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This thread is pretty convinced of doom. One of the things that always strikes me reading these big picture predictions of the end is that they tend to dissolve into inspecific notions of collapse. Is there any particular mechanism by which one of these thinkers has predicted collapse? Without some detail its hard to follow them through the logical leap of environmental degradation->societal collapse. If that mechanism is not well articulated its hard to see how they rule out other outcomes, like decline or decline punctuated by local collapse or even radical political re-alignment that establishes a sustainable new order or, well, anything really. And yes, I have read Collapse.
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 05:32
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So yeah, that's generally the sort of vague thing that gets bandied about. So say China seizes agricultural land in SE Asia, even annexes Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam - is that societal collapse? This is where the doomsayers break down for me; there's a tendency to assume that radical change in the political status quo is necessarily a sign of impending collapse, when it seems to me more likely to be a pressure valve. What if powerful states create a new age of imperialism in which the vast majority of natural resources are directed to a few? What if India and China do indeed collapse while other places merely suffer declining populations and standards of living? I could go on with what-ifs all day, because without a clear causal connection between environmental decay and abrupt collapse it's hard to say what might happen. Here you're positing a limited nuclear exchange, I guess. That's not the end of civilization. India, China, and Pakistan all have small nuclear arsenals and nuclear policies that are less insane than the U.S. and Russia. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 06:38
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Something will happen, certainly, but my point is that the dots have not been connected to global collapse of modern civilization. Maybe somebody has and I'd be interested to see that. But the dominant story in the last few pages of the thread of total collapse of civilization and a catastrophic return to primitivism (which is itself an anachronistic concept) hardly seems inevitable to me.
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Oct 8, 2012 09:07
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UP AND ADAM posted:I don't see why economists and neoliberalists are able to half bake whatever predictions or theories they want, and despite them not panning out their mandates are followed and revered... Have you read anything about the science of climate change, sustainability, energy, etc? Yes, I have, which you would know if you'd read just my posts on this page. You're not likely to find me defending the neoliberal consensus. I think political upheaval and reordering is a likely outcome of environmental degradation, as are falling standards of living and population declines. I'm not prepared, however, to accept the narrative of the Second Denial piece posted or the tone of the last few pages that seem to agree that catastrophe is inevitable. Claiming inevitability carries a heavy burden of explanatory power, but I've seen very little explanation of how we get from the premise to the conclusion. I'm glad my post has stirred up a lot of what-ifs. Each what-if is a counterpoint to the idea of an inevitable outcome, plus they're interesting to talk about and stimulate thought. Lazy subscription to a theory of inevitable collapse excuses us from contemplation of our choices in the immediate future.
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Oct 9, 2012 07:06
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khwarezm posted:Yeah dont worry, civilization probably won't collapse. . . I don't understand why this is a big issue,  You don't understand that the collapse of civilization is a big issue?UP AND ADAM posted:I haven't written anything about the environment since college (or actually anything that wasn't a text or shopping list or something, honestly), but this post is probably more about my problems with the world and reality. Believe me, I'm on board the "Bad Things Are Coming" bandwagon with all my limbs safely inside the vehicle. But like President Skillson said the collapse of civilization and bad things that are not the collapse of civilization deserve to be treated separately. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Oct 9, 2012 |
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Oct 9, 2012 16:54
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I actually think that dissolution of major governments and breakdowns in international relations are likely results of climate change and they do not constitute a collapse of civilization. I guess we need to have a shared definition of societal collapse if we want to continue this conversation in a meaningful way.
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Oct 11, 2012 03:38
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Wolfy posted:22 Money. It's not just greed either; our economic system is fundamentally blind to environmental damage and its costs because it predates environmentalism. People who benefit from the current system oppose amending this problem because established economic activities would suddenly start losing money if made to pay for their damage. They portray such a shift negative for the economy, when it's actually a net positive; and they get away with the argument because present economic calculations just leave out environmental damage.
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Oct 17, 2012 13:50
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I just don't understand how the environment is always on the back burner.
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Watching these smarmy shits on Frontline makes me seriously wonder how many lives would be saved if they were to die.
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Oct 28, 2012 05:53
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Hey guys, I have a question: what do you think would be harder, colonizing space or fixing the climate? Political costs included.
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Nov 3, 2012 06:06
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Shai Hulud posted:This. I work in the world of defense, and the DoD regularly holds up China as an example of a country that aligns policy to reality. They're building gigawatts of generation because they have the benefit of short-circuiting the carbon economy. Just want to say that Chinese system is a disaster for the environment, whether or not they have one or two impressive flagship policies. I would be shocked if the extralegal coal industry alone in this country didn't dwarf all next-generation electricity projects in scale.
