It felt surreal arguing with boomers about record breaking temperatures the other day. Like, a new record was just broken for the highest temperatures in many European countries while we’re sitting there, sweating our balls off in the middle of a 2 week long heat wave. “Nah” they kept saying “We’ve had hot days before.” When I showed them statistics they refused to look at them. Instead they changed the topic instantly and ignored me for a good 15 minutes. Those weren’t some strangers I just met, mind you. I’ve known these guys for my entire life.
Too many people but especially older people (at least from my experience) are completely delusional about climate. They aren’t interested in facts, not interested in other people telling them they’re wrong and they even ignore what they’re experiencing themselves right now in favor of a severely distorted, rather vague idea of what a summer used to be 50 years ago.
My parents bought a retirement property byba lake in the middle of nowhere and pit a boat on a lift on the dock. But the lake is a water supply lake, and their dock is only about 4-5 feet deep when the lake is full, which is only for about a week after a major flood these days.
Most of the time when I visit I end up driving under the boat with the lawnmower. It’s just a really expensive porch swing at this point. We can’t even take it to a different lake because it’s stuck on the slings
They are in complete denial. Imagine approaching death right as it’s impossible to deny your generation personally fucked up the future of civilization itself.
In my experience you now get one of: 1. The weather has always been like this, 2. I did everything I could, I recycled and brought my own cup to the coffee shop, 3. Oh well, I’ll be dead soon so it’s not my problem.
There is GreenPeace that was outlawed this year, but yes there is a green party, it only once reached 1% and they hold 0.1% of seats in regional governments, so they existed indeed. I never thought of this as a way to do something about the issue. On the downside they have a pretty bad stance on everything else, and even the green position is not very consistent
In a de facto two party system it certainly can feel like a spoiler vote, however a single issue party can be highly influential in getting larger parties to adopt better positions on those single issues in order to avoid having votes syphoned away. In a truely multiparty system, a single issue party can directly extract concessions if they end up as part of a coalition government or are in a king-maker situation following an election.
Except that I’m talking about feeling personally that you were part of the problem.
Joe Blow was not feeling personally guilty about nuclear weapons. Or felt like they personally caused the war. Or that the economic crash was their fault.
Do you know how many people, particularly boomers, spent literally decades denying climate change, while obviously not participating in efforts against it?
If I’m an old white boomer who spent the last 15 years making my whole identity a Ford F-350 and Fuck Biden / Fuck Trudeau bumper stickers, I heart oil, i heart beef, i heart anything that a liberal hates…I might be feeling a bit uneasy about some of my stances while I’m watching the world burn. Then again, let’s face it… the ones who did the most damage are the least likely to even be capable of understanding how dire things are, even when they’re staring it in the face…
That’s a bit of an exaggeration don’t you think? We are going to have higher highs and lower lowes things are going to be a bit fucked but it nothing close to civilisation ending.
Worst case scenario full ecosystem collapse and that will have the following issues:
A couple billion people die.
Most people who will die will be in the 3rd world or already weak (old, fat, etc).
The west will face mass immigration and if we are to survive we must reserve our resources else everyone dies. Ie full ecosystem collapse will necessitate letting billions starve as they beg for resources we cannot give them.
This is bad but not end of civilisation bad. Ur food might be a shitter and u won’t have the new iPhone but overall u will still be living a better life than most kings throughout history.
We are already seeing “civilization ending” events happening across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. To a lesser extent, we’re seeing it in Latin America and the Pacific Rim, as well. But a lot of that resulted from extractive oil industry long before climate change really started kicking in. The mass migrations out of the Persian Gulf region, the ugly turf wars over drilling sites, natural disasters knocking out cities that we are no longer able to rebuild… it’s all accumulating.
But civilizations don’t end overnight. The history books are going to write about this era as a span of decades - even centuries - with the ramp up of the O&G industry dating back to the early 20th century and peaking in the early 21st. We’re going to be talking about The American Empire rather than any individual politician or business leader. And we’re going to be documenting it in Spanish or Mandarin, because the big English-speaking countries will have walled themselves off from the global business community for so long that nobody knows how to communicate with them anymore.
This is bad but not end of civilisation bad.
It really depends on how far away from the imperial core you happen to be. And there will inevitably be events that feel like an end of civilization for a subset of people in a way that eclipses the nation as a whole.
I like to go back to the BP Horizon spill, which fucked up the Gulf Coast for years and still weighs heavily on the regional ecology. Or one of the bigger hurricanes - Katrina or Harvey or Ian - which inflicted property damage that never got repaired and displaced tens of thousands of people indefinitely. I might also point to the Gaza Genocide or the Ukraine/Russia War, which has demolished whole swaths of civilization and killed millions through a combination of active slaughter and social murder. Or the most recent massive earthquake in Caracas, for which relief has been strangled by ongoing sanctions and the threat of military intervention. Or the earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 and from which the island still hasn’t recovered.
