Great work guys, we are indeed in an inescapable predicament and I am tired of hearing utter hogwash to the contrary. I am a believer in telling the truth but I am finding people either look at me like I have lost the plot or they get really mad with me for delivering the facts xxx
It's hard to swallow that our way of life is fundamentally destructive. People want to continue flying, and consumming in the style to which they've become accustomed. But floods, heatwaves, fires and storms are telling the story louder every day. And of course, you are not alone. Thanks for your service to the planet!
Wouldn't you not like to know the truth about this predicament, for as long as possible? I would. At this point, ignorance really is bliss, for what remains of global industrial civilization.
William Catton warned us of this in 1980. We have spent over 40 years denying reality. We can tell the people the truth every day but I see nothing changing. My grandchildren are screwed.
@@FacingFuture The way of life of all species is fundamentally destructive. This means that there is nothing we can do about our predicament. All ecosystems find some climax state, after a perturbation. The species themselves have no control. Nature will have to find a new temporary stability because no species can voluntarily act in a way that species don't naturally act.
@@mrrecluse7002 It's a tough one, but still, I prefer to know the truth. I am stashing tinned food, pasta and water not in a bid for survival, but because I want to cushion the blow as systems collapse. Also I have decided against any travel as I don't want to be stranded away from home xxx
Dale's framing of our #overshoot predicament at the outset was spot on. It was great the way Michael challenged Rupert's eco-utopian notions of a future that will not be. Don't just collapse - #JustCollapse.
I am hearing and reading statements of more and more scientists who are witnessing current weather/climate events, stepping outside their own fields of study, and are finally "connecting the dots" between the Earth systems in failure. I am a lay person. However, I have been consuming all things climate change for about seventeen years--from the on-going mass species extinction to the arctic to food production to erosion, desertification, the cryosphere, permafrost melting, degradation of marine life, changing oceans, rising oceans, agricultural toxins, industry, cafos, etc, etc. All systems being connected, with warming, we see a changing planet, irreversibly changing planet. I have understood for a long time that we enjoyed a goldie-locks effect with a planet maintaining a stable balance, enabling life to go on mostly unabated for many centuries. We live on a different planet now and the elements and Earth systems we used to depend upon for life are locked onto a non-life sustaining trajectory. Scientists, too, are realizing we cannot reverse this process. We need diversity of species to maintain health of Earth, oceans, and atmosphere. We clearly need stable, moderate climate just to maintain sustenance, food. We need food, water, shelter--all things that are going away little by little. Once gone, we cannot bring back extinct animals, plants. Once gone, we cannot bring back the permafrost, the cryosphere, the glaciers and ice in the Arctic and Antarctica. Not to it's former state. We will never see the Earth as it was--it is degrading non-stop. Once desertification or grass lands take hold, we cannot bring back those old growth forests. Once the land subsides, sinkholes, mudslides, strip mines, tar sands occur, we cannot build the land back the way it was. We are actively and hurriedly dramatically altering the face of this planet and we will never live on our beloved goldie-locks Earth ever again. It will get hotter and hotter. People will lose ability to keep our systems going as crops fail, infrastructure is repeatedly disrupted, homes are continually destroyed by climate events. Roads and bridges fall away. We will be in a constant state of rebuilding just to be able to move goods and function in everyday capacity. As desrtuction increases in frequency and severity, eventually will not be able to keep up rebuilding roads, electric grids, homes, systems of exchange of goods. And transportation--can planes, trains, trucks, and autobiles keep functioning in constant three-digit seasonal temperatures? Will roads simply melt and fall away? And what of constant water displacement? Vast numbers of people will be on the move trying to find temporary safe-havens within our own imaginary borders. Will anywhere be safe from Mother Nature's wrath? Too dangerous or too hot for manual labor to keep commodities flowing to people in need. In the US, most employment is in transportation of goods and warehousing of goods. Only perishlables and high-end electronics are warehoused in climate-controlled structures (and a few other minor industries). All other commodities are stored in non climate-controlled warehouses. Think of millions of workers toiling inside vast concrete tombs with triple digit temperatures heating those buildings like ovens. There will be mass heat strokes and/or complete logistics shut-downs lasting days and weeks. Same with equipment failing under great heat stress. Trucks, forklifts, etc. We do not possess the ability to reverse or reset our planet to it's past homeostasis and the exponentially increasing changes will runaway out of human control. Human