Earth 'well outside safe operating space for humanity', scientists find

[OKIsItJustMe]

Source: The Guardian

First complete ‘scientific health check’ shows most global systems beyond stable range in which modern civilisation emerged

Damian Carrington Environment editor
@dpcarrington
Wed 13 Sep 2023 14.00 EDT

Earth’s life support systems have been so damaged that the planet is “well outside of the safe operating space for humanity”, scientists have warned.

Their assessment found that six out of nine “planetary boundaries” had been broken because of human-caused pollution and destruction of the natural world. The planetary boundaries are the limits at which key global systems, such as climate, water and wildlife diversity, beyond which these systems’ ability to maintain a healthy planet is in serious peril.

The broken boundaries mean the systems have been driven far from the safe and stable state that existed from the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, to the start of the industrial revolution. The whole of modern civilisation arose in this time period, called the Holocene.

The assessment was the first of all nine planetary boundaries and represented the “first scientific health check for the entire planet”, the researchers said. Six boundaries have been passed and two are judged to be close to being broken: air pollution and ocean acidification. The one boundary that is not threatened is atmospheric ozone, after action to phase out destructive chemicals in recent decades led to the ozone hole shrinking.

…

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/13/earth-well-outside-safe-operating-space-for-humanity-scientists-find

---

http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458

[elleng]

1. Hard to think of discussing such matters with my grands,

who are 4 to 9 years old.

[hamsterjill]

2. I am sure it would be hard, and I am sorry.

My daughter and son-in-law opted to remain childless because of this. I am grateful that my lineage will end with my daughter, but sad that I didn’t get to experience grandchildren.

I am afraid we are leaving them with no future and I hope and pray to be wrong, and that one of their generation has the wits and intelligence to make a difference and allow them to have their lives.

[elleng]

3. Thanks

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. 15 years ago I was at a family gathering

I can see it like it was yesterday. I was sitting in a circle on the floor, with my nieces, their boyfriends and my nephew, when one of them asked me in a serious tone about “climate change.”

1. Was it real?
2. Was it serious?
3. Could we stop it?

I told them:

1. Yes, it’s real.
2. Yes, it’s quite serious.
3. Yes, we can stop it.
4. But we won’t. (I’m sorry.)

I now have two great-nephews. One is 10, the other 2… Their mothers are both quite intelligent…

[elleng]

5. One (at least) of my 9 year old grandsons has engineering interests,

at least it appears so, and I want to encourage such. How to do so, in these times?

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. My oldest, dearest friend is a "counselor"

In recent conversations, she said:

1. More and more clients were telling her they felt like this was “the end of the world.” She didn’t really know what to tell them.
2. She wondered if it was right for her to make people feel better.

I said, for the history of humanity, we have each been born with an uncertain, but finite lifespan. Does it make a difference how we live it out? Whether we are miserable or joyful? Whether we do something with our limited time, or whether we just let life “pass us by?”

Philosophers have struggled with these questions for thousands of years. Generally they have concluded that it is preferable to be joyful and productive! https://iep.utm.edu/epicur/#H5

When my friend and I were born, it was pretty much a given that our lives would end in some sort of “Nuclear Holocaust.” When I was a little bit older than your grandsons, I told people, “If I heard that a bomb was going to be dropped on us, I’d go try to catch it. Who knows‽ I might succeed! but if I don’t, I don’t want to see what happens.”

I say, “Encourage your grandsons to pursue their interests!” They probably won’t “catch the bomb,” but they might succeed!

Don’t feel you need to burden them with the “end of the world!” That’s not the job of a grandparent. A grandparent’s job is to be a mentor!

Talk about it with their parents, but don’t lie to your grandchildren.

[elleng]

9. Thank you.

[Alexander Of Assyria]

7. The start of the Western Industrial Revolution was the start of the bullet about to hit the fan!

Took a couple hundred years of cheap and abundant to this day fossil fuels to power thst Revolution…worth it!??

And who ought to be most willing to pay, financially and politically, for the clean up and arrestation of the continuing same causes?

Why is that even a question?

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. There's some evidence that the bullet was fired when agriculture began...

Agriculture required “clearing the land…”

Where to begin? Was the birth of the first human the true beginning of anthropogenic climate change?

