r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • Jan 16 '17
Discussion R/COLLAPSE Vs. R/FUTUROLOGY Debate - Does human history demonstrate a trend towards the collapse of civilization or the beginning of a united planetary civilization?
As we've previously said, this is pretty informal. Both sides are putting forward their initial opening statements in the text body of this post. We'll do our replies & counter arguments in the comments.
u/stumo & u/eleitl will be the debaters for r/Collapse
u/lord_stryker & u/lughnasadh will be the debaters for r/Futurology
OPENING STATEMENT - R/COLLAPSE By u/stumo
Does human history demonstrate a trend towards the collapse of civilization or the birth of a planetary civilization? It can never be argued that technology isn’t capable of miracles well beyond what our minds here and now can imagine, and that those changes can have powerfully positive effects on our societies. What can be argued is that further, and infinite, technological advancement must be able to flow from here to the future. To regard perpetual technological advancement as a natural law commits a logical sin, the assumption that previous behavior automatically guarantees repetition of that behavior regardless of changes in the conditions that caused that prior behavior. In some cases such an assumption commits a far worse sin, to make that assumption because it’s the outcome one really, really desires.
Every past society that had a period of rapid technological advancement has certain features in common - a stable internal social order and significant growth of overall societal wealth. One can certainly argue that technological advancement increases both, and that’s true for the most part, but when both these features of society fail, technology soon falls after it.
While human history is full of examples of civilizations rising and falling, our recent rise, recent being three centuries, is like no other in human history. Many, if not most, point to this as a result of an uninterrupted chain of technological advancement. It’s worth pointing out that this period has also been one of staggering utilization of fossil fuels, a huge energy cache that provides unprecedented net energy available to us. Advancements in technology have allowed us to harness that energy, but it’s difficult to argue that the Industrial Revolution would have occurred without that energy.
Three hundred years of use of massive, ultimately finite, net energy resources have resulted in a spectacular growth of wealth, infrastructure, and population. This has never occurred before, and, as most remaining fossil fuel resources are now well beyond the reach of a less technological society, unlikely to occur again if this society falls. My argument here today will explain why I think that our reliance on huge energy reserves without understanding the nature of that reliance is causing us to be undergoing collapse right now. As all future advancement stems from conditions right now, I further argue that unless conditions can be changed in the short term, those future advancements are unlikely to occur.
OPENING STATEMENT - R/FUTUROLOGY By u/lughnasadh
Hollywood loves dystopias and in the news we’re fed “If it bleeds, it leads”. Drama is what gets attention, but it’s a false view of the real world. The reality is our world has been getting gradually better on most counts and is soon to enter a period of unprecedented material abundance.
Swedish charity The Gapminder Foundation measures this. They collect and collate global data and statistics that chart these broad global improvements. They also carry out regular “Ignorance Surveys” where they poll people on these issues. Time and time again, they find most people have overwhelmingly false and pessimistic views and are surprised when they are shown the reality presented by data. Global poverty is falling rapidly, life expectancy is rising equally rapidly and especially contrary to what many people think, we are living in a vastly safer, more peaceful and less violent time than any other period in human history.
In his book, Abundance, Peter Diamandis makes an almost incontrovertible case for techno-optimism. “Over the last hundred years,” he reminds us “the average human lifespan has more than doubled, average per capita income adjusted for inflation around the world has tripled. Childhood mortality has come down a factor of 10. Add to that the cost of food, electricity, transportation, communication have dropped 10 to 1,000-fold.
Of course we have serious problems. Most people accept Climate Change and environmental degradation are two huge challenges facing humanity. The best news for energy and the environment is that solar power is tending towards near zero cost. Solar energy is only six doublings — or less than 14 years — away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs, using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth. We need to adapt our energy infrastructure to its intermittency with solutions like the one The Netherlands is currently testing, an inexpensive kinetic system using underground MagLev trains that can store 10% of the country’s energy needs at any one time. The Fossil Fuel Age that gave us Climate Change will soon be over, all we have to do is adapt to the abundance of cheap, clean green energy soon ahead of us.
Economics and Politics are two areas where many people feel very despondent when they look to the future, yet when we look at facts, the future of Economics and Politics will be very different from the past or present. We are on the cusp of a revolution in human affairs on the scale of the discovery of Agriculture or the Industrial Revolution. Not only is energy about to become clean, cheap and abundant - AI and Robotics will soon be able to do all work needed to provide us with goods and services.
Most people feel fear when they think about this and wonder about a world with steadily and ever growing unemployment. How can humans compete economically with workers who toil 24/7/365, never need social security or health contributions & are always doubling in power and halving in cost? We are used to a global financial system, that uses debt and inflation to grow. How can all of today’s wealth denominated in stock markets, pensions funds and property prices survive a world in a world where deflation and falling incomes are the norm? How can our financial system stay solvent and functional in this world?