work will cease in times of great heat stress and people will be forced to consume less and to go without. And what of livestock--also mostly housed in-doors with no climate controls or in great, crowded feedlots in direct sun light with triple digit temperatures. There will be mass livestock death events. They are already happening now. And meat will be unaffordable and/or unavailable. So many people in the US especially are unaware or are in denial--they are not reigning in their excesses. They are not voting their best interests for human survival. They are not adapting to the changes. And, people, the world over, largely do not want to welcome migrants, sadly. In future, resources will be scarce and migrants will be rejected. We knew the solutions. We did not act in time. Collectively, we are not acting now. And world governments are not taking needed action at levels equal to scale of the crisis. We can talk about what needs to happen all day long. We can try and educate. But, nothing substantial is improving and we are racing toward total devastation faster than most people worldwide realize. Doom, indeed. I, for one, am trying. I live in 100 square feet tiny home on wheels--on wheels so I hopefully can get out of harm's way when climate change comes for me. I use as little resources as possible. I am vegan. I share the truth. And I live as if every day is my last, as best I can. My main solace is looking into the eyes of my geriatric dog and cat and knowing in my heart they'll be long-gone before climate change takes most of us away. That is my only hope and source of true peace. At least my beloved dog and cat will live full, happy lives. We won't. As for my millenial children and zoomer grandchildren, I look upon them with a sense of impending dread when I imagine how all our lives will be cut short. Of course I cherish them; but I cannot help but feel guilt, remorse for bringing them into this world with this untimely death sententence hanging over us all. Glad more scientists are really speaking truth to power now. Glad the gaslighting is beginning to subside, the hopium is beginning to be rejected. I really appreciate you all. I love this program. For years I felt pretty alone in my dread. Thank you for creating a forum for reality, love, and support. One of my top five favorite platforms. My mantras. Do no harm to others. Live for the moment. Love each other. Be frugal. Be productive. Respect life. All best. Much love. Heidi
Evolution or extinction? Are we able to learn to live in harmony with each other, nature and technology including AI? Sustainability not profitability. Mindfulness and self love, respect not exploitation. Our species faces a major die off, the population is passing the peak, passing a tipping point where our population goes from exponential growth to a transition to a new sustainable relationship with the ecosystem that has sustained us up until now. That downward curve can be as steep as a cliff which falls to zero, extinction, or it can begin steeply and recover as it returns to historic levels of sustainability, pre-technology levels such as pre-Columbian America. This could lead to a selection pressure that would produce a new species of hominid, speciation. The curve could be more gentle and could include technological solutions that would level off at a population that could both live more harmoniously with nature and each other and incorporate technology that would represent an evolution into a new species of technologically enhanced humanity, cyborgs. Taking life to other planets, terraforming and evolving new species of humans who could survive other planetary ecologies is another path that will require technologies including genetic engineering to reach for the stars. Managing these changes in a moral and humane way brings hope to a future that appears very scary from our selfish and ethnocentric perspectives. Keep up the good work or as John Perkins says "Dream True" instead of living like the hero of his book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Be blessed, you are a blessing. Aboriginal cultures have much to teach us.
Three of the very best, I particularly love Dale, tough choice as it is. I particularly love Dale for speaking up about Animal Agriculture in a world where suffering and methane are brushed under the carpet xxx
@@thegreatstoryI'm interested to hear people on the same program with you who think that there might be something we can do to save ourselves, and you and I both know it's not even possible 😢
I really love his video, 'Hopium Dealers Hall of Fame (with a nod to Guy McPherson). It's a very moving body of work and I do hope Guy reaches back to Michael before it's too late. Only love remains xxx
@@proudchristian77 They are not equal problems. Not even close. There is no evidence that warming is causing any problems. There is tremendous evidence that over population is creating serious detrimental issues for both humanity and nature.
I am releasing a documentary, Ecosophia in November on these topics: eco-spitituality and the limits to growth. Yes we over-shot the runway and are being fed false solutions and greenwashing, making money on the way down!
Humans have clear-cut forests for centuries, but they have never replanted forests. Sure we have replanted some trees, usually as woodlands or tree plantations, but forests are far more than just trees. In fact, forests have (at least) six distinct layers.