If you live in these areas right now, I don’t know if you can see the edge of civilization anymore. It is the End of Civilization for you. And as the impact of climate change expands and accelerates, you’re going to see more places on the map that suffer similar fates.
We are already seeing “civilization ending” events happening across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe.
By civilisation I’m more referring to human civilisation not civilisation in a national sense.
But a lot of that resulted from extractive oil industry long before climate change really started kicking in.
Hey they pay me well for extracting said oil and gas why would I complain about something that is making me rich?
The mass migrations out of the Persian Gulf region, the ugly turf wars over drilling sites, natural disasters knocking out cities that we are no longer able to rebuild… it’s all accumulating.
These are far away problems for people I don’t associate with it’s not a problem for me
But civilizations don’t end overnight. The history books are going to write about this era as a span of decades - even centuries - with the ramp up of the O&G industry dating back to the early 20th century and peaking in the early 21st. We’re going to be talking about The American Empire rather than any individual politician or business leader.
I absolutely agree!
And we’re going to be documenting it in Spanish or Mandarin, because the big English-speaking countries will have walled themselves off from the global business community for so long that nobody knows how to communicate with them anymore.
I disagree English has already become the global language of the human race. Science, programming, a lot of business, etc etc. Its all English. I’m currently in Istanbul the melting pot of culture here is really showing that English is the universal language. Nobody speaks it as a first language but it is the language that almost everyone has in common. For example I was speaking to a group of people from various middle eastern countries and they where speaking English as that was the language they had in common. Side note: The american who joined us was the least educated and spoke the worse English kinda funny lol.
It really depends on how far away from the imperial core you happen to be. And there will inevitably be events that feel like an end of civilization for a subset of people in a way that eclipses the nation as a whole.
Absolutely. I’m an Aussie we are pretty close to both the american and British imperial core. That combined with our remoteness and material/agricultural richness sets us up very well.
I like to go back to the BP Horizon spill, which fucked up the Gulf Coast for years and still weighs heavily on the regional ecology. Or one of the bigger hurricanes - Katrina or Harvey or Ian - which inflicted property damage that never got repaired and displaced tens of thousands of people indefinitely.
Far away from effecting my life so I don’t know much about this and am not too bothered tbh.
I might also point to the Gaza Genocide or the Ukraine/Russia War, which has demolished whole swaths of civilization and killed millions through a combination of active slaughter and social murder.
The middle east has been a clusterfuck for 3000years best not to get too invested in any particular tribe in the endless sand wars. Ukraine/Russia situation I think is the last of the empire wars of Europe. We have been doing this shit since the dark age. I’ve been investing into the European aggregates industry in preparation for the rebuild of Ukraine. I think the Russian federation will collapse into many separate nations (similar to the fall of the USSR) due to the misguided decisions of Putin which will overall be beneficial to the west and the idea of democracy.
or the most recent massive earthquake in Caracas, for which relief has been strangled by ongoing sanctions and the threat of military intervention. Or the earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 and from which the island still hasn’t recovered.
Again far away peoples of a far away nation. Its nation ending perhaps but not human civilisation ending.
If you live in these areas right now, I don’t know if you can see the edge of civilization anymore. It is the End of Civilization for you. And as the impact of climate change expands and accelerates, you’re going to see more places on the map that suffer similar fates.
Absolutely agree. But trouble and strife has been the nature of existence since the birth of life itself. One either sees the patterns for what they are and positions themselves to benefit or one dies. This is natural selection on a civilizational scale.
We think we have beaten natural selection but we have only deferred the pressured to the collective instead of the individual. Many other people may die but that is a price I’m willing to pay.
By civilisation I’m more referring to human civilisation not civilisation in a national sense.
A human collapse is going to begin in the most vulnerable countries and spread. It’s not just going to be everyone everywhere failing at once. What we’re seeing is the start of a long term, large scale global change with climate as a primary motivating factor.
These are far away problems for people I don’t associate with it’s not a problem for me
Sure. Until “Putin meddled in my elections! We need to go to war with Russia!” and “The Haitians are sneaking in to vote for socialism! We need mass deportations NOW!” is the rallying cry of your local party. And then you’re bumping elbows with fascism very quickly.
I disagree English has already become the global language of the human race.
The global language of the human race is Latin. Damn shame nobody still speaks it.
The middle east has been a clusterfuck for 3000years
That’s not actually true. It is, if anything, a product of a very recent turn in US foreign policy (and subsequent propaganda). The Middle East enjoyed centuries of (relative) stability under the Ottoman Empire. And it was one of the safer industrial stage regions on Earth to live during both World Wars. For most of that 3000 years, it enjoyed an enormous peace dividend as a center of trade and technological advancement, from which imperial powers positioned themselves securely while branching out across the globe. It was Europe before Europe was Europe.
The post-Cold War wave of conflicts is a novelty of colonization and extractive industry. It is the historical exception, not the rule.
We think we have beaten natural selection
We’ve beaten natural selection with manual selection. The future of the human race will be written by its ancestors’ in a way vanishingly few species can claim.