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

23. Beat me to it

The broken boundaries mean the systems have been driven far from the safe and stable state that existed from the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, to the start of the industrial revolution. The whole of modern civilisation arose in this time period, called the Holocene.

Starting with the Industrial Revolution (and cheap, dense energy in oil), the global population went from 2 billion to 8 billion in a hundred or so years.

Talk about climate impact...

[erronis]

11. Again, The Guardian is reporting good and news that we don't see in the US M$M

If anyone can give me the name(s) of some US newpapers/outlets that they trust and feel present a good overall viewpoint, please let me know.

I do subscribe to the tired Old Grey Lady and the WaPo. So much opinion and so little hard information.

I get RSS newsfeeds from many science and opinion blogs that have much more value than subscriptions to the big MSM outlets.

I want a global perspective - not a US-centric one.

Thanks!

[OKIsItJustMe]

17. It's not a Newspaper per se, but...

perhaps a subscription to New Scientist? Their coverage of COVID-19, and “Climate Change” have both been quite good.

Monitoring the Associated Press and Reuters will get you fairly decent coverage. (Any editor, even the editor for the “Old Grey Lady,” needs to pick out, “All the news that's fit to print” or, perhaps, “All the news that fits, we print.” No source can cover everything. That’s part of the editor’s job, to present a certain portion of the news.)

[erronis]

18. I've received New Scientist for 10+ years. It's become too expensive for me

and, as many magazines, too cluttered with ads.

I recently re-started my decades-long subscription to Scientific American which has published some good in-depth articles in the last few years.

Google news is a 'decent' aggregator but it no longer lets me choose which types of articles (and from whom) to receive.

I do peruse Reuters.

As far as the NYT - I think their current editorial staff is way too opinionated on which "certain portion of the news" to present. Again, they protect their "access" to "newsmakers" (such as tfg) at the expense of investigative reporting.

And both-siderism is rampant in the US rags.

Enough of my rant!

[OKIsItJustMe]

21. Yes, New Scientist has become quite expensive

One of the challenges that all of these “print media” face is that they have lost paying subscribers. So, they charge their remaining subscribers more, and increase the number of advertisers. (They’ve got to do something to raise money!)

My local paper is a shadow of what it once was, their staff was decimated decades ago. I (semi-sarcastically) describe its coverage as “Yesterday’s news, tomorrow.” It’s a journalistic reality. They no longer print it in town. It’s delivered at 5 am. I don’t know what their “deadline” is. So, although they dutifully cover “national news” it is perforce out-of-date. Their coverage of “local news” (what there is) is more in depth than the local TV stations can provide.

I maintain a subscription in hopes of helping to keep its doors open.

[erronis]

30. It's interesting. Heah in VT we have two very vibrant and active news outlets.

They both really focus on local/state-wide issues and do an excellent job.

VTDigger.org is non-paywalled, online only, very well sourced and funded by voluntary donations - and grants, etc. Has received many journalism awards.

SevenDaysVT.com is print and online, great in-depth articles, lots of ads but well done. Also well done and lots of national recognition.

My father ran a small local paper in upstate NY way back when. It was a lot of hard work getting advertisers and selling subscriptions. I can't imagine how these organizations can deal with the changes in customer habits, loss of print advertisers, etc.

Thanks for continuing this discussion!

[Mr.Bill]

12. I married a woman with grown children,

but I never had biological children myself due to relying on my looks and personality for birth control.

[LiberalFighter]

13. I'm beginning to think civilization on earth is near the end.

I won't be around but likely in the next 200 years or so. Unless there is a serious reduction of population and production of manufactured goods. It would likely require fewer roads, parking lots, and other constructions that replace earth surfaces.

[Brenda]

37. You're almost right. 20 years, not 200.

I probably won't be around either but I can't believe how so many people don't take it seriously.

[Voltaire2]

55. we are in civilizational collapse right now

it is just a slow process at the moment. The symptoms of dysfunction are all around us. As the saying goes, Rome did not collapse in one day. The western half of the empire's collapse took about a century, 376 - 476, and even then the eastern empire survived for another thousand years. The process can be so slow that people living through it just accommodate to 'the new normal' and continue on with their lives without necessarily realizing what is happening. That is what is going on right now.

[Polybius]

64. You think there will be no more humans in 20 years?

Outside of a massive nuclear war or asteroid hitting us, 20 years seems really fast.