Indeed, recently a local forest was 'cleared', locals were ok with it cos they were promised a tree would be planted for every tree 'cleared'. It sounds good but when you see an area full of saplings where a forest once stood you realise the truth. If I was a hot shot lawyer I would argue that a sapling is not a tree and that the word sapling should be used where saplings are to be replacing mature trees xxx
Yes, helping non-human animals and plants to get through this is the way to go. On a global scale I'd be already happy if humans would just leave without causing any additional damage. I fear it's just a dream, though. There will be chaos all over.
We're going down and we're going down fast and sadly, we are taking life on Earth down with us. At least the suffering will be over, so many earthlings live and die in pain and misery, it just goes on and on xxx
I think it has been the growing realization of extinction which has lately made me love and want to know better all the kind of bugs and plants that surround me. Trying to provide a good place for them and then just watching them live feels so right. I tell my mom who's now trying meditation, to try this sort of contemplation. Just looking at nature seems to help learn about it, relativise our problems, maybe make us take a not so "human-centered" view, as they said in the talk. Sadly I must now get back to work for the human machine. Have a good day all!
@@miguel5785 I love watching the different bee species in our garden, we have masonry bees, carpenter bees and a host of winged insects on our lavender. There's something lovely about watching a bee disappear into a foxglove flower :-) xxx
It is GREAT to hear from Rupert Reed, I always treasure your heart filled knowledge. Thank you Facing Future Dale W.. I certainly will miss the deep ocean mammals.
P.s. in my garden many birds communicate directly to me, the Blue Jays deeply grieve for their dead, it's hard for me to grasp that humans just don't value these social interactions-all animals participate in a group culture worth saving.
Good point made. But, in truth, our institutions are not medieval, our technology is not god-like and we have some degree of self-control and governance.
@@drawyrral I mean I understand your quote as a hyperbole intended to point out our limitations and the huge risks we face, not something to take at face value.
Things are going to change in a big way. It is a catastrophe. It is very disturbing. However, it is fascinating to be living in a very rare geoclimatic event. Even though it is horrific. God luck everyone x
Not accepting the civilization apologist who tries to market himself using Collapse Acceptance language and then shifts directly into hopium, mitigation, and mythmaking about adaptation and survival. It's fine to be Rupert and speak his truth, but I reject his infiltration into the collapse community. He's a drunk with a flask in the AA meeting & I flatly reject his rhetoric. There are actions to pursue but they're all driven by collapse acceptance, not civilization saving. Let go or be dragged.
Awesome! Right there with ya. Tell the truth? Pffft. Having been blocked by him for communicating the severity of our predicament, we conclude Rupert wouldn't know the truth/reality if it hit him with a stick.
I agree wholeheartedly. I also posted the same thing before reading your comment! lol Great minds think alike… He’s a mediocre mind parading as an “organizer of a movement” in order to maintain his status and lifestyle.
We will almost certainly follow the scientific/industrial narrative we have been given for the past 200 years right over the cliff. It's inevitable now. Almost all human cultures from the very beginning have collapsed at some point, either from interior or exterior forces. Mass production and our soulless indifference to the Earth as a living being have sealed the deal. It is unfortunate. The ironies are too numerous to mention. But the Earth will reclaim itself through fire and flood. It is oddly comforting to watch it do so. In the future, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers and the Fords will be looked on as poisonous entities. As will the social media powerhouses who robbed us of our ability to communicate as humans. Honestly, as inspiring as this conversation has been, it is also hilarious. Hilarious in the sense that we continue to claim humanities ability to save other lifeforms at the same time we talk about our own self-induced mass extinction. Ludicrous. We are riding a universe we have absolutely no control over. We have always been passengers. We simply chose to not love the Earth. We chose convenience over wisdom. We chose to love ourselves. Bon Voyage!!
This whole "moral obligation" is nonesense, the world does not respond with love and understanding. If you're smart enough to do the digging and figure it out for yourself, good on you. Learning the truth as a collective will only lead to more pain.
curious how you figure that? I think there will be more pain initially because this is so painful but then? don't you think a large percentage of people have some dignity and spirit in them? there are people who died in concentration camps helping others to live - we are a complex species - and those who can't handle the truth will probably never learn it anyway, so there is no fear of pushing them into it collectively - for the rest of us: we do better when we know what we are dealing with - local food communities etc. could help mitigate some suffering - planting berry bushes instead of roses etc. small changes can make small differences important to small people
Fantastic discussion! I would add Ravens to the list of species to encourage through the bottleneck. I can see them evolving into a much more ecologically compatible intelligent species if given enough time. Since they can fly, they won't need oil to get around!