But this isn’t a reason for fatalism. It’s a recognition that our current trajectory is a collective choice.
A human collapse is going to begin in the most vulnerable countries and spread. It’s not just going to be everyone everywhere failing at once. What we’re seeing is the start of a long term, large scale global change with climate as a primary motivating factor.
I don’t necessarily disagree I just don’t think that it will result in a total global collapse. I think the most vulnerable will fall and the strong will adapt and overcome same as every other global crisis in history.
Sure. Until “Putin meddled in my elections! We need to go to war with Russia!” and “The Haitians are sneaking in to vote for socialism! We need mass deportations NOW!” is the rallying cry of your local party. And then you’re bumping elbows with fascism very quickly.
As an Aussie I’m sufficiently insulated against european inpieralism and middle eastern sand wars. And fascism doesn’t scare me considering that I’m a strait white male with what fascists would consider pure “Arian” ancestry.
The global language of the human race is Latin. Damn shame nobody still speaks it.
It defiantly used to be but I think the penetration on English his suowrceeded its influence.
That’s not actually true. It is, if anything, a product of a very recent turn in US foreign policy (and subsequent propaganda). The Middle East enjoyed centuries of (relative) stability under the Ottoman Empire.
As I said I am currently in the former seat of power for the Ottoman empire and their treatment of people was anything but peaceful or stable. I WS in the quarters they kept their slaves 2 days ago its was not a pleasant place. The wives of the sultan where by definition taken by force from conkered lands as to avoid giving any particular family any power.
And it was one of the safer industrial stage regions on Earth to live during both World Wars.
I think the Anzac’s would disagree on this point but then again how fan they disagree when they all died at the hands of the Ottoman.
For most of that 3000 years, it enjoyed an enormous peace dividend as a center of trade and technological advancement, from which imperial powers positioned themselves securely while branching out across the globe. It was Europe before Europe was Europe.
Its was Rome then its was eastern Rome (which I would still consider the true Rome) until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
The post-Cold War wave of conflicts is a novelty of colonization and extractive industry. It is the historical exception, not the rule.
Conflict has been the default for the entirety of human history everywhere across the globe. The cold war was a solidification event that caused a bipolar consolidation of factions but nothing more than that.
We’ve beaten natural selection with manual selection. The future of the human race will be written by its ancestors’ in a way vanishingly few species can claim.
Is that not just natural selection by h a different name. Eatehr selection is natural or it is chosen and if its is chooses the correct terminology is eugenics.
But this isn’t a reason for fatalism. It’s a recognition that our current trajectory is a collective choice.
Its a collective choice amongst collectives. You still have free will to decide what collective and who within said collective you decide to associate with.
I just don’t think that it will result in a total global collapse
I don’t think there’s any difficulty in recognizing the risk of a global economic contraction, given the long history of global market conditions causing recessionary feedback loops. What we want to describe as a “collapse?” Idk. Certainly a global rapid deterioration, as human habitable biomes contract.
As an Aussie I’m sufficiently insulated against european inpieralism
Brother you are a product of European imperialism. And you are heavily reliant on the umbrella of NATO, along with a global financial system that transacts in your preferred currencies. Absent globalized institutions like the Bank of England and the ECB and cornerstone lenders like HSBC, you’re out begging China, India, and Japan for a cup of fungible credit.
I think the Anzac’s would disagree
I can’t imagine why. Aussies were vacuumed up as cannon fodder for the Pacific Theater within the first year of the war.
Worst case scenario is Venusification, where runaway climate change forces make earth literally uninhabitable for all known lifeforms. If we continue on our current path this is a likely outcome.
Your less-apocalyptic scenario is one where our global economy collapses. If this happens, no area of the earth will be safe. Food production will drop by 80-90%, which means that human population will have to drop by 80-90%.
Your assumption that the West will be a safe haven is incorrect. The West’s economic advantage relies on imports, and in a collapse scenario those imports will stop. We can see a small version of this during the current Hormuz crisis- without middle east oil, weatern farmers have limited access to fertilizer, therefore crop yields are down significantly. Without fertilizer imports, the West cannot farm. Without natural gas imports, the West cannot heat its buildings.
In the collapse scenario, the violence won’t be localized in places like the US border. Humans, even in western nations, will be desperate. Your neighbors will be watching their children starve to death. They will be willing to break down your door and beat you to death if you have food.
No current model predicts this with any degree of likelihood. The threat of climate change is largely focused on the current generation of terrestrial inhabitants. The degree to which nitrogen rich fertilizers has improved crop yields over the last century cannot be overstated. And the degree to which a shift in the biome means large scale collapse of crop yields is as terrifying as the boom in crops was uplifting.
But a sudden, globe spanning famine has second and third order consequences, not unlike the collapse of the Mississippi culture on the eve of the Little Ice Age. Or the global famines of the 1930s which starved humans from Ohio to Okinawa. A sharp drop in global food reserves would lead to mass migration and international conflicts. The resulting global wartime conflagration would likely mean a collapse in carbon emissions, as areas of the globe once thought safe from conflict come under the kind of bombardment not seen since the end of the Cold War.