[Brenda]

65. I didn't say that.

Neither did LiberalFighter. No one said there would be no more humans...we are speaking of the end of civilization as we know it today.

[Warpy]

14. We're adaptable

so unless the ocean gives up its stored methane, we are likely to go on.

We will be very different and there will be a lot fewer of us.

[OKIsItJustMe]

20. I am not as confident

Stanford Earth Matters: What caused Earth's biggest mass extinction?

Scientists have debated until now what made Earth's oceans so inhospitable to life that some 96 percent of marine species died off at the end of the Permian period. New research shows the "Great Dying" was caused by global warming that left ocean animals unable to breathe.

December 06, 2018

The largest extinction in Earth's history marked the end of the Permian period, some 252 million years ago. Long before dinosaurs, our planet was populated with plants and animals that were mostly obliterated after a series of massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia.

Fossils in ancient seafloor rocks display a thriving and diverse marine ecosystem, then a swath of corpses. Some 96 percent of marine species were wiped out during the "Great Dying," followed by millions of years when life had to multiply and diversify once more.

What has been debated until now is exactly what made the oceans inhospitable to life – the high acidity of the water, metal and sulfide poisoning, a complete lack of oxygen, or simply higher temperatures.

New research from the University of Washington and Stanford University combines models of ocean conditions and animal metabolism with published lab data and paleoceanographic records to show that the Permian mass extinction in the oceans was caused by global warming that left animals unable to breathe. As temperatures rose and the metabolism of marine animals sped up, the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen for them to survive. The study is published in the Dec. 7 issue of Science.

…

Ars Technica: Mass extinction event 260 million years ago resulted from climate change, studies say

Ocean stagnation, ecosystem collapses, and volcano eruptions all played a role.

HOWARD LEE - 7/25/2023, 2:00 PM

The Capitanian mass extinction was once lumped in with the “Great Dying” of the end-Permian mass extinction, but the lesser-known extinction occurred 8–10 million years earlier. It may not have been great, but it was quite lethal, seeing as many as 62 percent of species go extinct, according to one estimate. Two new papers by different teams shed new light on the event, revealing a pattern of cause and effect that’s seen in other mass extinctions: huge volcanic eruptions, global warming, the collapse of the terrestrial ecosystem, and the spread of oxygen-starved ocean dead zones.

Ocean dead zones

Huyue Song of China University of Geosciences and colleagues from China, the US, and the UK studied mid-Permian-age rocks at a site called Penglaitan, about 300 miles west of Hong Kong. They found that there were two distinct pulses of Capitanian extinction, one about 262 million years ago and another around 260 million years ago. Those are both well before the more famous “Great Dying” end-Permian extinction, which occurred 252 million years ago, and Song’s team set out to uncover what happened.

“In a way, the extinction losses have been hiding in the shadow of the end-Permian extinction,” said Paul Wignall, a professor at the University of Leeds and a co-author on Song’s paper. “It wiped out a lot of genera of all the usual things in the sea,” adding, “a bunch of animals died on land,” as well.

Previous studies have found evidence of Capitanian extinctions in places as far afield as Ellesmere Island and Spitsbergen in the Arctic, China, Iran, Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Africa, and Antarctica. The extinctions hit corals, mollusks, forams, and calcareous algae in the seas, as well as land plants and animals such as the dinocephalians (meaning “terrible heads”), a group of large reptiles related to the ancestors of mammals.

…

[housecat]

44. Thanks for the good read

[Javaman]

25. The acidification of the ocean will remove 1/3 of th worlds food

When you say “we” are adaptable, who is that “we” that you speak of?

Acidification of the oceans will happen in our lifetimes…more than likely within the next ten years.

With rising temps and blazing summers, there most certainly will be some form of crop failure globally at some point very soon.

Those who are “adaptable” will be living in the least climate change revenged areas. That’s not “adapting” that’s surviving.

Adapting is learning to eat less and less with very questionable potable water.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

28. Wait, but are you speaking of this?

Methane hydrates is a source of methane gas which is found in crystalline formation that look like ice and can be found in permafrost regions or under the sea in outer continental margins.

The seas warm, and those "melt", nothing we do will stop anything

[Voltaire2]

56. right. There will still be homo sapiens.

What is pretty clear though is that this global civilization has reached its limits and is self destructing. It is civilization that is in danger.