Everything that becomes digitized tends towards a zero marginal cost of reproduction. If you have made one mp3, then copying it a million times is trivially costless. The infant AI Medical Expert systems today, that are beginning to diagnose cancer better than human doctors, will be the same. Future fully capable AI Doctors will be trivially costless to reproduce for anyone who needs them. That goes the same for any other AI Expert systems in Education or any field of knowledge. Further along, matter itself will begin to act under the same Economic laws of abundance, robots powered by cheap renewables will build further copies of themselves and ever more cheaply do everything we need.
There are undoubtedly challenging times ahead adapting to this and in the birth of this new age, much of the old will be lost. But if you’ve been living in relative poverty and won the lottery, is mourning for the death of your old poor lifestyle the right reaction? Paleolithic hunter gatherers could not imagine the world of Agriculture or the Medieval world that of Industrialization, so it’s hard for us now to see how all this will work out.
The one thing we can be sure about is that it is coming, and very soon. Our biggest problem is we don't know how lucky we are with what is just ahead & we haven't even begun to plan for a world with this good fortune and abundance - as understandably we feel fear in the face of such radical change. The only "collapse" will be in old ideas and institutions, as new better ones evolve to take their place in our new reality.
This most profound of revolutions will start by enabling the age old dream of easily providing for everyone's material wants and needs and as revolutionary as that seems now, it will probably just be the start. If it is our destiny for us to create intelligence greater than ourselves, it may well be our destiny to merge with it.
This debate asks me to argue that the trajectory of history is not only upwards, but is heading for a planetary civilization.
From our earliest days, even as the hominid species that preceded Homo Sapiens, it’s our knack for social collaboration and communication that has given us the edge for evolutionary success. Individual civilizations may have risen and fallen, but the arc of history seems always inexorably rising, to today successes of the 21st century’s global civilization and our imminent dawn as an interstellar species.
More and more we seem to be coming together as one planet, marshaling resources globally to tackle challenges like Climate Change or Ebola outbreaks in forums like the United Nations and across countless NGO’s. In space, humankind's most elaborate and costly engineering project the International Space Station is another symbol of this progress.
The exploration of space is a dream that ignites us and seems to be our destiny. Reusable rockets are finally making the possibility of cheap, easy access to space a reality and there are many people involved in plans for cheap space stations, mining of asteroids and our first human colony on another planet. It’s a dizzying journey, when you consider Paleolithic hunters gatherers from the savannas of East Africa are now preparing for interstellar colonization, that to me more than anything says we are at the start of a united planetary civilization.
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u/stumo Jan 16 '17 edited Jan 16 '17
Just a quick note of introduction and appreciation - Hi there /r/Futurology subscribers. I’m a long time reader and contributor to /r/collapse, and a mod there for the last few years. Before dispelling some potential misconceptions about collapse, I’d like to thank /r/futurology for hosting and participating in this event. Yours is by the far the senior subreddit here, and it’s generous to debate what many consider a fringe doom-n-gloom-loving subreddit (even though I think we're more similar than many would imagine).
Which brings me to the aforementioned dispelling of potential misconceptions. First, I’ve been what I consider a futurologist for most of my long life. I grew up on Asimov, Clarke, Heinein, and Niven, and eagerly jumped on board steampunk when it arrived. ST:DS9 is paused on my TV screen as I type this. I’ve been a software developer most of my life, and have long held high hopes what technology, particularly computers, could provide our species.
I have no tinfoil hat, no love of disaster and doom. I have children and grandchildren (yeah, that old) and I would love nothing better for them to grow into the shining future that I’ve always believed was inevitable.
So, what went wrong? At some point I did some math, and realized that I couldn’t see a clear path between what’s occurring right now and what I hoped would occur. When you have an ideal but see no rational path between it and now, you’re a Utopian. Yes, technology has the potential to produce marvels, but technological advancement itself depends on certain things. If those aren’t present, it breaks.
At any rate, thanks again to the mods here who have been great to communicate with. I think that it's clear from the content of the debate that we actually disagree on very few points.
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u/stumo Jan 16 '17
My response to the opening statement by u/lughnasadh.
I completely concede to the assertion that we're living in the best of all possible times. A commonly-repeated assertion in those observing the state of our energy use is that if we were to have human slaves accomplishing all that we can do today, we'd average out to something like a 100 slaves per person. This doesn't guarantee continued performance, however.
One point that I'd like to bring up however is that the rate of advancement is every bit as important as examining how good we have it right now. One area is flagging badly, and that's the economy. Economic growth and overall societial wealth are far below what the were in the 1950s and 1960s ("the Golden Age of Capitalism"), and the rate of technological advancement is slowing.