@@amberazurescale5617 part of it is I love Ravens. They're increasing in population in New Hampshire and Massachusetts and I have had several magical encounters with these inquisitive birds.
@@markarchambault4783 Ah, I see. You got good reasons to love them. Ravens are awesome. When you wrote about them "evolving into a much more ecologically compatible intelligent species", I immediately thought ".. hang on. They already are." 🙂
Given the conditions of a limited environment relative to population and access to one or more excessive resources (e.g., oil, fertilizer), ecological overshoot is inevitable for any animal species on the planet be they deer or algae. It is a problem built into the nature of animals. Humans are animals, and we are not immune to such boom and bust cycles. Indeed, while our current condition is the most severe we've seen, this is not this first time a human civilization collapsed due to ecological overshoot. The global scale of the thing is the scary part since we're bound to take a good chunk of the planet's flora and fauna with us.
Is that boom and bust cycle something deterministic? Is there a place in this theory for something like Malthusian preventive checks, i.e. a soft landing?
@@miguel5785 As Dolores says, “Free will exists, it’s just fucking hard (Westworld (2016) Season 3 Episode 8: Crisis Theory)." Humans are animals and like any other animal, as a species, we tend to follow our instincts, needs and drives along well trodden paths. However, freewill is fundamental to reality and individuals, animal and human, will on occasion chose to act differently. The problem is that changing habits and adaptations on a large scale is very hard. Generally, it has to be forced. As for preventive checks, nowhere in human history has anyone successfully engineered an economy or a society. We just document what we are already doing at the time. That is why the road to Utopia always leads to Dystopia. We have yet to demonstrate the capability of constructing a social order (economies being a social structure) from scratch.
This week felt like a psychological tipping point regarding how dire our current climate situation is right now. The headlines (yes, mainstream media can no longer keep it out of the news) blasted us with the terrifying truth of how hot it is and how fast it got there. 98 degrees in the Gulf? We're in serious trouble. People like us are morally obligated to tell the truth now.
Here in the UK we reached 41C for the first time in recorded history. In Sardinia they are reaching 48C. I can't remember what temperature was reached in Death Valley today as I was stunned at the people going there to have their photo taken with the thermometer. WTAF? Humans are terminally nuts xxx
test...study our original human culture from before 70,000 years ago - still around today! The San Bushmen - no war - all males required to train in Tshoma spiritual training.
Everybody understands overshoot and settling. Just ask them to imitate a cheap robot. They will unhesitatingly start moving an arm to a new position, overshoot, and then settle with a decaying sin wave. This response is so common in our everyday lives that everybody can do it even it has to be explained to them.
I am finding it useful to take a look at the other end of our reality - conformal cyclic cosmology. Asking questions like 'whose life is it anyway?' I conclude that all phenomena asses are owned by The Tao which cannot be killed, though it occasionally pauses for an 'in breath' , the 'big bang'.... cya in the next one.
Indeed. The 'Tao Te Ching' won't give you answers but it will guide you toward the questions. We all need much more meditation in our lives and a lot less screen time...
Truth and reality... This is the way. This is close, so close and yet so far. This colossus vs sapiens is amusing...Previous overshoots and collapse have not been accompanied by abrupt irreversible climate change with a minimum 10C in pipeline next stop Venus. It's 118 in Rome and parts of Spain, northern Africa, ocean is 98 off Florida. Antarctica 6 sigma off in winter. We and everything to the tardigrades are functionally extinct (barring an asteroid strike I suppose... I'm open). We face that and still do everything we can anyway.
Compost Theologian ; ). My wife used to make fun of me grabbing a fist full of soil to admire it in our travels. We have 50+ fruit trees without chems; the bugs are returning. We must engage the largest energy flux as large as insolation on the planet. The book Pluvicopia details how and why we must engage this energy and water source to save civilization and the ecosphere. We can do it if we trust reason and the obvious. The urgency requires our honest action. Please read it before giving up; it is easier than we think. Ecological overshoot can be managed with limitless water.