[roamer65]

70. We're adaptable.

At far less than 8 billion.

[jaxexpat]

15. So with little hope of the planetary support systems expanding,

the path forward lay in reducing the pressure of human population on these necessary systems.

A little thing I heard from Mr. Obvious about 50 years ago.

[GenXer47]

16. capitalism must die

When you try to live by the Paris Agreement - 2 tons of CO2 per person per year - you realize that you only need around $30,000 per year.
No technology is going to save us. A lifestyle of very low consumption, and most of all, no leisure travel beyond maybe an hour from home. Business/work travel will have to continue, using all manner of electric vehicles. But even that has a cost which is why it needs to be justified by work/survival purposes.
But the main takeaway is, $30,000 per year. Why would anyone work so hard to become rich, or even upper middle class, if you can't spend all that dough? Kiss capitalism goodbye. And good riddance.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

26. Materialism gotta go

but the world don't care about per person emissions - at all - not even a discussion.

It only cares about total GHG. If China and India have more people, they emit more, and the world gets hotter.

APAC emits 80+% of all GHG, so if all of us in the US go to zero GHG, the world still burns.

[Voltaire2]

54. This is the reality that is being denied.

The system is the problem. Until we come to grips with this, until we end a system that demands perpetual growth, we will continue to shred the global environment and deplete essential resources. The insanity has to stop,

[Permanut]

19. In high school biology in 1962..

We had a long and interesting discussion on what was termed "carrying capacity" of an ecosystem, and what happens if that capacity is exceeded. We did not, however, consider at that time that the entire planet is an ecosystem, and that we humans would disrupt it simply by being too successful at reproduction.

[OKIsItJustMe]

22. Peanuts, March 11, 1957

https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1957/03/11

[housecat]

29. Even the wisdom of cartoonists fell on deaf ears

[Permanut]

46. Missed that one, thanks!

[OKIsItJustMe]

47. You're welcome!

When I was a boy, I had an extensive collection of Peanuts paperbacks. In the early days, Schulz did a lot of biting social commentary. It’s the era I call, “When Peanuts was funny.”

May 28, 1959: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1959/05/28
October 17, 1960: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1960/10/17
July 03, 1961: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1961/07/03
July 07, 1961: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1961/07/07

[Permanut]

50. That's a gold mine.

I'm hearing Vince Guaraldi's piano themes as I browse through.

[housecat]

27. Yet overpopulation in less-developed countries is currently less of a problem than the greed of

industrialized nations spewing carbon dioxide into the air and toxic chemicals everywhere. Yes, overpopulation will devour edible resources until they are gone. Industrialized nations will devour fossil fuels until the air and water are gone, and life ends. Humans did it to themselves, and sadly we are destroying all life -- animals, plants, and hope.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

31. Not really

80% of GHG comes from APAC, not the "industrialized nations" who actually have reduced our emissions

[OKIsItJustMe]

34. If I buy a product manufactured in China because it's cheap who is responsible for the emissions?

In many cases, “the industrialized nations” have exported our emissions to APAC.

Oh, the smokestack’s not just down the street, but we’re still the ones benefiting from it…

[housecat]

38. Good point. Maybe we should have two separate conversations-- one around overpopulation and one

around causes of climate change. My point was that overpopulation does not affect the entire planet the way climate change does. I'm all in for global birth control, but my experience with peasant cultures made it clear that they are not interested. These same families and villages contribute little or nothing to climate change. Yet they suffer from the same heat and droughts as the fossil fuel burners.

[OKIsItJustMe]

40. If anything, they suffer more

A child born in the US will likely contribute more to “climate change” than an entire family in one of those villages.

For me, one of the signatures of the carbon cost of US children is parents who will drive their children around in a car, to put them to sleep. In “less advanced” nations, parents might have to rock their children to sleep in their arms, maybe while singing a lullaby…

[housecat]

43. Sure when parents drive around and don't go anywhere -- whenn anyone does that

[housecat]

35. Okay maybe industrialized is the wrong term. But China and India, two overpopulated AND industrial

each have vastly different populations -- primarily rural, but the urban centers emit enough GHG to heat and smother everyone.

[OKIsItJustMe]

36. And US per capita emissions are greater than the citizens of either nation

It’s their large populations that make their national emissions figures as great as (or greater than) ours.

