate change by reflecting sunlight before it hits the Earth's surface. Of course this will eradicate most pests (and nature) but hey, problem solved!

That’s unfortunate because I have been trying really hard to participate in society.

We're moving back to office until we can't move at all.

That's old news, no? I recall reading that basically from 2°C there is no more economic growth, what means a lot of people are thrown under the bus. From 3°C there is no more economy, meaning no food, heating, fighting everywhere. From 4°C there is basically no more humanity.

That sounds pretty extreme. I'd be Interested in reading that article, if you can find it.

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

I'm looking at the Full Volume, and on page 71 you can see

With about 2°C warming, climate-related changes in food availability and diet quality are estimated to increase nutrition-related diseases and the number of undernourished people, affecting tens (under low vulnerability and low warming) to hundreds of millions of people (under high vulnerability and high warming) ... Climate change risks to cities, settlements and key infrastructure will rise sharply in the mid and long term with further global warming, especially in places already exposed to high temperatures, along coastlines, or with high vulnerabilities (high confidence).

At global warming of 3°C, additional risks in many sectors and regions reach high or very high levels, implying widespread systemic impacts, irreversible change and many additional adaptation limits (see Section 3.2) (high confidence). For example, very high extinction risk for endemic species in biodiversity hotspots is projected to increase at least tenfold if warming rises from 1.5°C to 3°C (medium confidence). Projected increases in direct flood damages are higher by 1.4 to 2 times at 2°C and 2.5 to 3.9 times at 3°C

Global warming of 4°C and above is projected to lead to far-reaching impacts on natural and human systems (high confidence). Beyond 4°C of warming, projected impacts on natural systems include local extinction of ~50% of tropical marine species (medium confidence) and biome shifts across 35% of global land area (medium confidence). At this level of warming, approximately 10% of the global land area is projected to face both increasing high and decreasing low extreme streamflow, affecting, without additional adaptation, over 2.1 billion people (medium confidence) and about 4 billion people are projected to experience water scarcity (medium confidence). At 4°C of warming, the global burned area is projected to increase by 50 to 70% and the fire frequency by ~30% compared to today

However, if you really want to get into it, you can read the Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Full Report. It has a lot more details about the effects of climate change on all parts of the world, but it's also a 3,000 page pdf.

It's mild hyperbole, but it's not far off from best-guess speculation. It's well and regularly covered in IPCC reports. Have at.

One of the counterproductive parts of projections like this is humans do poorly with long term thinking. These results are not immediate. Most people will just assume hyperbole when they see it not happen*

  • in an arbitrarily short time

Societal collapse, eh? Sounds like a great opportunity for profit!!!

Imagine how much ACs we could sell! And how expensive we could make food!

I really have to slow down on Armored Core, I thought you were talking about selling everyone mechs for a minute

a bit late for that when society is turning to fascism all over the world.

Good ol' fascism! You can always count on fascism to to help people. Well, the right people. I mean, some of the right people, maybe a small subset of the right people.

An ever increasingly small subset of the right people because Fascism requires there to ALWAYS be an other to blame it on.

I'd say the ones who have been saying it's not real should be the first to become soylent green

Societal collapse is the best thing that can happen right now, capitalism will not save the workers nor the environment. Only a complete revolution can save the workers, the environment, and the future of humanity.

Societal collapse doesn’t guarantee anything for people who want any kind of revolution

Most people forget they are probably just gonna die in an apocalypse.

We can put paper bags over our heads if we forgot our towels though.

We are gonna die anyway. At least with societal collapse there will be a chance that not everyone will die from climate collapse.

It means industry and industrial pollution stops.

Except it might not. In fact it might increase the dependency on fossil fuels as supply chain and the electrical grid break down.

Covid lockdown taught us it basically just needs most cars of the road. There's a million ways we COULD fix everything, basically overnight. We just won't

I doubt they'd be a net increase. So much CO2 is from industry and average people aren't going to know how or were to get their own coal or oil.

Idk... I'd rather just fix this issue and not have to find out the hard way 🤷

We had easy solutions to covid, but people decided that "their way of life" was more important then other people's lives.

So back to the rule of kings and Strongman Despots.

