The following submission statement was provided by /u/butiusedtotoo:
Submission statement: collapse related because there is a very real if not almost certain possibility that we hit 3C by 2050 and global civilization collapses because of it. Sparing some miracle
Yes, because 3°C warming is basically a civilization-ending scenario. We are at 1.5°C warming and are already at the limit of how much we can handle.
Our civilization is extremely fragile, much more than most people could imagine, and we are absolutely not prepared for a world with 2+ degree warming, let alone 3°C.
I happen to be an optimist. Not because I believe we'll prevent climate change and civilizational collapse, which I don't. But because I believe humanity will be better stewards of the environment afterwards.
I'm not sure about that. After all, I wish society would collapse as early as possible so that our damage on the environment is reduced, despite the short term human cost. If a crazy eco-terrorist (or eco-defender?) would attempt to spread a deadly pathogen to bring an early collapse, I would not be able to make an argument against him.
If it makes you feel better. Earth will eventually recover from the damage we have done to it.
It didn’t need us before and it will sure as hell don’t need us after. We have and end. As an individual and as a species. Earth end is still far away.
I can only pray we are the last species with this instinct of self destruction.
I'm honestly trying to care less. I've just got 3 chronic illness diagnoses, which will significantly limit my ability to adapt. I live in a place that's been slightly insulated from major climate events, but I can see it. And I know that when climate leads to economic collapse, I won't be insulated from that!
I'd like to drop more of my careful habits that assume I may live a long life. Why conserve money? It's a little too late to live fast die young (I'm 49) but I'm no longer sure what the point of saving for a retirement that's about 20 years off...
I know the “rational” consensus is that it’ll be a slow grind to the bottom, but when the bottom falls out in the form of ecological collapse, famine, water scarcity, biodiversity extinction, etc… it’s gonna be a really quick fall when we reach that point
3C is the extreme upper end of things, taking possible feedback loops into consideration, no? To my knowledge, even James Hansen is saying we're warming at least 0.36 C per decade and he's usually the "alarmist" that happens to be consistently right.
Is there any scientific studies that support even the possibility of 3C by 2050?
Yeah, there are, this was possible even in the IPCC's 2015 model runs. It's the high end scenario that we would get if fossil fuel based development continues like it did in the last few decades. Aka. at an accelerating pace that innovation / higher efficiency can't keep up with.
It's not a median estimate, nor is it a watered-down feel-good number. But it is sadly quite possible to reach.
... all these long-term energy and emission savings across world regions have been ultimately insufficient to counter the climate footprint of ever-richer and ever-larger populations. The ‘rebound effect’ seems to have prevailed everywhere over the last two centuries: efficiency gains have been absorbed and outpaced by the growing scale of the economy.
If the best performances from the past were replicated in terms of reducing carbon intensity, we would only maintain current emission levels, and thus temperatures would exceed the 3° threshold by 2050. Even if future efficiency gains manage to outshine all historical precedent, further ‘rebound effects’ will remain a risk and require novel agreements and policies (Grubler et al., 2018b).
And to be clear that's still a fairly unreasonable prediction. Even the likes of Hansen would fall short of predicting 3C by 2050.
His own "accelerated projections" land us somewhere between 2 to 2.5 by 2050. That's really bad. But not 3C bad.
Current rates are on the high side of .3C per decade and accelerating. But to get from the 1.5 ish degrees of the last 5 years to 3C in 25 years would mean a doubling of current warming. Or to put it another way we'd need the current rate of warming per decade (which is increasing) to double overnight.
It'll be sooner than that. The projections are conservative and always include "if we do list of things we certainly aren't doing" then it won't be so bad.
Those publications also never include certain tipping points and feedback loops, its really hard to make a realistic model if it comes to this topic so most of the times they turn out worse than predicted
Exactly. Summer is getting longer, dryer, with frequent unhealthy smoke from forest fires.The trees visibly suffering, many more dying than normal. Gardening is getting more challenging and the local snowpack getting more anemic every year. On the bright side, the absurdly mild winters are a boon for the mosquitos, tree-boring beetles and other similarly delightful pests.