We’re already seeing Iranian drones and ballistic missiles targeting US data centers across the Middle East. We’re seeing airports shut down across Eastern Europe in response to the wars. We’re seeing sea travel choked off from the Suez to Singapore. All of that puts downward pressure on carbon emissions, long long long before Venusification.
Your less-apocalyptic scenario is one where our global economy collapses. If this happens, no area of the earth will be safe.
Plenty of places were safe from the direct conflict of the World Wars during the last century. Refugees flooded into the Middle East and North Africa, precisely because the colonial era wars were forced to end in order to support direct conflict between Empires in central Europe. The great trans-Atlantic migration surged with refugees from the outset of European fascism until the end of the Cold War.
I don’t think full venisifcation is a real concern and that’s a long way off far enough I will not have to endure it’s outcomes. And yeah if food production drops the bottom 90% of the populations dies which isn’t really my problem.
The west will be a safe haven not because of economic advantage but because we hold the monopoly on violence.
U can grow food without fertiliser we did that for millions of years before we started pumping oil. Most of the united states crop supporting land is used to grow corn that is turned into ethanol for fuel crop yield can reach under 50% and we will still have the same amount of food assuming we drop the ethanol production with corn which is economically nonviable anyways.
People in old houses burning fuel for heat might die those who can afford electrical heating and solar face no risk so again it’s the problem effecting only the poor. And this not my problem
My man if the current trend continues for a few more years we will start having water wars. Winter has no snow anymore and droughts are a thing that happens every summer. Also you think people are going to stay put and wait to die? There will be mass migrations on a scale we haven’t seen before.
Stuff is already pretty bad in some places, in the US the Colorado River Basin is in a water crisis already, Lake Mead is getting so low they can’t use it for power generation.
Water wars and mass migration are all things that are controlled by the monopoly of violence. As someone living in a western nation and thus a member of one of the states which holds said monopoly I am not concerned. And still that’s not full societal collapse that’s not even a bump in the road of the human species.
I live in an area where ice used to be an industry. Not even a minute drive from my house is a lake where they’d cut big blocks of ice and ship them downstream to stack and pack in sawdust and such to last the rest of the year. This area supplied a lot of the ice for the city of Philadelphia because closer to the city the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers were too dirty and no one wanted ice from them.
This went on until around 100 years ago, maybe even a bit longer, my dad in his 70s remembers his grandmother still getting ice delivered for her icebox for part of his childhood until she finally got a refrigerator.
My friends dad, who was a bit younger than my dad, used to tell stories about how the local creek would freeze over in the winter and he and his friends would ice skate down the frozen creek to get to another town about 5 miles away.
I actively keep an eye on ice conditions around me because I would like to try ice fishing some day. It’s only been a handful of times over the last decade or so where any body of water around here has frozen over enough for it to be possible, and even then it’s only been just the absolute bare minimum 4 inches and I’d ideally want another inch or two before I felt comfortable enough to actually try it.
I’ve never even seen that creek freeze over enough that even some foolhardy kids would be able to try skating on it, I’ve seen it get maybe 1 inch of ice, and even that was a rare occurrence, they’d break right through if they tried.
These are things that people around me should remember or at least should remember their parents and grandparents talking about, not something that’s totally out of living memory, and yet they still refuse to see it.
i remember being up at lake tahoe (california-nevada border, USA. big freshwater lake) and the firm my dad worked for, one of the owners had a cabin up there. They were trying to convince my dad to buy into the practice so as part of his bonus one year (I was like, 4) we got to stay a weekend up there. tried to jump over a frozen creek, I was 4, fell through the (ice was a quarter inch, water was 6 inches, i was 4 remember) 12 foot hole in the ice to my watery grave. I spent (probably a second at longest) twenty three years, submerged (up to my shin at most? i really don’t remember), underwater, in that hole until my dad plucked me out, a grown man (yes all it took to turn from a 4-year-old to a fully grown adult, then man, because amab and i hadn’t done a lot of thinking by age 4, was getting my feet really fucking cold. truly i was a king among cold-feeted cold-feet-people.)
At least as far as ice harvesting goes, that’s a pretty well-documented historical fact that can be verified.
As far as my friends dad being able to ice skate on the creek, it’s a bit harder to verify what he was doing 60 or so years ago, especially since he’s dead, but he was also the kind of guy who did plenty of crazy things in his day, and that story would be downright tame compared to just about every other story involving him so it’s kind of hard to imagine that that was the one he misremembered or embellished, but I suppose it was possible.
And there are plenty of other little leftovers, like several parks and such in the area where the ice thickness is monitored by the park staff because once upon a time you used to be able to reliably skate and fish on the ice.
yeah, we got enough snow out here that it stuck to the fence once while i was growing up, and it was the weekend we were moving and we were in the damn truck during the hour it snowed. we had warm winters.
i got ice and cold as an adult (my first winter as an adult was in Utah), but i think it has a different effect on you as a child.