There is a tremendous ethical problem to consider in this discussion - what happens to the people who are already living, or who will be born in the near future? We all agree that the current system is not ecologically sustainable. Nonetheless, there are eight billion human beings who are largely dependent on that system for their physical survival. In the long run, we can’t do such a large population without the sustainability problem. But to get down to, say, one billion? Whatever a sustainable human population is? How do we get there? I only see two ways. Either we develop and distribute new technologies for a massively reduced ecological footprint, fundamentally changing our energy and food systems in the interest of sustainability - and we do this FAST - or we just let the system collapse, reducing the population via civilizational collapse, with literally billions of people dying of famine or warfare. And frankly, a lot of this conversation sounds uncomfortably like passively endorsing the latter. Moreover, the “let it fail” philosophy arguably fails at its own goals. When civilizational collapse means people are starving because they no longer have wheat or beef, what makes you think the elephants and bonobos are safe? At the end of WWII, there wasn’t a rat left in Berlin. Humans had eaten them all. When we resort to nuclear war over scarce resources, how will that be better for the environment than the long, painful process of disarmament? And finally, since it’s unlikely that we will achieve human extinction, what keeps the next human civilization from making the same mistakes? And without civilization, who will clean up the CO2 that has already disrupted the atmosphere and oceans? While there’s no guarantee that a surviving civilization will clean up the mess, there’s a chance. There’s NO chance that a collapsed civilization will clean up anything. We can provide energy without fossil fuels or uranium. Solar and wind are very low impact, and materials can be recycled (and the working lifespan of a modern solar panel is close to a century). We are developing the technology to synthesize animal proteins from yeast/bacteria/stem cells, producing the same nutrition and calories ten times more efficiently, so we can drastically reduce farming and fishing while still feeding everyone. We can drastically reduce our environmental footprint to sustainable levels, WITHOUT starving billions or destroying civilization - but we can’t do it by rejecting technology. Make sure you are morally clear about what you’re asking for. Are you seeking to save the environment, or to reject civilization?
"or we just let the system collapse" - I am stunned by your assumption that we are in control - maybe I am understanding this the wrong way Good points about the animals - I have animal family members and I worry for them when the grocery store shelves don't refill for a long time and promise to not to do so ever again - reducing our footprint or population? We are going in the opposite direction... I am 56, vegan, no children - and still - everything I wear, eat, sit on, live in is too much. Do you think people who drive F350 duallys and buy the next biggest BBQ grill every time one comes out want to live in a cave dug with their bare hands and eat grub, die from diseases, freeze in the winter, etc? How are we supposed to do this, to become sustainable again? In the U.S. there is now talk of restricting birth control for women. Insane. We are collectively insane and destructive - I wish I could say just self-destructive, but we take everything with us, sadly. I don't know if this realization is a starting point or the end. But it is a necessary step, I think, to face the truth. The end is more likely, I admit. Can something still turn us into a new equilibrium that sustains the life on earth as we know? Yes. But unlikely. I am working on it.
@@riodejaneiro7675 I firmly believe that, as a species, if we act in concert, we could - we can - transition to new energy and food chain technologies that can provide continuity for key systems like food production, shelter, transportation, and communication, systems that currently depend on fossil fuel energy, without a general civilizational collapse. Key technologies already exist, like solar and wind power, batteries for time-shifting that energy, and precision fermentation for protein synthesis. But we MUST force an end to fossil fuels. We cannot allow a pricing race to the bottom, or to let the “creative destruction” of capitalism to do all the work, even though as I often say, the market is your best friend or your worst enemy. But it’s very, very important to remember that this isn’t about individual responsibility. It’s about collective responsibility. Focusing on our own guilt for participation in systems that are very difficult to leave isn’t helpful. Blaming the billionaires isn’t helpful. Sneering at people over cultural differences isn’t helpful. We have to fix the systems, not the blame. It’s not a question of if we CAN control it. It’s a question of if we WILL control it. My hopes these days are pinned on generational shift. Getting the Boomers out of power - a generation that grew up and came to power without climate change - and bringing in generations that have never experienced anything else. Boomers won’t save us. Zoomers might. But that’s another 20 years to wait.