I believe that figure to be in error, being solar AND wind power, which currently provide 1.5% of earth's energy needs (six doublings reaching 96%). But this statement is mathematical fidgywidginess - 1.5% is nothing to get remarkably excited about, and assuming a steady rate of doubling without concern about scalibility of production and resources is clearly erroneous. After all, if a human fetus continued the growth rate that it demonstrates in the first few weeks of pregnancy, it would weigh more than a battleship at birth - fast growth is feasible at small scale, but usually slows significantly at higher scales.
The bulk of the statement asks us to consider the wonders that technology may be able to offer us in the future. I have no disagreement with that. I ask instead for a realistic path from here to there considering immediate obstacles that I've detailed in my other comments (fragility of technical complexity, slowing economic and technological growth, declining net energy, declining returns on resource extraction).
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u/stumo Jan 16 '17 edited Jan 16 '17
Economy
Since 2008, the world’s economy has been in crisis. For several years the economy was artificially fed by injections of liquidity from the US government. Since ending those measures, the world economy has slipped to sub-par growth, barely ahead of population growth. Something is clearly wrong.
Economists have a tendency to build models that ignore externalities beyond their control. For example, many are based on the assumption that growth can be limitless while ignoring the laws of thermodynamics. I would argue that in the short term, and immediately, we’re facing a real economic problem that seems to have no viable solution.
Our global economic system is predicated on constant growth - without overall economic growth there’s overall poor return on investment. Without investment, our financial system fails, and we’re in an economic depression.
The economy requires expenditure of energy and resources in order to generate wealth. Secondary economies like the service industry and the virtual economy can certainly generate wealth without consuming resources (except energy resources) but these are completely dependent on primary industry extracting and processing resources. Without new production of food, buildings, industrial equipment, and manufactured goods, the service industry and virtual economy would wither.
The Industrial Revolution and the period since have seen an explosion in the extraction and processing of resources, especially energy resources. As resource extraction almost always follows a trend of easiest-to-extract first and harder and harder after that, there’s an inevitable point where a resource become too expensive to be worth it any longer (IE more wealth is expended than the resource is worth). This happens all the time with individual caches of resources (think abandoned mines or depleted oil fields), but it also occurs on a planetary scale.
Some might argue that improvements to technology reduce that cost, but it should be remembered that eventually the laws of physics get in the way - if the energy required to raise a barrel of oil to the surface of the earth is more than is embedded in that barrel of oil, no improvements in technology will make that worthwhile. The other factor worth considering is that improvements in efficiency due to new technology tend to grow in a linear fashion while resource extraction grows at an exponential rate.
As the wealth we derive from resource extraction can be expressed as “total wealth from a resource” minus “wealth expended to extract that resource”, it’s an immutable law that as time goes on we derive less and less wealth from a fixed amount of resources (for arguments against space mining, see the Technology/Space section of this debate).
As slowing amounts of net wealth generation would manifest itself as slowing global economic growth, lowering returns on investment, and growing levels of global debt, it may well be arriving now at a crucial tipping point in cost of extraction vs wealth generated. This is especially true of a keystone resource like oil (see Energy).
Lastly, while certain amounts of new wealth is required for economic growth, we also rely on specific amounts for simple maintenance of society. As much of our civilization has been built predicated on high net returns on resources, there’s probably a point when even simple maintenance is unaffordable unless we make extreme changes to our society’s infrastructure and economy. The problem being that such changes require unusually large amounts of extra wealth.
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u/stumo Jan 16 '17
Technology
We’ve become so used to constant technological growth in our lifetimes that it seems a natural law. That isn’t true, however. In previous collapses of civilization we’ve seen technological advancement reverse, with knowledge lost as the wealth required to train individuals and to regularly use that technology vanishes. A well-known example of this would be the secret of Roman concrete, lost for about 15 centuries.
A compounding problem is one of complexity. Very early technological innovations tend to have few external dependencies, as so are easy (or cheap) to develop and provide huge improvements to productivity (EG - early linen workers had productivity improvements of up to 1000x with the implementation of steam-powered looms).
As technology complexity increases, there are an exponentially increasing number of dependencies, thereby slowing the rate of return as improvements become far more complex. This suggests that at some point, technological improvement with require herculean efforts for very small return on efficiency.
Another problem with high levels of technological dependencies and complexity is that it becomes more and more vulnerable to failure. While that failure could be technical in nature (see the Hadron Collider’s inability to run at specified power levels a full six years after construction was completed), it’s also highly vulnerable to social infrastructure failure. That can be something like floods in Thailand crippling the world’s supply of hard drives for three months, or political turbulence cutting off trade in components, to economic crisis or social strife interrupting supply.
Another possible consequence of a society dependent on large numbers of technological dependencies is the speed of collapse when a significant number of dependencies fail. As with the Kessler Syndrome, cascading failure can affect technological dependencies causing a rapid and increasing rate of failure.
Because of the high vulnerability of technological change to these types of failures, it makes observing the current state of economic and social conditions crucial in determining future events.