I had an extremely weird conversation a while ago. A coworker had never heard of global warming before. They listened intently as I explained, expression making it apparent that they were honest about their obliviousness.
Truthfully, she said that she had heard about it in passing but had never cared to learn anything about it. She knew the name and not a thing more. This conversation was spawned when I pointed out that I could no longer relate to the weather that kids today experience because of global warming, and gears started turning and she asked many questions. As far as how? Education in the US is not equally distributed.
My grandma died back in 2019, but before her death she was hard into every type of climate change denial. She was also a lifelong evangelical christian, and used to make it super awkward when I would hang out with a friend who was black. In the years before her death she would send me links to things proving that that historical climate statistics are lying, and climate change is just a hoax people are using to make money. She was also huge into bible codes, and huge into Israel.
Not really sure where I was going with that… but I have a suspicion organized religion is to blame.
I don’t understand. Is it arrogance or are they somewhat aware that they did this, that they are responsible and that they’re leaving this mess behind for the rest of us?
You know, going by this and other comments I think you have the right idea. Like, we all are wearing blinkers as we go about our day because our whole world would fall apart if we fully realize our part in this mess. I imagine some older folks lie to themselves about global warming because their whole world view would fall apart completely.
It felt surreal arguing with boomers about record breaking temperatures the other day. Like, a new record was just broken for the highest temperatures in many European countries while we’re sitting there, sweating our balls off in the middle of a 2 week long heat wave. “Nah” they kept saying “We’ve had hot days before.” When I showed them statistics they refused to look at them. Instead they changed the topic instantly and ignored me for a good 15 minutes. Those weren’t some strangers I just met, mind you. I’ve known these guys for my entire life.
Too many people but especially older people (at least from my experience) are completely delusional about climate. They aren’t interested in facts, not interested in other people telling them they’re wrong and they even ignore what they’re experiencing themselves right now in favor of a severely distorted, rather vague idea of what a summer used to be 50 years ago.
My parents bought a retirement property byba lake in the middle of nowhere and pit a boat on a lift on the dock. But the lake is a water supply lake, and their dock is only about 4-5 feet deep when the lake is full, which is only for about a week after a major flood these days.
Most of the time when I visit I end up driving under the boat with the lawnmower. It’s just a really expensive porch swing at this point. We can’t even take it to a different lake because it’s stuck on the slings
They are in complete denial. Imagine approaching death right as it’s impossible to deny your generation personally fucked up the future of civilization itself.
In my experience you now get one of: 1. The weather has always been like this, 2. I did everything I could, I recycled and brought my own cup to the coffee shop, 3. Oh well, I’ll be dead soon so it’s not my problem.
Everything I could, except vote for representatives who prioritize climate over line-go-up
The majority of Americans voted for Al Gore, but they weren’t on the SCOTUS so the votes didn’t matter.
Did those exist? I don’t quite remember anyone in my country who had climate in their agenda (not even now, afaik)
Don’t know where you’re from but i bet there is a green party in your country that got like 1% of the votes in the last election.
There is GreenPeace that was outlawed this year, but yes there is a green party, it only once reached 1% and they hold 0.1% of seats in regional governments, so they existed indeed. I never thought of this as a way to do something about the issue. On the downside they have a pretty bad stance on everything else, and even the green position is not very consistent
In a de facto two party system it certainly can feel like a spoiler vote, however a single issue party can be highly influential in getting larger parties to adopt better positions on those single issues in order to avoid having votes syphoned away. In a truely multiparty system, a single issue party can directly extract concessions if they end up as part of a coalition government or are in a king-maker situation following an election.
Point to a decade where someone wasn’t thinking this as they expired.
You don’t have to confine yourself to the 21st century. Or even the 20th. Or even the last 500 years. Literally pick any decade.
Except that I’m talking about feeling personally that you were part of the problem.
Joe Blow was not feeling personally guilty about nuclear weapons. Or felt like they personally caused the war. Or that the economic crash was their fault.
Do you know how many people, particularly boomers, spent literally decades denying climate change, while obviously not participating in efforts against it?
If I’m an old white boomer who spent the last 15 years making my whole identity a Ford F-350 and Fuck Biden / Fuck Trudeau bumper stickers, I heart oil, i heart beef, i heart anything that a liberal hates…I might be feeling a bit uneasy about some of my stances while I’m watching the world burn. Then again, let’s face it… the ones who did the most damage are the least likely to even be capable of understanding how dire things are, even when they’re staring it in the face…
That’s a bit of an exaggeration don’t you think? We are going to have higher highs and lower lowes things are going to be a bit fucked but it nothing close to civilisation ending.
Worst case scenario full ecosystem collapse and that will have the following issues:
This is bad but not end of civilisation bad. Ur food might be a shitter and u won’t have the new iPhone but overall u will still be living a better life than most kings throughout history.
