What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change—Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t…

[GliderGuider]

23. Was that Calhoun, or someone else?

Why do you think the human situation is not the same? The conditions you describe - food surplus and no predation - are identical. Similarly, many here would argue that it's our alphas (corporate leaders and politicians) that are driving the overshoot, and argue for their removal in order to prolong the human experiment.

I don't think that our crash will mirror that of a mouse utopia detail for detail. After all, we are a hyper-amplified species in almost every respect, and such quantitative differences can't help but affect the qualitative progress of the collapse. On the other hand, we are still a natural species, and so can be expected to follow the typical trajectory in general.

Our brains evolved to be limit-removal mechanisms. That means that they evolved as growth-enablers, and are quite poor at degrowth-related thoughts and actions. This is what has allowed us to drive as deep into overshoot as we apparently have. During our growth, every time we hit a limit we figured out a way around it so we could keep on going. That's the whole point of technology.

I also see evidence of this evolution in the operation of our steep psychological discount rates for risk assessment, under which distant, abstract risks are very heavily discounted relative to concrete, near-term risks. Like the classic "environment vs. jobs" conundrum.