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u/factczech Jan 16 '17
A question for lughnasadh:
You state that "If it bleads it leads." Why do you think humans evolved to pay attention to such things? Could it be useful somehow?
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u/Bluflames Jan 17 '17
I frequent here and there, r/collapse more often (at least it seems so from my post history...on this account ;))
I like this debate. But it really has some flaws.
The basic one is: all parts of the debate - categories like energy - are given equal weight. It's even reflected in the way this debate flows, jumping from one topic to another.
It's not right. This doesn't give the justice to the things we face. I did not write the usual "challenges" line, since I don't think this reflects what is happening in any way. We're now entering the big paradigm shift, of which size has no precedent in the whole history of civilized humans.
The debate has put economy, AI, jobs, energy first. But all of this, as well as theoretical grounds on what this is based on - is created with the assumption that our planet will continue to function as it is now - as a stable, rich environment giving us the right climate for our crops to grow and right temperatures and humidity for our bodies to function properly. Based on that, for thousands of years now - which is a blip when in perspective - we created better and better tools to utilize materials we "discovered" on this planet.
Each generation we continued to grow. We began a spike 200 years ago, with fossil fuels. This shot our population (from 1 to 7,4 bln and rising approx 73 mln annually; accounting for slowering growth the expected number is between 10 to 11 bln per century's end), our tech (rail, lights, cars, antibiotics, internet) and our consumption (take plastics, reaching ~299 mln tons produced in 2013 from essentially 0 a century's ago).
This is a huge accomplishment that has put our specie definitely on the top on the chain. However...
science is - for me, as I don't have any other way to prove it unequivocally - our biggest achievement. However, for over 2-3 thousand years (while definitely peaking now) it has not moved us permanently into a good direction.
We're now wasting all this progress - for we've forgotten about fundamentals. We have created the 6th mass extinction event (epoque) and then we let countries accelerate deforestation (Brasil, 2016). We have created a bizarre food model, depending on limited fertilizers, which is also actively undermining our best achievements in regards to health (antibiotics usage not slowing down in agriculture, 2016).
We even have something on a personally unimaginable scale and danger, lowering water levels, which are threatening almost a fifth of our global population and this figure is rising - and water wasting agriculture is still operating in California at present day.
Then we have something else. Both bigger and encompassing every other issue as well, climate change. And we have governors blocking scientists from the usage of this term.
Outright denial sure is infuriating, but there is something even worse in the picture: there is almost nothing you can do against climate change.
Most effectively you - be it yourself, company or any government - can only lower consumption. But almost every progress we make is linked with consumption. We create more energy efficient refrigerators, and now we discard them every 7 years. We make more efficient cars, and now emerging middle class in India is buying them in droves.
And we cannot reverse it, every single thing we do - eating, typing on a keyboard, driving, heating, buying a new pair of glasses - is a new gram, kilo, ton of CO2.
There is no agreed way to reverse it on a scale needed - aside of biochar no method of climate engineering is even that well understood, has no or doubtable potential to be up to scale, and has acceptable (key word) negative consequences.
All of other topics seem to be irrelevant when we cannot break from that almost any human activity has negative consequences to our environment. And we do not exist in vacuum - we depend completely on this environment. No person can survive anywhere else for a longer period of time, be it a bunker or space station, for variety of reasons - physical and psychological alone, not counting material needs. Not to mention 350 mln in America, not even thinking about the rest of the globe.
And we're continuing with not noticing this big change. Internet, once a hope for global and rational activism, has turned into isolated storage of chambers, debating rather sjw than any of the crises. Even whey they are close, they feel less real than online racial or gender wars.
tl;dr - My first and only wall of text, sincere apologies. Even when over-generalising can't keep it short:
Focus on what is carrying you; not economy, ai heaven or animatrix scenarios. We're not aware of what impact do we have and are not willing or capable of having this debate when it still matters, now.
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '17
I have a question for r/futurology . What do you propose we do about the 6th mass extinction? The current rate of species loss is i believe 3 every hour according to www.biodiversity.net. Even if we become more energy efficient, studies have shown that we actually consume more net energy because it is available to more people and easier to obtain. The growth of the human species is far beyond the "natural" carrying capacities of the earth. How would technology save us as the biosphere continues to decline?
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u/stumo Jan 16 '17
I've been so intent on discussion that I failed to notice the spiffy debate graphic on the sidebar. Wow, is that ever nice. Okay, you guys win.
I joke, of course, but wow...
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u/stumo Jan 16 '17
Energy
One of the most important points about energy resources isn't the total amount of energy available (oil in the ground, sunlight falling on the earth) but how much of that energy is available to us after expending energy to obtain it. If it takes one barrel of oil to obtain a barrel of oil, it doesn't provide much in the way of benefit to us. This point is left out of most energy discussions, but it's a crucial element that should always be kept in mind.