We are already seeing “civilization ending” events happening across the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. To a lesser extent, we’re seeing it in Latin America and the Pacific Rim, as well. But a lot of that resulted from extractive oil industry long before climate change really started kicking in. The mass migrations out of the Persian Gulf region, the ugly turf wars over drilling sites, natural disasters knocking out cities that we are no longer able to rebuild… it’s all accumulating.
But civilizations don’t end overnight. The history books are going to write about this era as a span of decades - even centuries - with the ramp up of the O&G industry dating back to the early 20th century and peaking in the early 21st. We’re going to be talking about The American Empire rather than any individual politician or business leader. And we’re going to be documenting it in Spanish or Mandarin, because the big English-speaking countries will have walled themselves off from the global business community for so long that nobody knows how to communicate with them anymore.
It really depends on how far away from the imperial core you happen to be. And there will inevitably be events that feel like an end of civilization for a subset of people in a way that eclipses the nation as a whole.
I like to go back to the BP Horizon spill, which fucked up the Gulf Coast for years and still weighs heavily on the regional ecology. Or one of the bigger hurricanes - Katrina or Harvey or Ian - which inflicted property damage that never got repaired and displaced tens of thousands of people indefinitely. I might also point to the Gaza Genocide or the Ukraine/Russia War, which has demolished whole swaths of civilization and killed millions through a combination of active slaughter and social murder. Or the most recent massive earthquake in Caracas, for which relief has been strangled by ongoing sanctions and the threat of military intervention. Or the earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 and from which the island still hasn’t recovered.
If you live in these areas right now, I don’t know if you can see the edge of civilization anymore. It is the End of Civilization for you. And as the impact of climate change expands and accelerates, you’re going to see more places on the map that suffer similar fates.
By civilisation I’m more referring to human civilisation not civilisation in a national sense.
Hey they pay me well for extracting said oil and gas why would I complain about something that is making me rich?
These are far away problems for people I don’t associate with it’s not a problem for me
I absolutely agree!
I disagree English has already become the global language of the human race. Science, programming, a lot of business, etc etc. Its all English. I’m currently in Istanbul the melting pot of culture here is really showing that English is the universal language. Nobody speaks it as a first language but it is the language that almost everyone has in common. For example I was speaking to a group of people from various middle eastern countries and they where speaking English as that was the language they had in common. Side note: The american who joined us was the least educated and spoke the worse English kinda funny lol.
Absolutely. I’m an Aussie we are pretty close to both the american and British imperial core. That combined with our remoteness and material/agricultural richness sets us up very well.
Far away from effecting my life so I don’t know much about this and am not too bothered tbh.
The middle east has been a clusterfuck for 3000years best not to get too invested in any particular tribe in the endless sand wars. Ukraine/Russia situation I think is the last of the empire wars of Europe. We have been doing this shit since the dark age. I’ve been investing into the European aggregates industry in preparation for the rebuild of Ukraine. I think the Russian federation will collapse into many separate nations (similar to the fall of the USSR) due to the misguided decisions of Putin which will overall be beneficial to the west and the idea of democracy.
Again far away peoples of a far away nation. Its nation ending perhaps but not human civilisation ending.
Absolutely agree. But trouble and strife has been the nature of existence since the birth of life itself. One either sees the patterns for what they are and positions themselves to benefit or one dies. This is natural selection on a civilizational scale.
We think we have beaten natural selection but we have only deferred the pressured to the collective instead of the individual. Many other people may die but that is a price I’m willing to pay.
A human collapse is going to begin in the most vulnerable countries and spread. It’s not just going to be everyone everywhere failing at once. What we’re seeing is the start of a long term, large scale global change with climate as a primary motivating factor.
Sure. Until “Putin meddled in my elections! We need to go to war with Russia!” and “The Haitians are sneaking in to vote for socialism! We need mass deportations NOW!” is the rallying cry of your local party. And then you’re bumping elbows with fascism very quickly.
The global language of the human race is Latin. Damn shame nobody still speaks it.
That’s not actually true. It is, if anything, a product of a very recent turn in US foreign policy (and subsequent propaganda). The Middle East enjoyed centuries of (relative) stability under the Ottoman Empire. And it was one of the safer industrial stage regions on Earth to live during both World Wars. For most of that 3000 years, it enjoyed an enormous peace dividend as a center of trade and technological advancement, from which imperial powers positioned themselves securely while branching out across the globe. It was Europe before Europe was Europe.
The post-Cold War wave of conflicts is a novelty of colonization and extractive industry. It is the historical exception, not the rule.
We’ve beaten natural selection with manual selection. The future of the human race will be written by its ancestors’ in a way vanishingly few species can claim.
But this isn’t a reason for fatalism. It’s a recognition that our current trajectory is a collective choice.
I don’t necessarily disagree I just don’t think that it will result in a total global collapse. I think the most vulnerable will fall and the strong will adapt and overcome same as every other global crisis in history.