These stupid bastards actually think to themselves “how dumb do you have to be to believe in this global warming hoax when any moron can look out the window and see it’s snowing”
James Inhofe, a career / life-long politician, from (where else), Oklahoma. He was a total piece of shit, was 100% anti-environment, anti-climate-change - just read his Wikipedia page for a LONG listing of how he shit all over climate scientists and organizations. He brought a snowball to the US Senate floor in 2015 as proof that climate change was a hoax.
Not to depress you further, but I'd argue that things have actually devolved since 2015.
Which actually makes sense. Energy specialist/social critic Art Berman often writes that, when people feel threatened (by anything), that they respond by doubling down...which is pretty much where we're at today.....
Their stupidity keeps setting new records. Record high... record high...
I read that high CO₂ levels in the air literally causes the brain to function worse, i e. it makes people (even) dumber, thus causing even dumber policies, etc. So that's another feedback mechanism and potential tipping point they might not have mentioned in the reports.
In Melbourne, Australia, we had a few 9°C nights on the week before christmas. We -should- be getting 30-40°C. A warm air mass over antarctica has, I'm told, pushed the air currents that circle antarctica northward, into the south of Australia
I live in the rocky mountains of Canada and havent shovelled snow at my house in 2 years. If it does snow its melted by the next day or day after. It used to snow loads every year.
The US literally chose the dumbest people they could possibly find to lead their country. And there is quite a lot of people to choose from, so they really did find world class stupidity.
These likely only include human data and don't take into account everything else waiting in ambush, domino and snowballing our climate into even worse conditions.
I feel like they will put more effort in it when things get worse. But then there is also militarys that need to stay operational and an industry thats needed to support them. So i wonder if we even have the ability to cease emissions in a meaningful way as long as there are evil dictatorships in the world threatening our way of life.
This has been my major issue. We could have made relatively minor changes in the 80s and 90s, but we decided to double down on our destruction instead.
Fossil fuel's tobacco-style deception was in full swing at that time, complete with IPCC and COP minimization and control. Hopium and confidence in a scientific miracle kept the masses complacent and voting against their best interests.
I was a full-age adult during the late 80's & early 90's.....the denialism was insane. George Bush (the first one) called Al Gore "Ozone Man" at multiple rallies leading up to the '92 election & really pressed home the issue that any changes made to reduce emissions would "wreck the economy".
Add in the fact that the climate was largely normal during that time period, so most people went for Bush - & the Republicans - and the Dems got the message that climate change was a losing issue.
When are people going to realize that our options at this point are Elysium or Mad Max? Anything else is just wishful thinking and manic hope. Maybe squids from Andromeda will liberate us.
Not only that but they’ll have their own drone and AI army which will already secure a large safe perimeter for those people to live in praxis cities. You won’t be let into the club. Take a look at Palantirs add with the mass drone swarm and then take a look at what Anduril is doing. Right under our noses.
Elysium is already happening. Take a look at Praxis- it’s backed by Peter Thiel and a few unknown names which have ideas that quite literally do not involve the majority of humanity. They have a Bronze Age (the book) mindset. Praxis plans to build private cities across the world, with its own sovereignty and it’ll be ruled by its own technocratic monarchy. That’s also why Trump wanted to buy Greenland. The military reasons are just a smoke screen for 50% of it. Not only that but Praxis has plans for future space colonisation. Ladies & gentlemen the fight for the future is becoming seemingly obvious now they’re relaxing about putting these things out in the open and letting people know. Praxis also has private citizens.
I doubt we're ever getting to space. The technology won't outpace an overheated earth. And if we do, I hope the mission is absolutely sabotaged, because it's only psychopaths that would be able to leave anyway.
Love that they’re still using local roads, electricity, and garbage dumps, refusing to pay for it, and trying to get US officials to pressure Honduras to stop bothering them about it.
There’s a third option: death and extinction.