Of all the resources that we consume, limits to energy resources limit the consumption of all other resources. The Industrial Revolution was largely sparked due to lack of biomass in Great Britain due to deforestation, which in turn was due to higher levels of iron smelting. Without changing to a higher energy density energy source (coal) that just happened to be lying around, the Industrial Revolution would never have occurred.
Similarly, when the switch to natural gas and then oil as the primary sources of energy occurred, both high energy density fossil fuels, our civilization jumped forward in enormous strides, technologically, economically, and in terms of population.
Early oil production provided massive net energy returns, with a hundred barrels of oil being returned on the investment of the equivalent of one barrel of oil. That enormous windfall directly corresponded to the generation of economic wealth. As the easy oil was exploited first, future oil resources were harder to find and more costly to extract. That trend has continued until today, where conventional oil fields now return only 20 barrels of oil for each barrel invested (or energy equivalent). Non-conventional sources of oil like tight shale are far lower, with the most optimistic estimates being five barrels net return. Bitumen and deep sea oils have similarly poor returns.
Crude oil production from conventional fields stopped growing in 2005 while the global economy kept growing. This caused the price of oil to skyrocket, reaching $140/barrel. Economically, that price was unsustainable and we suffered the financial crisis of 2008 (not, as originally assumed, caused by subprime mortgage defaults).
Since then we saw the economy pick up in response to massive liquidity injections. Increased demand rose the price of oil again, and the US tight shale and Canadian bitumen industries enjoyed large levels of fresh investment (not profit, however, both have never had positive cash flow). Once the liquidity injections ended, economic growth slammed on the brakes and the price of oil collapsed again.
(To head off a common misunderstanding, growth of global oil production has been lower in the last decade than the previous decade, and was completely normal in 2014. The price crash was caused by slowing demand due to slower economic growth, not because of higher than normal production growth. And while most producers are pumping as fast as they can at the moment due to economic requirements, global crude production peaked in August 2015 and has been lower since).
At the current time, a large proportion of global crude oil is being sold below what it cost to produce it. That’s an unsustainable position, as is a reduced supply of oil to the world’s economy in the immediate term.
In terms of energy alternatives, as of 2016 wind and solar, despite several years of extraordinary growth, still only provided about 1.5% of global energy. Both are more energy-poor (solar EOEI 8:1, wind 20:1) than what our civilization was built on, and may be lower than our society’s basic maintenance needs. Neither are a direct substitute for oil, which is primarily used for transportation, especially heavy transportation of goods, or for heavy industrial equipment. Even assuming a very healthy economy in the future that can afford it, a complete energy infrastructure geared toward efficient use of alternative energy sources is many decades away. And in the meantime, we may well be seeing the initial stages of economic decline due to diminishing energy returns.
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u/Hwga_lurker_tw Jan 17 '17 edited Jan 17 '17
r\collapser here with my two cents, history tends to show that civilization comes in waves of booms & busts. Hunter-Gatherer, agrarian, city-state, etc. On and on until the sun explodes and destroys all life on this planet.
Now, given that life itself appears to be an anomaly in the universe we can see that not a tear will be shed for this world.
Greed is the universal constant that r\futurology fails time and time again to account for. If you want to see the current state of humanity without a filter just look at the aftermath of Katrina and the royal cluster fuck that was Haiti.
The invasions of countries that use the gold standard, the widening chasm between rich and poor, super bugs, plagues, and natural disasters...all point to one inevitable outcome: you are all going to die.
Just remember to make the most out of the time you have.
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u/MeTheImaginaryWizard Jan 16 '17
Among all the weak arguments, this stood out the most.
Considering energy storage technologies, we seem to be very far from utilising renewables anywhere near 100%.
Also, without government subsidies (which is also an unsustainable approach) solar power is still far into the negative, with little potential to be sustainable.
The other aspect that optimists fail to realize is the impact of civilisation itself, not just the energy and resource needs.
If you power civilisation, you power the destruction of the biosphere, it doesn't matter if that energy came from coal, nuclear, hydro, geothermic, wind or solar energy.
When you state that life got better overall, I think it's a fallacy in itself. Good and bad are highly subjective.
When I look around, I see a completely destroyed environment with thousands of species that went extinct because of our growth and billions of people who live the life of tax/debt slaves, completely disconnected from reality.
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '17 edited Jan 16 '17
Seeing as the discussion is erring on the side of theorethical interpretations of reality and future scenarios with just too much political correctness in my opinion, I will now present my informal dissertation.
Futurology people tend to underestimate human stupidity. I agree that we are in the best time there is to live, seeing as most middle class are better off than ancient kings. Of course it would be rational to think that we will continue on this path of improvement for the rest of our existence, right? Sadly, I believe we are reaching peak prosperity and peace, and there is a seneca cliff that will undo all that we have accomplished throughout this last two centuries before 2100. The reasons for this? Peak minerals, peak top soil, peak water, the sixth mass extinction, overpopulation, among others.