As an Aussie I’m sufficiently insulated against european inpieralism and middle eastern sand wars. And fascism doesn’t scare me considering that I’m a strait white male with what fascists would consider pure “Arian” ancestry.
It defiantly used to be but I think the penetration on English his suowrceeded its influence.
As I said I am currently in the former seat of power for the Ottoman empire and their treatment of people was anything but peaceful or stable. I WS in the quarters they kept their slaves 2 days ago its was not a pleasant place. The wives of the sultan where by definition taken by force from conkered lands as to avoid giving any particular family any power.
I think the Anzac’s would disagree on this point but then again how fan they disagree when they all died at the hands of the Ottoman.
Its was Rome then its was eastern Rome (which I would still consider the true Rome) until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Conflict has been the default for the entirety of human history everywhere across the globe. The cold war was a solidification event that caused a bipolar consolidation of factions but nothing more than that.
Is that not just natural selection by h a different name. Eatehr selection is natural or it is chosen and if its is chooses the correct terminology is eugenics.
Its a collective choice amongst collectives. You still have free will to decide what collective and who within said collective you decide to associate with.
I don’t think there’s any difficulty in recognizing the risk of a global economic contraction, given the long history of global market conditions causing recessionary feedback loops. What we want to describe as a “collapse?” Idk. Certainly a global rapid deterioration, as human habitable biomes contract.
Brother you are a product of European imperialism. And you are heavily reliant on the umbrella of NATO, along with a global financial system that transacts in your preferred currencies. Absent globalized institutions like the Bank of England and the ECB and cornerstone lenders like HSBC, you’re out begging China, India, and Japan for a cup of fungible credit.
I can’t imagine why. Aussies were vacuumed up as cannon fodder for the Pacific Theater within the first year of the war.
Worst case scenario is Venusification, where runaway climate change forces make earth literally uninhabitable for all known lifeforms. If we continue on our current path this is a likely outcome.
Your less-apocalyptic scenario is one where our global economy collapses. If this happens, no area of the earth will be safe. Food production will drop by 80-90%, which means that human population will have to drop by 80-90%.
Your assumption that the West will be a safe haven is incorrect. The West’s economic advantage relies on imports, and in a collapse scenario those imports will stop. We can see a small version of this during the current Hormuz crisis- without middle east oil, weatern farmers have limited access to fertilizer, therefore crop yields are down significantly. Without fertilizer imports, the West cannot farm. Without natural gas imports, the West cannot heat its buildings.
In the collapse scenario, the violence won’t be localized in places like the US border. Humans, even in western nations, will be desperate. Your neighbors will be watching their children starve to death. They will be willing to break down your door and beat you to death if you have food.
No current model predicts this with any degree of likelihood. The threat of climate change is largely focused on the current generation of terrestrial inhabitants. The degree to which nitrogen rich fertilizers has improved crop yields over the last century cannot be overstated. And the degree to which a shift in the biome means large scale collapse of crop yields is as terrifying as the boom in crops was uplifting.
But a sudden, globe spanning famine has second and third order consequences, not unlike the collapse of the Mississippi culture on the eve of the Little Ice Age. Or the global famines of the 1930s which starved humans from Ohio to Okinawa. A sharp drop in global food reserves would lead to mass migration and international conflicts. The resulting global wartime conflagration would likely mean a collapse in carbon emissions, as areas of the globe once thought safe from conflict come under the kind of bombardment not seen since the end of the Cold War.
We’re already seeing Iranian drones and ballistic missiles targeting US data centers across the Middle East. We’re seeing airports shut down across Eastern Europe in response to the wars. We’re seeing sea travel choked off from the Suez to Singapore. All of that puts downward pressure on carbon emissions, long long long before Venusification.
Plenty of places were safe from the direct conflict of the World Wars during the last century. Refugees flooded into the Middle East and North Africa, precisely because the colonial era wars were forced to end in order to support direct conflict between Empires in central Europe. The great trans-Atlantic migration surged with refugees from the outset of European fascism until the end of the Cold War.
cackles maniacally in tardigrade
I don’t think full venisifcation is a real concern and that’s a long way off far enough I will not have to endure it’s outcomes. And yeah if food production drops the bottom 90% of the populations dies which isn’t really my problem.
The west will be a safe haven not because of economic advantage but because we hold the monopoly on violence.
U can grow food without fertiliser we did that for millions of years before we started pumping oil. Most of the united states crop supporting land is used to grow corn that is turned into ethanol for fuel crop yield can reach under 50% and we will still have the same amount of food assuming we drop the ethanol production with corn which is economically nonviable anyways.
People in old houses burning fuel for heat might die those who can afford electrical heating and solar face no risk so again it’s the problem effecting only the poor. And this not my problem
My man if the current trend continues for a few more years we will start having water wars. Winter has no snow anymore and droughts are a thing that happens every summer. Also you think people are going to stay put and wait to die? There will be mass migrations on a scale we haven’t seen before.