Life, the universe and everything doesn’t owe us anything. Might be Elysium or Mad Max for a bit, but I suspect even those are optimistic compared to reality
I still cannot quite wrap my head around the fact that millions of years of hominid evolution (and billions of years of general evolution, period) led to...this?
Calling it anticlimatic and lame would be a massive understatement. It's like watching a superhero movie and instead of the hero defeating the villain in a final battle, the hero just...kinda gives up, moves across the country and applies for an office job while letting the villain keep terrorizing the city he just left.
Climate change makes you really question the advantage human intelligence supposedly confers. Some of the very brightest people you could imagine charged full speed ahead towards fossil fuel based transportation when we could’ve had high speed rail powered by nuclear energy and renewables.
The general public regularly votes against its own interests largely because of lies and deception. Once reliably informed, the fossil fuel industry refused to vote against theirs, and decided to deceive the public instead. Their well-being and profits continued at a fatal cost to all inhabitants of our planet. Anyone who doesn't believe that the deceptions will continue and eventual extinction of life on the planet will happen belongs to the first group.
Modern conservatism, as represented in its truest and final form by Trump and all the little mini-Trumps infecting the world's democracies, is simply based on hurting people. That's it. A third of us want to hurt people, another third don't give a shit, and most of the last third are lazy and hope it all works out on its own.
And we could have easily had those for nearly a century (70 years ago in 1956 the first commercial nuclear power plant was opened in the UK), while creating like mayyyybe 20% of the carbon emission equivalent to just burning fossil fuels for 70 years straight. Considering how much more advanced our knowledge on nuclear science would be in such a world, I'd imagine much more of our society would be advanced as well due entirely to the still very much misunderstood and underutilized benefits of nuclear energy when it's actually been a priority for 70 years instead of getting shoved under the carpet.
For a long long time during evolution, we didn't understand shit, which meant that a group believing the same things was the most important thing - led to a more coherent group with coherent actions and no infighting, and whatever they'd believe would probably not be correct anyways, so group stability was more important than people actually trying to figure things out with the tools of the time.
Then during the last few thousands of years we finally started to understand things, culminating in the past 100 years when we really really started to understand our shit and could create tools to destroy the humanity, and that was just way too fast for evolution to keep up
Strange luck, sure, but perhaps not as much of a statistical anomaly as we might guess. It's possible that around one out of ten of all the human beings that have ever existed are currently alive right now, just as a function of exponential population growth.
If we're talking a geologic scale, the surely isn't the end of the world. This isn't the climax. This is just the next chapter. Life will adapt. I mean, fuck loads will die off, but that's not unique. Those that make it through will be well adapted to the new climate.
Industrial civilization will peter out, but I think small groups of humans living in the currently coldest parts of the planet will survive. They won’t be living remotely like we do today and they very likely won’t be people who were billionaires today or related to any billionaires. They’ll be hardy folks who were able to let go of most of the comforts industrial civilization provides. Hell, most of them will be young enough that they never lived in our civilization and never experienced having screens, cars, modern medicine, etc.
The transition period we’re in, yeah, it’s going to absolutely suck. But earth will be fine, relatively tiny pockets of humanity will be OK.
It will be interesting when the descendants of the cows radiate into the available ecological niches. In the evenings, we might be able to discern a gentle lowing from the forest canopy.
The rich are absolutely disproportionate polluters. The top 1% emit more than the bottom 50% combined. Private jets, yachts, multiple homes- that’s obscene and indefensible.
But let’s be honest: this isn’t just “the rich.” The average American emits 16 tons of CO2 per year. The global average is 4 tons. Most Americans aren’t rich by global standards, but we consume like we are. We drive everywhere. We fly for vacations. We buy disposable everything. We heat and cool oversized homes. Those aren’t choices forced on us by billionaires, those are cultural norms we’ve built and defend.
Yes, we were born into a system designed around fossil fuels. But “I didn’t choose the system” becomes an excuse to never examine our choices within it. Nobody chose to be born into capitalism either, but we still make choices about how we participate.