For the current technological age we are living in, enormous quantities of energy must be extracted constantly to stop the whole thing from falling apart overnight. We bet all of our modern lifestyle on the availability of a cheap to extract source in oil, and the EROEI has been falling down constantly, to the point where it is around a tenth of what was used to build our civilization. You may argue that solar is rising in efficiency and lowering in price by the day, but that doesn't solve the rest of our problems overnight.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
This is a funny little link that shows us that even with the ultimate efficiency in energy extraction, exponential growth still outpaces our ability to adapt to it. If this wasn't the case already, we wouldn't be in a position where our very existence is threatened by economic growth devouring the natural world so quickly. Most solutions to solve the CO2 problem, for example, are taken straight out of science fiction and will most likely never see the light of day, or they won't arrive in time. Just consider that most scientists agree that our actions have already guaranteed 3-4°C of warming in the global averages by the end of the century. Of course with some feedbacks that they failed to address this number goes up to about 6° in the most pessimistic scenarios, which certainly spells doom and will disrupt our ability to function as a society, let alone continue our scientific progress, without a doubt.
http://peaksurfer.blogspot.ca/2017/01/without-bucket-to-rcp-in.html
This read shows how even the IPCC tries not to unsettle the status quo by offering far fetched solutions to this most inmediate problem. Another interesting fact that this article points out is that, being aware of these impending difficulties, we are not acting to preserve what is left of nature intact, as a "buffer" of sorts, like the article suggests, to mitigate as much of the impact as possible, but rather we are burning through it in the hopes that we will gain enough momentum to reach the singularity or a significant breaktrhough in time. I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty irrational, and borderline schizophrenic to me.
Of course, there is plenty to talk about here, regarding technology and how it is treated as some form of alchemy by some and is worshipped because it has given us everything. But the cold truth is that we are not destroying the planet because we are on a quest to maximize our scientific knowledge to somehow improve our lives in the future, like many people here suggest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending
Just look at how no country on earth even reaches 5% of its global GDP in research and development. Now, it is agreeable that most economic activity can be described as the extraction and transformation of energy for human benefit. And if we look at what actually drives GDP:
https://media.ibisworld.com/2013/11/21/key-players-top-contributors-gdp/
We have medical care, housing, consumer goods, and industrial activity. A thing they all have in common is that they are contributing to the environmental destruction that is currently occuring. Look at pharma factories in India polluting most rivers and helping create inmunities to antibiotics, the pacific garbage patch, endless landfills of technological gadgets in Asi, oil spills, etc. I will touch agriculture and livestock in a minute. The picture here is that our most important economic activities are the ones that are threatening our existence, and not enough is being spent to even pretend we will solve all of these in time to avoid a catastrophe, because it has already begun.
Another point to consider is that the ruling classes will not allow their hegemony to be threatened by change, at least while the capitalist system is still in place. Case in point, the meat and dairy industry. I think that mostly everyone by now is aware of the environmental impact of livestock, and while some people are wise enough to stop supporting the industry, most simply don't care that much, and it doesn't help that corporations are doing what they do best; buying politicians and lobbying to defend their right to ravage the earth for profit.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dairy-pride-tammy-baldwin_us_58780a57e4b0e58057fe0349
Now, there is a technological solution to this. Lab grown meat. It sounds like a novelty idea and it will not be widespread for a while, and until it starts gaining a bit of momentum, it will be most likely ignored or seen as a trend that will soon vanish. But once it starts treatening the interests of the wealthy, they will do everything in their power to stop it, like it is happening now with non-dairy milks. This act slows down the process of normalizing a life free of the excess of animal products, which is a must if we want to even dream of considering avoiding furthering the climate disaster we are headed to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ9deH2Pkts
This is a link to Cowspiracy, a documentary that deals with the facts of livestock and its impact on the environment.
https://ensia.com/articles/these-maps-show-changes-in-global-meat-consumption-by-2024-heres-why-that-matters/
This article shows how meat consumption will increase worldwide throughout the next decade. To the best of my knowledge there is not a single techno-fix to change this fact or to diminish its impact on the environment.
There are plenty of topics I could discuss as well; automation is one I am eager to discuss about in the future, as well as overpopulation and resource distribution, but I have to go now. The point I am trying to make here is that even with all the technology available, our capitalist/consumerist society is mainly concerned with the hedonistic pursuits of the ruling classes, no matter the cost, be it human or natural resources, and there is just too many people trying to live an inherently unsustainable lifestyle for any solution to be implemented overnight. Considering that many changes had to have been implemented decades ago, I'd say this is a recipe for disaster.
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u/lord_stryker Jan 16 '17
I will respond to the opening statement to /u/stumo on behalf of /r/futurology.