[housecat]

39. Agreed. The cause is shared. Maybe a solution will be multinational.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

48. But that's the point

per capita means nothing to the environment.
Per capita is only an argument to put more pressure on western countries to cut back (to no avail) when countries with absurd populations are the real problem.

[housecat]

60. yes and no. Few drive a car in many overpopulated areas

[OKIsItJustMe]

62. Hmmm... Interesting viewpoint...

(The) “countries with absurd populations are the real problem.“ (Like India for example? who we emit almost twice as much as…) India’s the “real problem?”


World Resources Institute: This Interactive Chart Shows Changes in the World's Top 10 Emitters

…

1) The World’s Top Three Emitters Contribute 15 Times the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of the Bottom 100

The top three GHG emitters — China, the United States and India — contribute 42.6% total emissions, while the bottom 100 countries only account for only 2.9%.

It’s interesting to note that while India ranks high among emitters, when you factor in population to look at per capita GHG emissions, the highly populated country ranks significantly lower than the other top 10 emitters.

Collectively, this group of nations account for over two-thirds of global GHG emissions. The world cannot successfully fight climate change without significant action from the top 10 emitters.

…

The average American is responsible for about 5 times the emissions of the average Indian.

[Snooper9]

58. not to mention the trash

India's Ganges River is a paradox: The mighty river's tributaries are cool, Himalayan-glacier fed springs. But where the river meets Indian subcontinent's highly populated cities, and pours out into the Bay of Bengal, the water goes from crystal clear to trash-and sewage-infested sludge.
https://i.insider.com/5a6b4d281784251e008b4d4d?width=1300&format=jpeg&auto=webp





A worker clears rubbish from the Yellow River, where a survey of sewers is to be carried out to identify sources of pollution. Photo: AP

[housecat]

61. As disgusting this is for water and life, the damage to climate is small

[Alexander Of Assyria]

68. Much like The Thames in the Industrial Revolution, the West can help with this also!

[OKIsItJustMe]

45. If US mines export their coal to China who is responsible for the resulting emissions?

Up 700%, China’s Consumption Of US Coal Drives Shortages, Not Railroads

Roslyn Layton
Former Contributor
International Tech Policy
Jun 1, 2022,11:04am EDT

…

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

49. Still China

We're not forcing them to consume it.

Frankly, I think we should flat out stop the export of ALL hydrocarbons - for so many reasons...

[housecat]

63. Mining companies destroy land whether they burn coal or not

Of course China makes a huge contribution to fucking up the planet, as well as US mine owners.
The "but for" argument can't be ignored.

[EarthFirst]

24. We.Fucking.Suck.

Do better.

Sigh.

[bucolic_frolic]

32. What will Republicans do when their dividend checks stop?

[Mr.Bill]

33. The republican reaction?

Passing more laws forcing babies to be born.

[Snackshack]

41. 10-15yrs ago...

I read an article about the same type of study and its conclusion was that every ecological system on our planet was in decline so this new study tracks right in-line with what would be expected when all you do is increase the activities that created the system being in decline in the 1st place and nothing to curb them.

[Think. Again.]

42. Yep...

...and the resulting extinctions, extreme chaotic weather, ecological system collapses, etc, that we are beginning to suffer are just the beginning.

[DFW]

51. It sounds that the end of the Holocene era is long past

We are now well into the Justobscene era, and are realizing it too late.

[cstanleytech]

52. In the end the danger comes down to pollution. If we get a handle on that it can buy us time to

maybe come up with ways to mitigate the damage we have inflicted with it or allow the planet to do it itself.
As for some of it such as increased temps we can adapt by changing our building techniques such as instead of cutting down trees to harvest for wood to build homes we can instead build with think earthen walls or in some cases build homes in the ground itself.
The main benefit when building underground is that when it comes to cooling and heating it takes far less energy to maintain a comfortable year round temperature.

[Aussie105]

53. Nothing new here.

Any species that over exploits its environment tends to degrade it.

Rabbits and mice will breed in huge numbers in a good season, only to run out of food and have their numbers decimated.

The time scale there can be measured in seasons, for humans it's measured in decades if not centuries.
But the same end result.

The writing on the wall has been there a long time.
Those who stopped long enough to read it just said . . . I'm busy, not my problem.

We have answered two out of the following three questions:

1. What is happening?

2. Why is it happening?

3. What are we going to do about it?

Got kind of got stuck on the last one there. Have, for a long time.