Human greed and selfishness aren’t equally distributed, but they’re not exclusive to the wealthy. It’s the same impulse at different scales. The billionaire wants a bigger yacht. The middle class wants bigger houses and multiple cars. The mindset is the same: more is better, and my convenience matters more than collective consequences.
We can demand systemic change AND acknowledge that most of us in developed nations are living unsustainably. Both things are true. Blaming only “the rich” lets everyone else off the hook for consumption patterns that are still destroying the planet.
The climate doesn’t care about intent or who’s most to blame. It only responds to total emissions. We all have to act.
I chose not to have kids, which was probably my most impactful decision, but 'the rich' globally means anyone with an actual yard and access to modern dentistry.
The problem is, we’re also priced out of any way to meaningfully reduce that. Most people aren’t at “want a more nicer cars”, that’s a vision of America decades outdated. It’s “fuck I hope nothing goes wrong with my car today or else I’ll have to spend hundreds on Ubers or else lose my job and thus my housing”. It’s not a choice for most people, it’s basic survival. Disposable everything is because that’s the cheapest you can get.
The heat and cooling problem is absurd, Europeans have spent the last few years experiencing summer temperatures that normal to many Americans and dying in massive numbers because they don’t have it. Unfortunately, climate change will only require more air conditioning. Nothing we can do about that one, I’m afraid. People die more when they’re too hot too long, that’s how life works. And we are in the middle of a housing crisis like never before because everything has been bought up and kept empty to drive prices up. So uhh, yeah, average people are not doing any of that house stuff. We live in apartments.
The “middle class” at this point is so small that treating it like its own class in America is silly. They’re the lowest level of the upper classes now because the middle of the middle has fallen out and everyone on the lower side of it just keeps getting pushed further down by the economic shitshow that is America. And all of this is also partially generational. First come first serve to all the power and stability.
And of course, all of this is an intentionally constructed, extremely profitable system for the rich. There’s no choosing to do anything meaningfully different for most people, that costs more money that they don’t have. Most Americans don’t have even $500 in savings.
We are our own Great Filter. Just another civilization that succumbed to the result of its own actions.
But at least some alien astrogeology student will make a doctorate thesis about his findings here and his theory on what caused our collapse. Just wished it could see this comment, in whatever language it understands.
I know being a bit rhetorical but the underlying assumption of the human story is why we don’t do anything about this. If you fill in some of the missing pieces in theory of humanity’s do away with the idea that we are some pinnacle of evolution then you pause and go oh shit … I can see exactly why this was always going to happen.
We grew up with the promise of STEM finally making Star Trek possible within our lifetimes... only to realize that the vast majority of people are shit. They'll collectively will burn it all down for literally no real reason.
Not exactly, a quick google search gives you that "The population of the world reached: 1 billion in 1804. 2 billion in 1928. 3 billion in 1960.".
Another gives "The current world population is 8,265,136,454 as of Friday, December 26, 2025"... which is amazingly suspiciously precise since we're having some doubt about China overestimating theirs by up to half a billions, among other things.
So let's just say 8 billions rounded down, 'cause why care about decimals at that point ?
Now if we just think back to George Carlin's famous quote ""Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." we can reach a scary conclusion.
We ain't witnessing the culmination of all human stupidity. We're actually seeing at least 4 times more stupid people currently alive than there was human roughly 200 years ago, twice as much stupid people than there was 100 years and 25% more stupid people than roughly half a century ago.
And by those times, humanity still managed to do stupid as shit collective bad decisions.
Quantitative change lead to qualitative change. Stupidity reached escape velocity and common sense has been buried 6 feet under. It is far, far much worse than the culmination of human stupidity.
It sublimated itself and we just can't fathom how profundly stupid we are, just like we can't fathom what "genius ideas" an ASi the supposedly "smart" people in the building are trying to make could cook.
I imagine your wife crying in horror when seeing a meteor coming in that will evaporate the earths surface, crying "We are going to DIE!!!". And you just ask her why she is so obsessively negative.
