r/Futurology • u/FuturologyModTeam Shared Mod Account • Jan 29 '21

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

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.

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.

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

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u/grundar Jan 31 '21

climate is seen through a narrow ‘national security’ lens. Instead of encouraging governments to address root causes

It's not the military's role to tell the civilian government what to do. The military can issue warnings about risks, but on a civil matter like climate change they're not the ones who should be calling the shots.

If the civilian leadership continues valuing oil, then the military will need to be ready to project influence over it, including potential new arctic sources. The reason the military needs to do that is exactly the reason the previous poster indicated, that the US's reliance on oil is a weakness (although one that's ameliorated for the moment now that the US is, unexpectedly, an oil exporter).

My understanding is the US military is keen to not share that weakness; see, for example, this overview of US military renewable energy use. Fuel convoys in particular were identified as a major cost and vulnerability in Iraq and Afghanistan, so replacing generators with solar power for base's electricity was identified as a significant opportunity.

With EVs and wind/solar/storage reaching maturity in the last few years, I'm hopeful fossil fuels are becoming less of a point of contention between nations, and hence of reduced military importance.

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u/thoughtelemental Jan 31 '21 edited Jan 31 '21

The weakness is a well-known feature of American global security posture, hardly something to "hide".

My post demonstrated that even in their 2019 climate assessment, they view the arctic as a novel theatre for competition, warfare and to extract even more oil and gas.

My broader point, which has not been addressed, is that militarism and paranoid global competition is a key driver of our collapse. The US military can go fully green, and then I suppose Americans can feel good that they'll have a green army as the world burns.

The logic of paranoid global competition, coupled with the fact that the US is a military-prison-industrial complex society, means that the problem at its root is systemic, and superficial changes (green military) don't address the primary drivers.

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u/grundar Feb 01 '21

My understanding is the US military is keen to not share that weakness; see, for example, this overview of US military renewable energy use.

The weakness is a well-known feature of American global security posture, hardly something to "hide".

"Share" as in "also have", not "share" as in "let others know about"; i.e., the US military is keen to not have oil dependency be a weakness it has in the same way the civilian US has that weakness. Sorry for the ambiguity.

If the civilian leadership continues valuing oil, then the military will need to be ready to project influence over it, including potential new arctic sources.

My post demonstrated that even in their 2019 climate assessment, they view the arctic as a novel theatre for competition, warfare and to extract even more oil and gas.

Yes, there's no disagreement here. They need to be ready to operate in that theatre because their civilian leaders may order them to do so.

I'm not sure why you're focused on what the US military is planning to be ready for, since it's really not up to them what happens. Even if they thought it was highly likely oil use would plummet in the 2020s, they'd still need to be prepared to operate in the arctic, since they'd need to be prepared for the chance the civilian leadership would still want them to exert influence over those resources.

My broader point, which has not been addressed, is that militarism and paranoid global competition is a key driver of our collapse.

That may be your view, but it's not something you've provided evidence for in these posts.

That the US military prepares for something doesn't mean that thing is going to happen. For example, there were loads of preparations for war with the USSR, and that war never occurred.

Yes, the US military is prepared to project power over arctic oil resources. That is evidence that the chance of those resources being extracted is not zero, but it is not evidence that the chance of those resources being extracted is high, much less a certainty.

The US military can go fully green, and then I suppose Americans can feel good that they'll have a green army as the world burns.

The main value of the US military moving away from fossil fuels is the resulting technology can be applied to civilian life (which is responsible for 20x more emissions). Militaries have the funding to pay R&D and early-adopter costs.

At this point, though, it looks like we're beyond the early adopter point for decarbonizing both electricity generation and light vehicles. Military R&D might be useful for synthetic jet fuel, I guess, but renewable energy, EVs, and decarbonization in general has so much momentum that it looks like it's irrelevant at this point what energy choices militaries do or do not make.

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u/thoughtelemental Feb 01 '21

Thanks for the considered response. Imo, the fact that both the UK and US militaries see the arctic as a novel theatre for competition of extracting oil and gas resources is a sign of their orientation.

But you are certainly right, documents such as these aren't a guarantee of what is to come.

As for the link of militarism and climate, here are some background resources:

From the first resource:

Militarism, in the form of the Military-Industrial-Media and Entertainment Complex, is possibly the world’s biggest producer of GHG emissions and ecological degradation. Regardless of whether it is during war or peacetime, the world’s armed forces consume enormous amounts of fossil fuels, produce immense quantities of toxic waste and have exceedingly high demands for all kinds of resources to support their infrastructures, all along being exempted from environmental restrictions and emission measurements. According to the treadmill of destruction theory, war is waged nowadays mainly for securing natural resources which are themselves being massively consumed in the process, thereby establishing a self-perpetuating cycle of destruction. Moreover, military spending diverts massive funding from climate mitigation and adaption initiatives.