Because that's what a social collapse will get you every time. There will be no "worker's paradise".

I'm afraid it's not going to save anyone, because it's going to be a collapse with many casualities mainly on the side of the poor, not a revolution. I imagine it as a social disaster. The rich will be ok.

The rich will be ok and their kids will repopulate earth. With a plow, a hammer and a sicle. Oh the irony...

Richfolk are known for their strong survival skills.

My odds are on them being the first ones killed and looted when the shit really hits the fan.

Probably by the very armies and security forces they hired to protect them from that in the first place, once they realize that the rest of society collapsing means there probably won't be consequences for forcibly inheriting their employer's estate.

Or maybe it will be whoever holds the keys to the safety system they built when they realised they'd be at the mercy of their security forces.

What's the richman gonna give his army? Money?

His army's got the guns. It's one versus the entire staff, on a private island, at the collapse of society, and you think the guys with all guns and no food are gonna treat their boss with the civility that's expected in a typical employee/employer relationship?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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The rich are only safe if they keep every grain of gunpowder and lump of c4 in there with them.

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Your accelerationist bullshit does nothing but harm us all

I'm not an accelerationist, but they aren't wrong.

it's not that I want a collapse, but at some point soon(very soon) the only answer will be for a collapse.

I stopped fighting against corpos years ago because the only way to stop them would restrict my freedom and take me away from my family. all I can do now is to stay informed, plan, and educate myself and family.

I'm not rich. I have no bunker. my mind is sharp. my goal is to survive what comes next. not because I want it to happen, but because corpos won't stop and my government sold me out long before I was born.

I'm not all for his rhetoric that it will be an improvement, but I'm not doubting it won't happen.

Better to understand it is inevitable and prepare for it instead of sticking your head in the sand about it.

Even better to understand that there may be no coming back. We’ve burned bridges behind us and populated way beyond any ability to survive without it. We desperately need this society to succeed because there may be no alternative anymore

Do you actually think that?

As though we just do societal collapse on Wednesday and then start living our best lives on Thursday?

If capitalism is allowed to continue it will render humanity extinct. If we collapse now, and are reduced to a fraction of our population this century, humanity may live.

I don't enjoy that being the best option we have at this point. It brings me no joy. But what brings me less joy is knowing that we won't even make a choice. We will continue blindly waddling along and as capitalism consumes the world, we will wonder who will save us. And no one will.

Is anyone actually claiming that we're on a path to extinction? That's hyperbole.

This type of thinking is not constructive in any way.

We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event the earth has experienced. As ecosystems collapse, organisms at the top of the food web are in peril. Yes, humans are in danger of extinction.

What a silly thing to say.

You realise extinction requires no living specimens to exist right?

Some number of humans will prevail even if the only thing left to eat is slime mold.

Climate change is a big deal. The future is very bleak. People with the power to mitigate the damage are doing the opposite.

Claiming that human extinction is possible or likely about as helpful as suggesting that ancient aliens have the solution.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47540-7

Don't miss this bit:

The bounds are subject to important limitations. Most importantly, they only apply to extinction risks that have either remained constant or declined over human history. Our 200 kyr track record of survival cannot rule out much higher extinction probabilities from modern sources such as nuclear weapons or anthropogenic climate change.

Oh sweetheart.

Did you google "human extinction science" and link the first result without reading it?

The part you quoted just says modern extinction risks are out of scope for this study.

It does not say that extinction is probable or likely.

Our 200 kyr track record of survival **cannot rule out much higher extinction probabilities **

I'm not sure if you're being disingenuous or you're just not very bright.

"much higher extinction probabilities" doesn't really mean anything.

The probabilities referred to in this paper are very low. Less than 1 in 14,000 in an extraordinarily conservative estimate, 87,000 is probably a more useful number. So each year you roll that 14,000 sided dice with 1 chance of becoming extinct that year.