[Martin68]

57. It is true that "the whole of modern civilization arose after the last ice age during the Holocene,

but our ancestors lived during the last glaciation and thrived in spite of it. If we don't rapidly limit greenhouse gas emissions, civilization as we know it will crash. Humans will survive, though. We are a remarkably adaptable species. Who knows, maybe we'll get it right next time.

[OKIsItJustMe]

59. Don't be too confident

PNAS: Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios

…
August 1, 2022
…
Abstract

Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses. We outline current knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies' vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.

…

The Potential for Climate Catastrophe

There are four key reasons to be concerned over the potential of a global climate catastrophe. First, there are warnings from history. Climate change (either regional or global) has played a role in the collapse or transformation of numerous previous societies (37) and in each of the five mass extinction events in Phanerozoic Earth history (38). The current carbon pulse is occurring at an unprecedented geological speed and, by the end of the century, may surpass thresholds that triggered previous mass extinctions (39, 40). The worst-case scenarios in the IPCC report project temperatures by the 22nd century that last prevailed in the Early Eocene, reversing 50 million years of cooler climates in the space of two centuries (41).

This is particularly alarming, as human societies are locally adapted to a specific climatic niche. The rise of large-scale, urbanized agrarian societies began with the shift to the stable climate of the Holocene ?12,000 y ago (42). Since then, human population density peaked within a narrow climatic envelope with a mean annual average temperature of ?13?°C. Even today, the most economically productive centers of human activity are concentrated in those areas (43). The cumulative impacts of warming may overwhelm societal adaptive capacity.

…

Conclusions

There is ample evidence that climate change could become catastrophic. We could enter such “endgames” at even modest levels of warming. Understanding extreme risks is important for robust decision-making, from preparation to consideration of emergency responses. This requires exploring not just higher temperature scenarios but also the potential for climate change impacts to contribute to systemic risk and other cascades. We suggest that it is time to seriously scrutinize the best way to expand our research horizons to cover this field. The proposed “Climate Endgame” research agenda provides one way to navigate this under-studied area. Facing a future of accelerating climate change while blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk management at best and fatally foolish at worst.

…

[Martin68]

66. I think if you read it carefully, it addresses the effects on "society" and "civilization" in terms

of where humans have been most "productive." It references "large-scale urbanized agrarian societies". There is no suggestion humans will go extinct. Humans have survived as small cultures in the Kalahari Desert and above the Arctic Circle. We are remarkably adaptable. Our civilization, and the societies that exist now, are not. They will crash and burn. We will end up as small bands living off the land in areas where temperatures aren't as extreme due to altitude and or latitude. We are as adaptable as cockroaches. Evolution will continue, selecting for individuals better adapted to live in a new climate regime. We will not live in cities and large-scale agriculture will be a thing of the past.

[OKIsItJustMe]

67. My hunch (like yours) is that a "remnant" may survive

As I have suggested elsewhere, if it is realistic to believe that we could create self-sustainable colonies on the Moon and/or Mars (where there is essentially no atmosphere) creating a similar outpost on Earth should be (relatively) easy. One might imagine an underground city like the one in Logan’s Run or a large dome as portrayed in other works of Science Fiction. Of course a city like that would be quite an undertaking, and, if, for example, we were having trouble producing food crops, we might have higher priorities.

In addition, the great mass of people who would not be chosen might just be jealous of those who were…

Perhaps the “Nuclear Armageddon” we’ve worried about for decades will be spurred on by the competition for habitable/fertile land.


We’re already perpetrating a “Mass Extinction.” Climate Change might put the finishing touches on it for us, and we might fall prey to it ourselves. (It would seem fitting.)


The odds of human extinction may be low. Are they acceptable?

[Martin68]

72. But you are positing an advanced technological solution. I am suggesting a return to small hunter-

gatherer clans, at least to start with. It could take millennia to develop advanced technology - but if we were lucky, we might stay in better harmony with our environment. Suppose technology ended up being based on the common good rather than profits for a few at the expense of environmental destruction. "Thirty Monkeys" was a dystopian view of a far more negative outcome.

[roamer65]

69. Want to truly help fight climate change?

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

[OKIsItJustMe]

71. Global Weirding - The easiest ways to fix climate change is population control and going vegan - ...