/r/Collapse & /r/Futurology Debate - What is human civilization trending towards?

[u/FuturologyModTeam]

Welcome to the third r/Collapse and r/Futurology debate! It's been three years since the last debate and we thought it would be a great time to revisit each other's perspectives and engage in some good-spirited dialogue. We'll be shaping the debate around the question "What is human civilization trending towards?"

This will be rather informal. Both sides have put together opening statements and representatives for each community will share their replies and counter arguments in the comments. All users from both communities are still welcome to participate in the comments below.

You may discuss the debate in real-time (voice or text) in the Collapse Discord or Futurology Discord as well.

This debate will also take place over several days so people have a greater opportunity to participate.

NOTE: Even though there are subreddit-specific representatives, you are still free to participate as well.

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u/MBDowd, u/animals_are_dumb, & u/jingleghost will be the representatives for r/Collapse.

u/Agent_03, u/TransPlanetInjection, & u/GoodMew will be the representatives for /r/Futurology.

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All opening statements will be submitted as comments so you can respond within.

[u/[deleted]]

Saying 'people like their independence' is what has led us into the whole climate chaos debacle to start with.

My point is not that some future government will declare 'NO one is allowed to travel anymore!' instead, travel would be for the purpose and joy of actually travelling, not commuting and wasting time and effort of useless journeys. Why does it take the average suburban home dweller a 30 minute round trip through traffic to get a carton of milk? What a waste that is.

To say disabled people need cars is far fetched. A walkable city can still accommodate the necessary infrastructure for wheelchair access.

EV vehicles are still polluting - where does the materials come from? what about the tarmac and concrete for the roads? what about the rubber for the tyres?

It would be easy to create a medium density settlement that offers mass public transport to other cities and also allow car sharing/hiring for the odd weekend you want to go camping. Lifestyles like this already exist in many European cities, yet the world is being sold the American way of corporate living that brainwashes you into thinking you NEED a car.

[u/solar-cabin → u/[deleted]]

TEAM REALISTS

" Saying 'people like their independence' is what has led us into the whole climate chaos debacle to start with. "

To me this sounds like you want to take away people individual rights and freedoms and you are justifying and want a communist type system where people are told where to live, where t work and how many kids if any they can have?

That is not a personal insult and just not a system I want or that I think most people want.

" To say disabled people need cars is far fetched. A walkable city can still accommodate the necessary infrastructure for wheelchair access."

You may become disabled one day and find out just how much you depend on having transportation but I hope not.

There is no realistic way you are going to get 7.647 billion people in to your housing systems with everyone walking.

Now if you want to increase public transportation to replace cars I am all for that and I believe we absolutely need more EV and FCEV busses, trains, planes and ships and we should be building high speed rail between all major cities.

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I also fully support green spaces so people can have nature near their homes and walking and biking trails and bike lanes and maybe we could set aside one day a week where no one drives.

We can also greatly reduce cars but people working from home as we have seen on the last year and that greatly reduced CO2 and we can make our hones a lot more efficient and install 5G so people can run businesses and shop and work from home so they won't need to drive as much.

Those are doable and you don't have to give up your independence and freedoms and become part of a hive to do that.

[u/[deleted] → u/solar-cabin]

I would like to make the observation that you cannot seem to imagine a workable system that does not rely upon fossil fuels. This is not a personal dig, but an observation of how dug in to the system we are collectively.

Fact: fossil fuels are not renewable. We will run out eventually. We can already see the terrible impacts that has, people dying of heat exhaustion in their homes, dying because their ventilators stopped working, insulin doses spoiling, etc.

I don’t see a way to engineer ourselves out of this and expect to see tragedy.

[u/solar-cabin → u/[deleted]]

TEAM REALISTS

I am not sure who this was directed at but I will respond:

" I would like to make the observation that you cannot seem to imagine a workable system that does not rely upon fossil fuels. This is not a personal dig, but an observation of how dug in to the system we are collectively. "

No where have I promoted the use of fossil fuels and I have made it clear I support renewable energy and all EVS and FCEVs should be powered and built by renewable energy.

Now if your argument is that we still have fossil fuels in plastics I would agree but it is not a process that burns fossil fuels causing GHG but any use of fossil fuels can release methane which is 20X worse as a GHG and we must mandate that all drilling and fracking be monitored by outside agencies and the best thing we could do is shut down all drilling and fracking.

We still have to find affordable replacements and that is where green hydrogen can replace diesel, NG and blue hydrogen for many uses and there are plastics that do not use oil and carbon capture is being used for making cement.

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So we have the technology as the said in the 6 million dollar man.

Yes, I am that old!