This is where it says that:

Using the fact that humans have survived at least 200 kyr, we can infer that the annual probability of human extinction from natural causes is less than 1 in 87,000 with modest confidence (0.1 relative likelihood) and less than 1 in 14,000 with near certainty (10−6 relative likelihood). These are the most conservative bounds. Estimates based on older fossils such as the ones found in Morocco dated to 315 kya result in annual extinction probabilities of less than 1 in 137,000 or 1 in 23,000 (for relative likelihood of 0.1 and 10−6, respectively). Using the track record of survival for the entire lineage of Homo, the annual probability of extinction from natural causes falls below 1 in 870,000 (relative likelihood of 0.1). We also conclude that these data are unlikely to be biased by observer selection effects, especially given that the bounds are consistent with mammalian extinction rates, the temporal range of other hominin species, and the frequency of potential catastrophes and mass extinctions.

So, a "much higher probability" might be 2 in 87,000 for example. Much higher than 1 in 87,000 but still not very likely. More to the point, the paper is saying it doesn't consider those factors, they're out of scope, the methodology used in the paper is incapable of assessing the likelihood of nuclear annihilation.

Honestly, if this paper is the best argument you have that human extinction is likely then you really have nothing.

Look, I know it's not something anyone wants to confront, but I'm not sending it out of malice, or to attack you. There's no need to be condescending.

I simply want to be realistic about the world we live in. From my point of view it is better to be concerned about the possibility of human extinction and act as though it is a potential outcome, rather than to pretend that our species has wholly conquered the laws of nature and is indestructible.

It's impossible not to sound condescending when talking to someone who's just making stuff up and claiming that it's a plausible assertion.

You're not being realistic, you're being dramatic.

Human extinction is not a realistic nor likely outcome to the problems humanity presently faces.

Even in the worst projections for climate change, some areas of the globe will still be able to support life.

Alright. I'm sorry to have annoyed you. I was just hoping for a discussion.

We have a difference of opinion and that's alright. My concerns surrounding the Holocene extinction event triggering total ecosystem collapse need not be yours.

I'm a human behind a screen, just like you. It's free to be kind to people, even when you disagree with them.

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Interesting thought. What is the nutritional profile for slime mold, can humans survive eating just slime mold?

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As though we just do societal collapse on Wednesday and then start living our best lives on Thursday?

Commenter never said that. So you're just strawmannning. Do you honestly think capiatlism and consumerism will do an about face and start taking care of the rapidly degrading environment? If not, it would seem that we then we need to change how we behave, soon-- right? Accelerationists are at least doing something, even if it may not be the right plan, while you are whining to keep the exact status quo going thats killing us all, and doing nothing to improve things .

To use a metaphor: dont criticise the fat guy working out at the gym while you youself are sitting on your butt, are also fat and have ice cream on your face. If you want to criticise, get off your ass and get to work on something better. Otherwise shut it and let the adults figure out how to save your ass while you do nothing.

I didn't say that the commenter said that. Ironically, you're just strawmanning.

Anyone suggesting that societal collapse is a good outcome doesn't really understand what societal collapse entails.

I also didn't suggest that capitalism will save us - that's another straw man.

Your metaphor is disingenuous.

This commenter is the fat guy eating burgers all day trying to bring on a coronary because it's inevitable so you may as well get it over with, all while claiming that's a better outcome than wasting time and effort at the gym trying to lose weight.

Anyone suggesting that societal collapse is a good outcome doesn’t really understand what societal collapse entails.

Anyone who says preserving the status quo is a viable outcome doesnt really understand how high the cost of that status quo is.

Participating in an Ethnic cleansing of a group that is 26% of the humans on the planet will end in tears for us, and pull this country inexorably rightward as we respond to its effects. Even now just a few Yemeni missiles on cargo ships in the Suez has upended Americans faith in the dems by raising prices. Thats with true pushback having not even begun yet. DNC leadership and dem voters are not taking the long view on this. Why dont you think long term and tell me what you see 8 years into the future.

Anyone who says preserving the status quo

This is an epic straw man. Usually I avoid calling out straw man arguments because you can frame almost any assertion as a straw man and ultimately it doesn't further discussion. In this case though, you started it.