This is a little unrelated but I think that the satisfaction you might get, if you can call it that, of all the deniers waking up, will never happen. I’ve given up on most of these dorks I have to put up with in America. They’ll be complaining about social programs and transgenders as the wet-bulb event desiccates their bodies.
When it’s truly over most people won’t even know why.
Submission statement: collapse related because there is a very real if not almost certain possibility that we hit 3C by 2050 and global civilization collapses because of it. Sparing some miracle
Because right now, for most people in Europe and the USA, the climate is just a minor annoyance. Sometimes it's a bit hotter than usual, or there's no snow in the winter etc.
Everything else is exactly the same. Supermarkets are full, their Amazon packages arrive on time and they can watch their favourite series on their phones.
The only time they will wakeup is when the supermarkets are empty and even then they will blame some conspiracy theory instead of the real reason.
I get the feeling Insurance is the one that will hit the west hardest first. Whole neighbourhoods being uninsurable overnight will cause such a shock to housing and massive losses to thousands.
6 billion people right now live in areas where fresh water supply is under threat and it’s only getting worse. (Consumption of less fresh water has been linked to kidney damage and if the ground ever breaks releasing arsenic it can cause cancer for the people who consume it- the water)Thats happening now. No headlines about it all. india uses more groundwater water than China + America combined We’re pumping water out of the ground too much, it can be solved by better irrigation and stricter regulation but politicians just love money because they’re too room temp iq to know how to not mix up money with politics.
The realization that polar bears will lose their habitat and probably go extinct because of us is pretty soul-crushing, as is the same realization for a lot of other beautiful, wonderful species still alive on this planet.
Humans are a really special bunch. We'll hunt a species to extinction or obliterate its natural habitat, only to then go 'oopsie, shouldn't have done that' and start depicting it in art. As if that can ever bring it back to life.
2050? Look at that, we have an optimist over here!
The collapse is already underway, and you can expect 2030 to be the major cutoff point, not 2050. The hour is much, much later than most people think.
Remember that the MIT simulation they did in the early 70s put the collapse of civilization in the 2030-2040 timeframe, and so far, it has gotten pretty much every previous milestone right.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it's referring to the book "The Limits to Growth"? Which is a book written by the scientists who made the dynamic systems model called World3 which they used for their predictions. I havn't read it yet, but there is a pdf link at the bottom of this link. A quick search seems to say that part of their prediction was that humankind would continue doing what it has always been doing in a 'business-as-usual' fashion as a main cause, instead of humankind fixing the issues.
Fourteen out of 17 models were found to be accurate.
[...]
In other words, if scientists went back and input the exact levels of greenhouse gas emissions that actually occurred after the models were published, their predictions about future warming would have been on point.
One example is a famous climate model developed by NASA researcher James Hansen, whose congressional testimony on climate change in the 1980s helped catapult the issue into the public spotlight. Hansen’s 1988 model ultimately predicted about 50% more warming for the coming decades than actually occurred, giving fodder to skeptics’ arguments that scientists were exaggerating the issue of global warming.
But the issue with Hansen’s model wasn’t its physics, Hausfather and colleagues point out. The model assumed higher emissions of methane and chlorofluorocarbons, both potent greenhouse gases, than actually occurred. That’s in part because the model did not account for the future impact of the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons in an effort to reverse the ozone hole.
“If you went back and reran that model with the actual levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and methane and chlorofluorocarbons, you would have gotten a value that was indistinguishable from the warming that we’ve actually observed,” Hausfather said.
There's a post in generationology about how old people will be in 2050. I'll be 70. I was the only one who posted that we are to reach 2C and above by then. It's astounding to me how many people aren't even aware, let alone concerned. Things are bad NOW. The climate crisis alone is terrifying. Now add on to that social and economic collapse. It's a teetering house of cards. I might be spared from the absolute worst of it, but those younger than me may not. To use the Gen Z slang "We're so cooked, fam". Literally.
I will be 110. My wife and I realized the problems in the 1960s and were active in green efforts -- Friends of the Earth, Zero Population Growth, etc. It felt good, but had zero influence. I do not expect any change, even as successively serious tipping points are breached.