Millions of plant and animal species across the entire northern hemisphere are experiencing expanding habitat for the first time in modern history. All due to a warming planet. This is positive, but nobody will discuss it.
@@anthonymorris5084 It's not positive if it happens so fast. It causes all sorts of problems. Species are specialists and adapted to their environment, food sources, other speicies around them - their ecosystem. One species, able to move fast, can upset that for everything around it.
@@riodejaneiro7675 The animal world is simply not that fragile. The plants and animals across the northern hemisphere endure temps that go from around +30 to -30 and back again in just 6 months. This is extreme climate change in a very short time. Nothing dies. Canada geese have stopped flying south in my lifetime because of an abundance of food. Whales that live in the Arctic migrate to the Sea of Cortez every single year. Crocodiles that swim in vast rivers wallow in mud during the dry season. Lions in zoos around the world frolic in snow and Polar bears thrive in zoos in the tropics. The warming that you are experiencing would be imperceptible without scientific instruments.
Read Morris Berman’s “Wandering God” about how civilization goes with overshoot and hierarchy!!! How we need to recover the Gatherer-Hunter values in balance with ecosystems.
It does seem that the philosophy of inevitability of overshoot by civilizations generally is a form of predestination that typically soothes the dysphoria of invading societies. There is no reason to apply the designation of civility to such a culture, in evidence here, on such grounds. It rather brings to light the difference between our tradition & higher aspiration.
In the end, we are destined to be "Men, huddled in the dark", as when we began our journey, starting out in caves. It will be a fitting end, to a species, which singlehandedly caused the sixth mass extintion. To me, this is just a brutal fact. Not something I wish to be true, so don't misunderstand my motivation for claiming it.
Live in a bread truck, work and office van. Live near work. Don't consume. Don't drive. Do your own cooking. Shower using four milk jugs, standing in a 18 gallon Rubbermaid.stomping on your laundry. Dump the water on the floor. Be comfortable and happy.
I've held this image for a long time: an indigenous person standing in a parched landscape; he has a loin cloth, a walking stick and a big smile: The meek shall inherit the Earth.
They are being driven from the Earth, even in the Amazon rainforest right now - as they have been everywhere else already - I wish you were right but I am afraid not. For some terrible reason might won over right.
Why would we have to go somewhere? Specially flying is causing huge emissions. Even on holiday flight with fully booked plane causes significant emissions. Flying over Atlantic ocean means reducing WEEKS from someones life per passanger. Is your holiday worth to reduce lives? And yea, we are going to 3-4C warming by 2100. There is no real large scale actions against it. 3-4C is nearing the limits that human can survive... And specially civilizations will collapse. Hansens latest study found that we are at 2,55C warming currently, when aerosol effects are added. If that's true then all Paris goals are long gone. IPCC did lousy job on adding its low estimates of aerosol dimming. Current 1,2C + 0,6C from dimming means 1,8C. So we are already at 1,8-2,55C temperature when aerosol effects are added. And our political elite is not doing anything but allowing even more emissions. G20 could not even add coal in their papers. Next COP is in oil producing country and led by oil company CEO. And then we go to Australia that opened world largest coal mine... And in USA republican party is owned by fossil companies and they are willing to make everything go crazy to allow this mayhem continue. War in Ukraine and poor relations that it has made are not the real issue against climate efforts. Oil demand is record high this year. And fossil firms seeks and opens new mines so we can burn our way to even worse climate hell. And that's only climate part. Then we add 6th mass extinction, losing water and food security, losing coral reefs, losing most fishes, losing many habitats, ... We can already see that current direction will cause severe harm and most of us are not willing to do anything serious about it. We should end all fossil burning. We should take all fossil company CEO's and their henchmen in politics to the courts and make them responsible for the actions against mankind and whole living planet. The real problem lies in the system that powers up those who makes most harm against nature. We should rip this system down. And make these worst emitters pay for their actions. Any billionaire is doing too much harm.