If you're into logical fallacies, I will say that your argument is a false dichotomy. Between "societal collapse" and "status quo" there's an obvious third option: "try to fix all the broken things", which is what most people are trying to do. Both societal collapse and status quo are absurd propositions that no reasonable person would subscribe to.

which is what most people are trying to do

I dont agree that this is happening. Climate pledges are being abandoned. The imagination of International solutions are being abandonded for self serving ones. Even recycling in my area has been throttled way back. Internal combustion engine cars are surging back into popularity. One of the biggest possible polluting events are wars, and theres possibly a whole bunch on the horizon as Pax Americanan ends with the disolution of our soft power. We are not motivated to make progress and our political system and international reach seems to be in decline.

If you look at the trajectories we are on in multiple areas, you can see inevitabilities. I dont fault you for having hope that the whole of human society will pull it out of the fire at the last second, but I no longer beleive its in our nature to act on these threats. Americans arent even convinced climate change is real.

I still do beleive in the good will of the American people, and their ability to rebuild quickly and better. When forced to come together on a pursuit, American free thinking outpaces other international mindsets pretty reliably. Or it used to.

Implicit in your assertion is that we can stave off this collapse and that theres plenty of time to iterate to some changes.

Consider that by 2050 we'll need 60% more food than we produce now, and projections are that with climate change effects we'll have no way to make that much, even if we start all eating bugs and kelp. So at the end of many of our lifetimes we'll observe tangible impacts. 2050 is just 26 years from now. So just sit on our hands and be patient, you think?

https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/worlds-food-supply-made-insecure-climate-change#:~:text=In%20the%20next%2030%20years,system's%20vulnerability%20to%20climate%20change.

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If you take a look at history, you'll notice a pattern:

  1. civilization/empire/society/whatever X begins forming
  2. X is at it's peak, it's situation is pretty stable and prosperous
  3. event Y starts
  4. as a result, X's situation begins to worsen
  5. X has fallen completely, it's previous members now struggle with disease, famine, and political instability
  6. whoever survives begins to form a new civilization/empire/society/whatever
  7. repeat

And honestly, I don't think that the left at it's current state is anywhere near strong, large, or unified enough to be the one to rise from the ashes. It's better to do what we can now, and save the revolution for when we are able to actually succeed at it.

We'll burn down capitalism one piece at a time.

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People think it's gonna be fun, like Zombieland. Instead, it's going to be fun, like The Road.

Good, I'd rather it all burn than to be looked down upon by the Trumpler in the Ivory Tower

Wow, yeah if only we had some alternative to Trump.

We do, but for some fucking reason a ton of people think not voting for her will magically save Palestine from Nethanyu. I voted for Harris, everyone else needs to do the same fucking thing.

If only she could do something to change the mind of those "tons of people".

Trump ALSO wants to destroy Palestine, you must understand that there is no option here that helps Palestine, there is merely one option that can help America. I'd like a perfect solution but there isn't one

Oh there is one, Kamala could just not continue on the same path re: Israel as previous people in power. It's a simple change that gets her a lot of votes. But oh no, Trump bad, vote Harris, that's the only compromise people like you seem to offer.

I'm not offering a compromise, I can't make Harris do anything. If you think I'm some kind of wizard who can wave her hand and suddenly make Harris put Nethanyu on blast as she sends in the calvary to start rebuilding Palestine, then I got a bridge to sell ya.

I'm merely point out that we have two options.

We let Trump get elected, he deploys nuclear weapons in Palestine because he's an idiot who keeps demanding to know why we aren't doing that already ( https://patch.com/us/across-america/donald-trump-reportedly-asked-adviser-nuclear-weapons-if-we-have-them-why-we-can-t ) and starts rounding up vulnerable Americans in camps because he likes Hitler. We try to protest both, he deploys the national guard.

We get Harris elected, the threat of Trump is gone forever because he's not going to even live long enough to try this shit again in 2028, we still have the freedom to protest, she doesn't make things any worse for Palestine than they already are under the Biden administration, and we can still focus on trying to push the country leftward with the whole "Not having to fight for our lives" conditions a Harris presidency brings that the alternative does not.

Under the former, we can't do shit to help Palestine because we'll have our own problems, under the latter there's still a fight.

I'm not meekly saying "But Trump..", I'm merely being realistic in what the landscape looks like under each presidency.

Palestine isn't gonna have a good time under either President this is true, but one of those is clearly worse than the other for not only that region, but our region. You must understand that.

If you really want to stand there and pitch a fit because you can't have your cake and eat it too, congratulations, you're going to get us all killed.