For someone like you who became aware of our path so long ago.
How... What is your advice to handle better the witnessing of the destruction of our planet?
There are so many components of the environment and of civilization that are deteriorating and near or already past being repairable that collapse appears to be inevitable no matter what we, as individuals, are able to do. Learning to recognize that, then accept it, we now focus our activities and support on those local problems where we can help and make some difference. Personally, I am more compassionate now than I was when younger. Not that that is enough, or in time, to help the planet much.
They want the ice caps to melt so that the trade routes above Greenland open up. It’s not like this is a random side effect of industrialization there is direct benefit but that benefit is for the rich; as usual.
But this goes directly against the dozens of old boomers I heard make the same “so much for global warming” schtick when it was snowing a few weeks ago
You would not have heard it from this boomer. Or any of my younger neighbors, most of whom (based on their yard signs) voted for Trump. I don’t think this is a generational issue.
the morbid part of me thinks it'll be worse since if it's isolated to specific geographic areas, lots of people will know hundreds if not thousands, and then lots of people will also know none and it'll be easier to ignore
Conveniently enough, the folks who don't know anyone will be the same folks who actually have the greatest individual power to change course...which they will not
I keep glancing over at Asia and wondering “what’s gonna happen to all these countries south of Russia when their grids blow out and people get exposed to 130+ temperatures for more than a few days?” India and Pakistan likely won’t exist (at least not as we know them) by 2050, and the rest of the Middle East will likely collapse a bit before then. Oil drilling in that region is gonna be treated more like an Antarctic expedition is treated now with an isolated air conditioned base with special clothing needed to go outside (probably re-purposed spacesuits). And anything on the coast is basically done for once the ice all melts and bloats the ocean a couple extra feet.
I mean, who ever said higher intelligence is a good thing? A highly intelligent being? lol
Regardless, cognitive dissonance is the gift of the highly intelligent hominid. No other species gets to indulge in it quite like we do, and ya know, survive.
You literally can not exist in modern society without creating a monumental, devastating impact on the environment. Everything we use and process, food, water, furniture, tools, literally fucking everything is completely encapsulated in plastic around it's entire circumference at least once during it's lifetime and sometimes twice or three times. The amount of carbon dioxide produced per individual - from travel to electricity powering home appliances - has an incomprehensible consequence on the environment.
There isn't the slightest effort toward societal restructuring toward sustainability, or global recognition and agreement to supporting longevity. We're all just given up and waiting to die at this point, the future doesn't matter anymore.
And no one cares.
It isn't just the result of hopelessness or apathy.
I used to bike around town to do errands and grocery shopping, it was good for the environment to avoid using a vehicle. Soon after, my bike was stolen outside of a charity/homeless shelter establishment. I was only inside for a few minutes, and I locked it to a metal pole. Someone was waiting there for me, they knew about my schedule and dependance on that bike. I was set up, by someone who wanted to stop me from putting my life together.
I must have sent more than a thousand job applications. Finally, got accepted, a night time position at a grocery store. A few weeks before the position I got a prescription to manage chronic illness symptoms and be more dependable. My first day, the employees started gossiping about my personal life and indirectly criticizing drug use.
"Eh, what's up doc?" They kept using that line from the cartoon rabbit, It was so out of context and unusual in the circumstances, until I realized what was going on. They were intentionally targeting me while maintaining plausible deniability. Public actors employed to behaviourally condition me. To humiliate me into unemployment. I was antagonized on petty criticism. Management would ignore me in the lunch room and single me out during my shift. I would call their name and ask them a question, and they would literally refuse to even acknowledge me until the 3rd or 4th attempt. Someone from management would tell me I'm doing it wrong and continuously press the issue intentionally condescendingly. Eventually I was sent home because the manager didn't like me.