Randomly yelling at people's do more harm & no good, its shakes people's up , your organs feel it too , u cant imagine unless u be there or cause it , if u mess up , yes , if u don't, leave em alone , their trying, the whole point of hurting a person is because they ask for it , by crossing lines , y u don't ask , ! 💝🚴♀️
You know, books and video coverage depend on folks having the energy and curiosity to read or tune in to positive discussions like you are having, and that dependency is the highest barrier to change or preparation. Frankly, the percentage of the population in the US that has both the energy and curiosity to be influenced is very small. So there will be some who are on your side, but the majority of the US and the world will not respond. There has to be some major incentive to attract the attention of that large unmotivated majority. Sorry, but science and the power of positive thinking aren't very popular right now - at least in the USA.
I am respectfully skeptical about Michael Dowd on his uncontrollable rise in CO2 and Methane prediction if humans disappear today. May I ask what model is he basing his prediction on?
They would slow, but there are still millions of leaking wells and open cut coal mines leaking away. Permafrost at the moment has the methane emissions of a mid sized nation as it thaws, forests will continue to burn as temperatures increase. The half life of methane in the atmosphere is increasing due to hydroxyls being reduced to more carbon monoxide from larger bushfires. Hydroxyls scrub methane from the atmosphere, but also react with carbon monoxide. Probably other vectors too.
If we disappear without a 40-60 year sincere and incredibly difficult decommissioning of nuclear power reactors, 457 of them will meltdown turning the planet into a radioactive ball of nightmare.
Self-reinforcing feedbacks will continue because the total cumulation of greenhouse gases cannot reduce naturally for tens of thousands of years. This guarantees that the Earth energy imbalance (per Hansen) will also continue unabated for millennia. The consequences therefore being more greenhouse gases being continually released from thawing permafrost & from continually burning forests. This adds even more to the total greenhouse gas cumulation & thus perpetuates the energy imbalance ad infinitum (on human timescales) - unless solar radiation is somehow reduced, which could offset such effects.
Evolution or extinction? Are we able to learn to live in harmony with each other, nature and technology including AI? Sustainability not profitability. Mindfulness and self love, respect not exploitation. Our species faces a major die off, the population is passing the peak, passing a tipping point where our population goes from exponential growth to a transition to a new sustainable relationship with the ecosystem that has sustained us up until now. That downward curve can be as steep as a cliff which falls to zero, extinction, or it can begin steeply and recover as it returns to historic levels of sustainability, pre-technology levels such as pre-Columbian America. This could lead to a selection pressure that would produce a new species of hominid, speciation. The curve could be more gentle and could include technological solutions that would level off at a population that could both live more harmoniously with nature and each other and incorporate technology that would represent an evolution into a new species of technologically enhanced humanity, cyborgs. Taking life to other planets, terraforming and evolving new species of humans who could survive other planetary ecologies is another path that will require technologies including genetic engineering to reach for the stars. Managing these changes in a moral and humane way brings hope to a future that appears very scary from our selfish and ethnocentric perspectives. Keep up the good work or as John Perkins says "Dream True" instead of living like the hero of his book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." Be blessed, you are a blessing. Aboriginal cultures have much to teach us. Try to dream a better future. Read the works of John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and his work on the Amazonian Indiginous tribes that still live in a sustainable relationship with their environment. Maybe the Hippies were right.
Yesterday Bernie Sanders and AOC had a Climate Discussion with other eco warriors. It was great. We should make the Oil Companies pay for the destruction they caused.
'Making oil companies pay' will accomplish nothing unless the economic system that drove them to do what they did is completely changed to something whereby corporate and private economic interests become aligned with the long-term interests of planetary ecological health.
How would that help? Suppose the oil companies *were* to somehow pay for the destruction they supposedly caused, what could be done with that money that wouldn't just add to ecological overshoot? Money is just a claim on resources, and excessively exploiting resources is what got us into this predicament in the first place.
Bernie and AOC sold their souls years ago. They are politicians. Politicians are by their nature corrupt. Bought and paid for and if they aren’t, they either become a tool of the machine or they disappear. Bernie, AOC and the rest are kept there to give naive “liberals or lefties” the illusion that there is a voice and a hint of a chance that corporate, military industrial, Wall Street power and greed can be resisted. Ronald Reagan put paid to that. It’s over rover.
@@delburnwalter2024 Anything you do will use resources. We just have to ensure we do not use them excessively, as you say. So that money could be spent in transitioning to a more sustainable economy.