PS: "We could all vote Third Party." - ELECTORAL COLLEGES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

"Electoral Colleges are inhumane, undemocratic, and we need ranked choice voting." - True, but it doesn't change the fact that our current system is an Electoral College and Republicans are the reason that's not going to change anytime soon.

Buddy, buddy. The entire thing is really simple. Trump doesn't need the votes from pro Palestinian people. He probably wouldn't get them anyways. Harris needs those votes. So either she changes course, or she loses an election. People who see Palestine as an important issue aren't going to vote for someone because they are "better" but still supporting genocide. They'll vote based on other issues, or won't vote at all. It's not the job of the voters to get a specific party votes - it's the exact opposite. They are getting elected for the people - not for themselves. So do what people want or lose.

  1. you didn't read the post you are replying to.

  2. your stance is irritatingly naive.

If pro-palestine single-issue voters sink the Harris ticket there is a real chance they wont get to vote again. If perfection is allowed to be the enemy of progress you will inadvertantly elect the regressive party. A party helmed by a guy who has said publicly on multiple interviews he would sic the national guard or military on protestors, undesierables and political rivals.

It is frustrating to have to keep going over this, either the correct choice is made by the US citizenry and the status-quo continues (as poor as that may be) or the guard rails of democracy are dismantled by a wanabe dictator and your prefrences wont be asked of you again.

Do you understand what a genocide is? Or do you think it's "a war in some far away land I don't need to worry about"? Do you understand that people lose their loved ones daily? There is no "perfection" there is just a person supporting genocide, wanting votes from people who have family, friends, colleagues suffering in Gaza. You don't get votes for not doing what your voters want you to do. That's the truth, and frankly people going "oh but you still absolutely MUST vote for our guy" are obnoxious. No, they don't get automatic votes when their policies are horrible.

Ah, single issue voters who aren't bright enough to understand the big picture and how it effects them.

Or again... failing to realize Trump has a stance on this issue that's literally worse than Harris'..... and has done shit like put the fucking Israel-US Assembly in god damn Jerusalem, basically mandating that Palestine doesn't exist.

It's like imagine one party wants to break your spine and permanently paralyze you, and the other is going to kick you in the shin really really hard, and if you don't vote because neither of those sound good thinking "Oh well, I don't really want either of those." the former is going to win, and it's kind of objectively much worse.

One party wants to break your spine and permanently paralyze you, and the other wants to break your spine and permanently paralyze you. You don't get points for "bad vs worse" when you are talking about supporting a genocidal regime. You don't get to ignore the elephant in the room and expect everyone going "holy shit a fucking elephant" to vote for someone who supports the elephant being there and gaslighting them.

That's a very privileged view you have, that both parties are the same.

There is no "Zero Genocide" option, not because I'm bloodthirsty, but because I am held hostage b y a blood thirsty machine, just like every other American.

Right now, that machine does not need consent to destroy Palestine, but it does need consent to kill pregnant women, to separate latino babies from their parents, to end birthright citizenship, to mass incarcerate transgender individuals in prisons intended for their birth sex, to deport Palestinian-Americans back to Palestine while it's still being bombed... Because this is all Trump wants to do.

You can't kill off the whole group simply because you're upset that there can't be a 100% survival rate here.... And it pains me to say that, I'm not trying to be dismissive, I'm saying that the people you want to save are doomed no matter who is President. But there are still many other lives who will perish under a Trump regime, who won't under a Harris presidency.

Reminder: Trump also supports the genocide of Palestine, but he also supports escalation up to and including Nuclear weapons, Harris would keep it business as usual. Neither is exactly my ideal outcome for Palestine, but you need to let terrible be the enemy of bad.

Edit: Look I'm just gonna post this picture because it shows the situation better than I can explain it

So why aren't you voting for Trump? After all, you said it yourself - it doesn't matter that people die because MaChInE won't stop. It's better to give up than to not vote for someone who supports killing the people you want saved according to you.

When it comes to Palestine, Trump and Harris are the exact same. Both support killing of Palestinians. She had a chance to do the right thing and get the votes, instead she doubled down. Fuck Harris and fuck Trump.

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