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Nov 9, 2012 18:55
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Here you go buddy. It's not that coal plants are sneaky, it's that they're profitable and well-connected. It's all graft. They used to have the excuse that the government at the top just couldn't control all this corruption but in recent years it's become clear that the rot goes all the way to the top. The NYT just got blocked over here because it reported on Part Secretary Wen's accumulation of $2.7 billion during his ten years in office. From the WSJ article: "One fifth of the power plants in China are illegal, according to government estimates..." From Wikipedia: "unregulated mining operations ... account for almost 80 percent of the country's 16,000 mines." Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Nov 10, 2012 |
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Nov 10, 2012 05:22
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deptstoremook posted:In this very thread, though, you see people clinging to a hope Fixed that for what people actually believe. I think breakthrough technologies are the best hope for humanity because convincing the world to act together against climate change is even less likely. 
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Nov 22, 2012 06:54
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Well look on the bright side. If these projections are correct, we'll be able to colonize a new continent! Surely that will make up for losing some of the most densely populated and intensively improved land on Earth! 
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Jun 15, 2013 11:02
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I just listened to the This American Life segment where they ask an Exxon scientist whether it's true that 20% of current known reserves will put us over the "everyone's hosed" 2 degrees C warmer on average line established by the U.N., and the answer they get back is "Yes, and with current projections we expect a 5 degree increase by the end of the century." I only have one question: is political violence justified by these circumstances? I feel like if there was a cabal of supervillains getting together and announcing their plans to destroy Miami, New York, London, Shanghai, etc. etc. the U.S. special forces would be there before the end of the broadcast. Yet we have shareholder meetings of the big energy companies essentially announcing the same things and nobody is sending killteams after them.
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Jun 28, 2013 11:49
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Arkane posted:So how anyone could look at the past decade of data and think 5C by 2100 is still a legitimate possibility boggles the mind. So... you're saying I should take the AK back to the store?
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Jun 28, 2013 20:23
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Squalid posted:Have you ever talked to climate scientists in real life Arkane? In my experience, when asked to show the evidence supporting warming they'll rattle off those 2-4C numbers, but when you ask for their opinions, scientists who'll only defend conservative warming estimates will gladly spout off every terrible prediction you can imagine. In my experience, most climate scientists believe there enough unknowns in climate models to produce far more warming than existing data indicates, and often believe the IPCC errs on the conservative side. Anecdotal, yes but it could explain some of the vagueness these statements. I only have so many days to return this thing. Should I keep it and order the full-auto conversion kit or take it back? This thread is giving me whiplash. Joking aside, seriously, would violence even slow down global warming at all? Did the gulf war slow it down (let's assume Hussein doesn't light the Kuwaiti oil wells.) Did the Iranian revolution slow it down? Did Exxon-Valdez slow it down? Do Nigerian insurgents attacking oil fields have any appreciable impact? Does anyone else think maybe it's starting to be time to at least examine whether violence is an option?
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Jun 29, 2013 04:05
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unlawfulsoup posted:If anything wars are going to accelerate climate change. Collective international action becomes difficult when people are shooting at each other, let alone trying to create new agreements. Further, just the nature of any war is going to foster huge releases of carbon. Whether it is the actual usage of weapons/vehicles or simply the mass creation of new ones. I guess in some kind of horrendous long term perspective a short brutal war that wiped out a large amount of the populace might slow down global warming. Still, considering that as some kind of solution is well within the realm of lunatics or the insane people who want to release mutated viruses to 'cull' the population. I meant like terrorism. Like, should we start examining whether physically attacking the oil industry and its leaders is a viable tactic.
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Jun 30, 2013 08:20
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Strudel Man posted:Only one way to find out. Get back to us, okay? Yeesh stop advocating violence dude!
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Jun 30, 2013 09:03
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:Hop on over to the prison thread to see what's in store for you! So... what are people doing about this? Individual action isn't meaningful. China is a lost cause and the American government is paralyzed by a minority party that has gerrymandered itself into a stranglehold on legislation. India, Africa and the Middle East are just going to increase their emissions. Europe's governments could turn off everything that runs on fossil fuels tomorrow and it wouldn't save us. So what's going to happen? Are we just going to pump carbon out of the ground and into the atmosphere and watch civilization be forced into a new shape by calamity after calamity?