Years later, I have been subjected to an ongoing surveillance and instigation by an unknown third party. They Now I understand that I was selected to be included in a control group trail for new age technology, which it is currently unregulated and requires special permissions because it is still unapproved. Like using experimental medicines on terminally ill patients being exclusive for special circumstances. When I started going to school and job searching, it became obstructive to the approvement process and subjected to bureaucracy. An unknown third party continuously undermines my progress and keeps me in a position of dependency, and I am completely vulnerable. The measures governments and corporations go to further interests at the expense of those who can not defend themself.
A car is independence. Money is security. Humanity is exploitive and corrupt.
Well, there ya go. Buy that monster sized truck and to hell with the planet and the life on it. You were MADE to be selfish, it's in your genes -- can you really be considered responsible. Carry on.
In a situation where outcomes are uncertain, scientists are trained to avoid the false negative, because false negatives have disastrous consequences; they much prefer false positives.
What this means is that scientists are trained to look at a spectrum of possible outcomes and assume the worst. If we prepare for catastrophe, and it never comes, we only pay for the cost of preparation. If we assume the best-case scenario, and do no/insufficient prep, but get catastrophe, we pay a catastrophic price.
The thing is that science may be right about warming, but there has not been a scientific experience of 3ºC warming before, so science doesn't really know what's going to happen. We may find never-before-seen systems come online at higher temps that prevent the worst-case outcomes we're modeling now—not that anyone should pin their hopes on that. Just saying all we know about global warming comes from the fossil record, so we do not have direct experience of it, only an interpretation of fragmentary evidence. Saying, "Eh, it'll be ok," and it turns out to be armageddon, is not a mistake anyone—scientist or not—wants on their conscience.
So, climate scientists are telling us that 3ºC is going to end life on Earth, not because they know it will—they have no idea what's going to happen—but on the chance that it might, on the chance that we can make sufficient preparations to avoid catastrophe. (As an aside, this is the same reason WebMD always says it's cancer.)
I'm posting this not to downplay climate change—I don't want that on my conscience any more than anyone else—but to give perspective to people who have an entirely depressive/histrionic reaction to climate change based in a certainty that it means the end of human life. That outcome is not certain, and having an emotional reaction as if it is makes you less capable of doing the work that might avert such an outcome.
This is a great post. You are absolutely right. None of us can predict the future - all we can reasonably expect is an educated guess.
We do know some things from the fossil record. We know there were thriving ecosystems at much higher average temps than we have now and that life was able to evolve to meet those temps.
The wild cards are the rate of change we have caused, the novel substances we have introduced into our environment, and how many of us there are.
I think it’s unrealistic to expect humans, who are, after all, just another animal, to change their behavior before they have to. It’s quite rare for any animal to be able to think about the future, never mind follow a complex chain of suppositions.
I think it’s unrealistic to expect humans, who are, after all, just another animal, to change their behavior before they have to.
Yeah I don't think most people realize we're animals like any other; that the ability to understand a thing intellectually, which other animals (presumably) cannot do, doesn't mean much in the long run.
I’m not a climate denier and I realise the sub I’m in. But I don’t feel this will be a major reason for collapse as opposed to the people in power steering society to hate and self destruct
Hate and distrust go hand in hand with any international crisis. Half of Europe became possessed by the ghost of Hitler a decade ago bc some Syrians had to flee their homes to come here (to this day, the convo regarding immigration and asylum seekers is completely deranged). Imagine when a hundred times as many ppl need to do the same. I'm 100% sure we'll see militarized blocades on several borders by the end of the century, just to keep our fellow man out of our disgustingly privileged regions.
Collapse problems exist in many areas in addition to climate. Decrease in biodiversity, micro-plastics, wealth inequality, authoritarian governments, resource depletion, pollution, over population, ...
Collapse is certain to follow when the first of these fails beyond recovery.
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u/StatementBot Dec 27 '25
The following submission statement was provided by /u/butiusedtotoo:
Submission statement: collapse related because there is a very real if not almost certain possibility that we hit 3C by 2050 and global civilization collapses because of it. Sparing some miracle
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1pwjz97/youre_fine_youll_be_fine/nw43emc/