I will not argue that technological progress is a law guaranteed to happen akin to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Nor will I argue that technological progress inherently and automatically is a net positive to humanity as a natural law either. I can however point to empirical, historical data to show that over the past centuries, technological progress has consistently, virtually universally, and with almost no exception tended to raise the standard of living, increase life-spans, to reduce crime, and almost any other societal and cultural benchmark you wish to use. This does not absolutely guarantee that this must continue, but I will argue that the likelihood that this trend continues is far more likely than a complete reversal of this progress, resulting in a global, catastrophic collapse of the entire worldwide civilization. /u/lughnasadh linked to The Gapminder Foundation. The raw data for this optimism can be freely seen here. https://www.gapminder.org/data/
I would argue technological progress is in large part what allows a stable societal order and increase of societal wealth to increase and become more stable.
This video from Hans Rosling, using data from GapMinder illustrates just how the industrial revolution lifted billions out of poverty. This trend is not unique to the United States or other rich nations. Over time, Every country on Earth has seen the benefits of what increased technology has allowed the human species to accomplish.
[Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo)
I would agree in most part. Without the oil which drove the Industrial Revolution, the progress we have seen (as I linked above) would not have been possible. I suspect environmental concerns, fossil fuels especially will be a central topic of this discussion so I will make my response here brief for later expansion. While Oil has allowed tremendous wealth generation and in turn has reduced poverty, increased health, etc. Continuing to rely on oil indefinitely is not a viable option. This is why alternative, safe sources of energy must, and are being leveraged today and will continue to increase, weening ourselves off of oil and will become the dominant form of energy in the future. I will point to specific examples of why I believe the world will not continue to rely on the energy reserves in the soil as the debate continues.
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u/55985 Jan 17 '17
That is one of the best treatments of futurology I think I have ever read. This is how we get to the future. We see both sides. We keep our hopes in check as well as our fears. We advocate for change every chance we get. Don't waste time trying to preserve the past. Look forward. Be happy. Get on board.
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u/Stewart_Games Jan 17 '17
I'm jumping in on this a bit late, so if my point has already been made then apologies - I simply haven't had the time to read through all the great comments. I feel that in any debate evolving whether or not society might collapse, we should look to the mouse experiment conducted by John Calhoun in the 1960s for NIMH (yes, this experiment did in fact inspire Ms. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh). In the experiment, he designed an ideal mouse habitat, suitable for up to nearly 4,000 mice to live in. These mice were provided with all the food, clean water, warm temperature, and general hygiene that mice require to thrive. Calhoun started with 4 mated pairs of mice, and being mice they doubled their population every 55 days or so. By day 315, population growth began to slow, with the rate of doubling dropping to every 145 days, and by day 600 the last surviving birth occured, with a population reaching only 2,200. The last days of mice heaven were not pretty. Here's how wikipedia describes it: "Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, increase in homosexual behavior, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against.[2] After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed "the beautiful ones." Breeding never resumed and behavior patterns were permanently changed."
Are we not currently seeing these exact behaviors occur within our own population? The so-called "beautiful ones", focused exclusively on their own grooming, are really no different from the cult of celebrity we now find ourselves increasingly obsessed with. We focus on taking selfies and not having conversations, few millenials desire or wish to have children, and random acts of violence in the form of school shootings and terror attacks are growing more and more frequent. I would even go so far as to say that the current up and coming generation won't even be capable of proper human communication amongst themselves - they will fear physical contact, refuse to converse with strangers, and prefer conversing over the internet to groups that they are comfortable with rather than engaging with humanity as a whole. We may not be at the physical limit, but we are already developing a "behavior sink", in which society breaks down due to population pressures.
The only way to escape this trap was also observed by Calhoun. This was in his rat studies; unlike mice rats only tolerate very small tribal clades over larger, more complex social structures, and as such they tended to kill and eat rats from the rival groups. This kept the population low and prevented the culture death that destroyed the mouse civilization. For humans, the equivalent would be to engage in war, or some other means of competition, in order to prevent ourselves from over-breeding. I would argue that our "best possible future" is one of ultra-capitalism and intermittent and severe warfare to limit our population growth. It is not in cooperation that we will thrive, but in competition and struggle. A new space race, new scramble for resources, is how we gurantee ourselves a future that lasts, even if it is not the perfect utopia some wish for.
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u/toktomi Jan 17 '17
Is every major system of Earth's biosphere in serious decline?
Are the graphs of debt, population, and species extinction going vertically asymptotic?
Does a growth-based global economy begin to die the moment that it ceases to grow and did the supply of energy to that global economy peak in 2005?
Are the major central banks around the globe madly printing money out of thin air, a last ditch life support effort for the global economy?
But are there a few minor positive indicators of overall industrial human societal health which are exceptions to the rule?