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Jul 1, 2013 16:20
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Coriolis posted:Yes, that's exactly what's going to happen. Yiggy posted:Yes. I'm sorry. But it's still not time to even examine whether violence might help, because people might go to jail? Sure, cities will be destroyed, productive land will wither into dust, and wars will erupt over shifting resources but let's not do anything because peaceful means of resistance have been exhausted and violence means people might go to jail? If this is your threshold for (in)action how do you justify doing anything about anything? Oh and lose the faith in the Chinese autocrats. They don't deserve it.
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Jul 3, 2013 03:13
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Can you think of any non-governmental entities that control a large portion of the world's fossil fuel reserve that have centralized organizational structures?
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Jul 3, 2013 03:55
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Yiggy posted:Is it time to examine? Sure, but you're implying that this examination automatically reaches a conclusion that we can be sanguine about, and I don't feel that's the case. There is no good way to organize something like that among a group of individuals that will be effective at achieving the stated goals, without being swiftly and brutally squelched by state actors. Splintered, individual actors will not be effective. And even if so, what are their targets? I get that this is pretty close to that famous philosopy thought experiment, with the train and the switches and the one person vs five people. It's even closer to the variant where you push one guy onto the tracks in order to save another five or ten. I, personally, am not interested in pushing people onto the tracks to stop the train. This is exactly the sort of thought I was trying to provoke; I'm not implying that there's anything to be sanguine about in violence. It would be great if we could come to the conclusion that violence would be counterproductive anyway so the best thing to do is to continue to sit and discuss things on an internet forum (haha) or like be activists through traditional means. I just think that, once we've reached the point of "the world as we know it is going to end so that people can get rich" we need to take off the blinders and consider all the options. I don't think that's an unfair characterization of the situation; there is a lot of support behind carbon controls and there was much more support before wealthy people started a very successful propaganda campaign in the U.S. This is absolutely a struggle between people benefiting from economic externalities on an unprecedented scale and everyone else in the world. You see it in the thread title: despair. People are in despair over this because they see the world they know ending and all action stalled and blocked by very very obvious interest groups. What I'm saying is that we need to be honest about the situation and the available options because despair is ultimately a lazy response. I mean: what do we do? The answer that the thread seems to have come to is to do nothing. I don't like that answer and I think that, if the current boundaries of debate yield that answer, it's time to shift the boundaries of the debate. I don't actually expect violence to be something attractive or workable; hell there have been armed militias fighting oil companies in Niger for decades and I don't know that they've made an appreciable dent. Violence is sort of the last thought of a despairing mind trying to approach the problem. The question I want to ask the thread is: if not that, then what? If you've listened to the This American Life episode that got me thinking about this, you've heard about the disinvestment campaign they started, like the one that crippled the Apartheid regime where American institutions, under pressure, pulled all their investment money from South Africa. But the TAR piece makes it sound like that's going nowhere, and it would take a lot of time anyway, and we don't have a lot of time. I live in China so when I hear "the money is bound up in a complex pooled investment fund so we can't disinvest from a specific thing" what I hear is "we don't want to do this, please go away" and honestly that's what it means. It would be troublesome for some investment vehicles to manage disinvestment so they don't want to bother doing it. You know, burn down the world (like literally oh my god wildfires) so some people can make money without having to do too much work. The whole situation is just frustrating and full of despair and there has to be something that can be done, right? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 06:14 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 06:07
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Well it's comforting to think that after the 1% has killed the whole human race because it turns out the human brain is warped by wealth and capitalism is maladaptive, the Earth will recover fairly rapidly. Really the upcoming mass extinction will be nothing but a blip in the fossil record. I imagine some interesting things will come along to take over all the ecological niches we've wiped out. Maybe cephalopods will experience a renaissance once the fish are all dead and the oceans are dominated by jellyfish?