The biggest overshoot and settling that we face is world human population. We are now in major overshoot approaching 9 B. We will peak in the second half of this century and then fall to the stainability level for a damaged Earth. Estimates are about 3 B over a few hundred years. This is well studied by little known. This settling (not a collapse!) is critically important to our address our climate crisis.
We are probably peaking right now, the oceans will be dead by the 2nd half of this century, which is the subject of many peer reviewed papers, along with alot of other species and ecosystems..And there is no way I could conceive humans being alive in 300 years, especially not 3 billion, maybe 3 dozen...
The biggest overshoot is consumption. A person in the USA having a child will be far more destructive then a person living in a small village in the high Andes living their traditional ways, within their environmental means. Definitely population is a major problem, no doubt, but consumerism and industrialization have been the driving force of our ecological mess, many societal problems, financial instability, population growth and mass extinction. I also feel the separation from nature, the natural world, is a major contributor to our predicament. We need to face into both population growth and our consumption.
Many primate species, not just hominidae, have complex social relations and family dynamics from which we should learn. Many other species as well, not just the few who’ve been well acknowledged for their complexity, so many….
Oh I agree about industry doing more damage than cows! Sadly, cows became a commercial industry-not animal husbandry, anymore. *_Commercialized cows_* do damage the land and air. And add a layer of grief to the land.
nuance is required of our activism. divisiveness around meat consumption is fueled by sloppy words. industry is killing the environment. not meat- eating.
Animal agriculture is the number driver of global warming and eco destruction. Ruminant animals give off megatons of methane, which is way more warming than CO2. Forests and wildflower meadows are destroyed to make way for pasture. I recommend a film on youtube called 'Eating our way to extinction' and also a facing future video called 'Animal Agriculture is killing the planet.'
Thank you! Eating Our Way to Extinction is brilliant. Once you see the facts about land use, pollution from tons of bovine manure and methane and the state of the oceans, it's clear that animal agriculture is killing the planet.
I feel lately, at 75, that a very reassuring place to be is: "To What do I belong?" Literally, as John Muir said: "I am a citizen of the Universe" BEING A PART OF THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE, IN WHATEVER FORM, IZ BEING HOME. WE ARE ALL HOME AND IT IS LOVE WHICH ULTIMATELY MANIFESTS ALL EXISTENCE. Thanks for the humor 'The ocean won't burn down' !!!🤣 Regards, Viet vet VFP
I don't understand this either. When I was 16 (in the early 1980s) I said we have too many people on earth and people looked at me like they wanted to kill me. We still congratulate everyone on a new birth in the family. Insane. My mother said I'd want kids when I grow up. I'm 56 now and never wanted or had any. There are so many of us here already to love, care for, and have community with. How about leaving some space for another critter or some space to absorb our trash or grow our food? I think I lost that battle.
I have two kids and I love them and it also gives you great responsibility. It was fun seeing them grow up, so I understand why people want kids. And from a point of continuity, it is neccessary ofcourse. But there are way too many people on this planet to a point that it threatens our existence. There must also be some kind of rationality and survival instinct kicking in, but that doesn’t seem to happen. Tribal forces (fear of being replaced by ‘others’) seem to be stronger…
There is a solution. We use oil pipelines to transport water everywhere. The infrastructure is already there and we can bring water to places that had grown too dry to grow crops by taking it from areas that are heavily flooded. We can transport water to fire regions to put out the fires. This plan does work.
No, this doesn't work. Sources for water are really not that plentiful. Usually a place needs all the water that's there and floods come and then go. And, water in oil pipes? Water and oil don't mix and get along.
Why do you three think that system change is impossible? We have the evidence of history, that large-scale revolutionary systemic change has taken place many times. New philosophies have been articulated and written about, and charismatic leaders have mobilized people to create the changes necessary. Why do these people insist on looking to the past for examples of a new regenerative way of living on Earth? Why not coalesce build and develop a new philosophy of governance a new ideal of what government is and what it should do and how it should function? Call together all the experts. Don't let them leave until they can present a plan! a step-by-step plan, for Humanity as a whole, to navigate the coming years. Plans to set up villages, for refugees to be able to migrate as a whole community, for example, will immediately be resisted and criticized, but that doesn't mean you leave it out of the plan! The vision of a step-by-step transformation of our governance, society, and way of "doing civilization" needs to be delineated and laid out.