Stuff is already pretty bad in some places, in the US the Colorado River Basin is in a water crisis already, Lake Mead is getting so low they can’t use it for power generation.
Water wars and mass migration are all things that are controlled by the monopoly of violence. As someone living in a western nation and thus a member of one of the states which holds said monopoly I am not concerned. And still that’s not full societal collapse that’s not even a bump in the road of the human species.
I live in an area where ice used to be an industry. Not even a minute drive from my house is a lake where they’d cut big blocks of ice and ship them downstream to stack and pack in sawdust and such to last the rest of the year. This area supplied a lot of the ice for the city of Philadelphia because closer to the city the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers were too dirty and no one wanted ice from them.
This went on until around 100 years ago, maybe even a bit longer, my dad in his 70s remembers his grandmother still getting ice delivered for her icebox for part of his childhood until she finally got a refrigerator.
My friends dad, who was a bit younger than my dad, used to tell stories about how the local creek would freeze over in the winter and he and his friends would ice skate down the frozen creek to get to another town about 5 miles away.
I actively keep an eye on ice conditions around me because I would like to try ice fishing some day. It’s only been a handful of times over the last decade or so where any body of water around here has frozen over enough for it to be possible, and even then it’s only been just the absolute bare minimum 4 inches and I’d ideally want another inch or two before I felt comfortable enough to actually try it.
I’ve never even seen that creek freeze over enough that even some foolhardy kids would be able to try skating on it, I’ve seen it get maybe 1 inch of ice, and even that was a rare occurrence, they’d break right through if they tried.
These are things that people around me should remember or at least should remember their parents and grandparents talking about, not something that’s totally out of living memory, and yet they still refuse to see it.
are they doing the thing again?
i remember being up at lake tahoe (california-nevada border, USA. big freshwater lake) and the firm my dad worked for, one of the owners had a cabin up there. They were trying to convince my dad to buy into the practice so as part of his bonus one year (I was like, 4) we got to stay a weekend up there. tried to jump over a frozen creek, I was 4, fell through the (ice was a quarter inch, water was 6 inches, i was 4 remember) 12 foot hole in the ice to my watery grave. I spent (probably a second at longest) twenty three years, submerged (up to my shin at most? i really don’t remember), underwater, in that hole until my dad plucked me out, a grown man (yes all it took to turn from a 4-year-old to a fully grown adult, then man, because amab and i hadn’t done a lot of thinking by age 4, was getting my feet really fucking cold. truly i was a king among cold-feeted cold-feet-people.)
At least as far as ice harvesting goes, that’s a pretty well-documented historical fact that can be verified.
As far as my friends dad being able to ice skate on the creek, it’s a bit harder to verify what he was doing 60 or so years ago, especially since he’s dead, but he was also the kind of guy who did plenty of crazy things in his day, and that story would be downright tame compared to just about every other story involving him so it’s kind of hard to imagine that that was the one he misremembered or embellished, but I suppose it was possible.
And there are plenty of other little leftovers, like several parks and such in the area where the ice thickness is monitored by the park staff because once upon a time you used to be able to reliably skate and fish on the ice.
yeah, we got enough snow out here that it stuck to the fence once while i was growing up, and it was the weekend we were moving and we were in the damn truck during the hour it snowed. we had warm winters.
i got ice and cold as an adult (my first winter as an adult was in Utah), but i think it has a different effect on you as a child.
I had an extremely weird conversation a while ago. A coworker had never heard of global warming before. They listened intently as I explained, expression making it apparent that they were honest about their obliviousness.
How? It’s been part of the news circle for two decades minimum.
Truthfully, she said that she had heard about it in passing but had never cared to learn anything about it. She knew the name and not a thing more. This conversation was spawned when I pointed out that I could no longer relate to the weather that kids today experience because of global warming, and gears started turning and she asked many questions. As far as how? Education in the US is not equally distributed.
My grandma died back in 2019, but before her death she was hard into every type of climate change denial. She was also a lifelong evangelical christian, and used to make it super awkward when I would hang out with a friend who was black. In the years before her death she would send me links to things proving that that historical climate statistics are lying, and climate change is just a hoax people are using to make money. She was also huge into bible codes, and huge into Israel.
Not really sure where I was going with that… but I have a suspicion organized religion is to blame.
I don’t understand. Is it arrogance or are they somewhat aware that they did this, that they are responsible and that they’re leaving this mess behind for the rest of us?
You know, going by this and other comments I think you have the right idea. Like, we all are wearing blinkers as we go about our day because our whole world would fall apart if we fully realize our part in this mess. I imagine some older folks lie to themselves about global warming because their whole world view would fall apart completely.
To admit they agree with you would require them to admit they did nothing to stop it for decades despite mountains of evidence.
Not to mention they’d have to give up conveniences they’ve grown accustomed to or be labeled hypocrites.
I want to build bridges between generations more than anything but it’s really hard when being wrong and inconvenienced are two things boomers hate
It’s willful ignorance.