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Jul 22, 2013 04:05
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If it makes you feel better, the human brain's pleasure system is self-regulating. You'll feel about as okay in the horrifying future as you do now. But it's still not time to consider political violence! Someone might go to jail! Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 14:56
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The hostility at the mere suggestion that violence maybe should be discussed as an option in the most radically leftist conversation space i know of shows how doomed the environmentalist movement really is. Actually maybe this should be a thread in itself analyzing the efficacy of political violence in itself. I feel like the vast majority of people in the west dismiss it out of hand, and yet there are a long litany of successful violent political movements in the 20th century and even more in the 19th. Are we ready to assert that violence as a tool of political change is defunct in the 21st century, or in the west, or in the us? With the increasing concentration of wealth throughout all the developed world, coupled with globalized capital, were seeing neoliberal policies increasingly result in a starkly binary decision-making calculus of Us vs Them, where we are the vast majority of the world population and They are an arbitrarily selected and poorly defined bunch of global super wealthy. And they are getting the benefits of the political and economic decisions. Not since the era of monarchy has the decision-making system of the world been so obviously fixed in such a consistent manner, and yet it's hard to see what if anything can be done via legal channels, just as in 1848 or what have you. I wonder if it isn't time to reexamine 20th century assumptions about political participation as the politics of the 21st century becomes increasingly different. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 16:43
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Nenonen posted:Splendid idea! Start by punching yourself for a stupid derail attempt. Or go punch Arkane. Oops badly phrased I meant maybe this discussion should have its own thread, not take over this one. TheBalor posted:My hostility is due to the fact that the suggestion that violence is necessary is a conversational dead end. You clearly believe it is, and your despair seems such that I doubt any argument would persuade you. A: No I don't believe that, but when you can't even suggest talking about something with this kind of hostility it's hard to communicate what your beliefs actually are! Especially when you're trying to figure out what they are but nobody will talk about it. B: I find this kind of contempt hilarious whenever it crops up on D&D. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 03:05
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HighClassSwankyTime posted:Arglebargle III, you're a loving idiot. Are you seriously proposing posting a thread to discuss whether violence (murder, arson, terrorism?) is a valid method to achieve your desired society? Wow, are people this cowed that discussing this sort of thing makes you nervous? People are allowed to discuss questions like that. It happens every day, all over. I have a poli sci degree, my focus was revolutions. We managed to discuss revolutions without blowing anything up or killing anybody. I even managed to attend class without overthrowing the professor and killing the other students! How do you guys ever manage to have a discussion about nonviolence without peeing yourselves because someone might bring up violence as a counterexample? Did you hide under a desk as a little kid when it was time to discuss scary George Washington and Sam Adams and their unconscionable decisions? I'm completely serious, this pushback is ridiculous.
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Jul 23, 2013 09:49
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Okay, well, you can laugh about it in another thread. I don't know what you expect to accomplish out of debate though since a thesis of "you are a loving idiot" isn't likely to produce agreement. Maybe you can take your thesis about political violence to the new thread if the thought of discussion doesn't terrify you too much.
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Jul 23, 2013 |
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Jul 23, 2013 10:15
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Look on the bright side, Miami is going to be a crazy productive reef.
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Sep 1, 2013 10:45
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Are we screwed again it is the thread on another one of its "it's not so bad get out and fix it goon" kicks?
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Oct 25, 2015 18:54
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computer parts posted:Except in this case "build a better world" means "literally causing an economic collapse" (or as someone suggested upthread, suspending the rule of law). Are you trolling? In a world where advanced economies suffer chronically low demand and stagnating wages, large infrastructure projects will destroy the economy? Reminder that pollution from fossil fuels kills millions of people every year. Thanks for the concern troll though. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Oct 26, 2015 |
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Oct 26, 2015 14:18
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When you figure out how to make a closed environment self-sustaining in orbit I have some ideas about how you could get free gravity and heat management and save a lot on fuel costs.
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Oct 27, 2015 18:12
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ComradeCosmobot posted:By 2100, summer temperatures in Mecca, Dubai, Doha, Bandar Abbas, and Abu Dhabi may become incompatible with human survival. They aren't already? I thought Dubai only got down to like 100 degrees in the winter.
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Oct 27, 2015 20:37
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blowfish posted:The idea is to send out colony ships, not to relocate the whole species. If the goal is to create independent human populations, it is irrelevant whether the selection is random, based on objective criteria, or a FYGM shitshow as long as it doesn't make the colony unviable. Here's an idea: if you have the technology to create a clean recycling infrastructure that will support a biome indefinitely on a space voyage, how about you use it to colonize Earth?
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Oct 28, 2015 01:47
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Does anyone think the ExxonMobil news deserves its own thread?
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Nov 1, 2015 18:23
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Banana Man posted:What news? Are you joking? The news that ExxonMobile's head scientist presented its executives with in-house research showing 3 degrees of global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions in 1978.
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Nov 3, 2015 01:56
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Silver Nitrate posted:How long until everyone dies? For everyone alive today? Like 100 years or so.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:43
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