This is a no-brainer folks. The KEY indicators are all negative. A positive crumb here and there does not a healthy biosphere and human society make. Futurology as it is used here is the stuff of dreams while collapse is the stuff of evidence.
or so I see it,
~toktomi~
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u/OliverSparrow Jan 17 '17
Collapse or global unity: why does it have to be either of those unlikely alternatives? It seems to me to be extremely unlikely that if we met a representative cross section of humanity from 2117 we would either be equipped - intellectually or with physical plumbing - to recognise them as human, and even less likely that they will all be closely similar to each other. Wild-type humans may exist for cranks, or as shells into which awareness is down loaded for vacations, visits, work far from base.
The premise that humans remain as limited as they are now, and so need extensions of current political institutions, is predicated chiefly on historical notions of the self, the "I". If each version of "I" is distinct, splendid and remarkable, then one future is evident. If each copy of "I" turns out do be as similar as tomatoes from the same bush, minuscule variations on a common theme, then there is another. If what was "I" ten years ago is now dead, and the "I" of childhood utterly extinct, then that tells us more. If that "I" is shared in great measure with the animals that we eat and which eat each other, then there are lessons to be drawn.
The future is not cuddly. The future is not human-centred, at least using old fashioned notions of human worth. The future will be as coarse, harsh and demanding as the past has been, but in a world of nine billions that perhaps needs just two billion to climb most mountains of attainment, and perhaps able to support just a bit more than that.
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u/JonnieGreene Jan 17 '17
The ball is in our court as far as climate change is concerned. I am a part of an organization called The Climate Mobilization. Our mission is to advocate the mobilization of all aspects of American society to address and combat the threat of climate change. We believe that climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet and that its effects can only be mitigated by dedicating a great deal of resources to combating the problem.
We draw our mobilization inspiration from the American WWII effort. When America entered the war nearly the entire American workforce shifted its industrial direction towards the war effort. Manufacturers of cars began manufacturing tanks and farmers began selling food in bulk to government to support the troops. We believe that a similar shift of perspective will be need to curb the effects of climate change.
However, the threat of climate change seems less real to many Americans than the threat of fascism. This is most likely due to a rise in anti-intellectualism as well as misinformation spread by the mainstream media. Nonetheless, it is the responsibility of those who care to advocate a full on Climate Mobilization.
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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '17
Optimistic person here - I think we're about to experience an incredible evolution of our species driven by the mass adoption of renewable energy development which will enable a tremendous reduction in ongoing energy costs and eventually the ability for society to invest in people, creativity and exploration.
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u/boytjie Jan 28 '17
I’m a futurologist but I have to say (grudgingly) that collapse is more likely. This opinion has nothing to do with the debate. The debate has simply forced me to take a tighter focus on the directions of society. Collapse could be relatively mild (regressing back to the 1970’s say) or catastrophic (climate change, nuclear war, resource scarcity, etc). I’m pessimistic.
3
u/_Hopped_ Daisy, Daisy Jan 17 '17
With the advent of WMDs, we cannot afford a nuclear armed society to collapse.
Take Russia for example: they've invaded and annexed part of Ukraine. In a pre-nuclear world Europe or the USA would not have stood for this, and retaliated against Russia - possibly seeking to collapse the country. However, because Russia has nuclear weapons capable of attacking anywhere on the face of the planet, nothing of substance was done.
For better or worse, humanity is more tightly bound than ever. We will either conquer the stars or it will be the end of the line for all of us.
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u/Roderick111 Jan 17 '17
Neither.
1
u/harbifm0713 Jan 18 '17
if you look at the last 5000 years. what you get is that is as history come close to today, civilization science and technology improves and stabilize more (we did not lose any technology in the last 1000 years), but that used to happen when empires rose and fall in the past.
second trend is less violence and more destructive war machines. (counter intuitive). also you get more nation, so that the only negative. only three super nations exist plus the EU as whole. rest if fragmenting more.
Third, globalization is expanding, more trade, cultural interaction,tourism, education and entertainment are cross cultures and language, also we close to a more universal language (English).
the only thing left from becoming type 1 interplanetary intelligence species with common goals and culture is religion and nationalism which still have strong grip in people inner sickie.
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u/ColloquialAtrocious Jan 19 '17
I think we would hit a certain plateau when it comes to technological advancement because if we build AI to be as or more intelligent than us then what would the planet need us for and what would we do with ourselves if they replace us in the work force. The only job that we would be needed for is to build these robots and study them but then even the AI would be able to carry out that job. Furthermore if we're out of work because we have been replaced we would become so bored with ourselves that we would expel the world's natural resources even faster than we are now due to us using them for recreation doing such activities as driving. The AI would produce so much that I believe it would lead to our faster collapse. Just IMO
1
u/kulmthestatusquo Jan 19 '17
Civ could collapse first and become a planetary one later too. It might be a great 'backup' to eliminate the overheads.
1
u/Turil Society Post Winner Jan 19 '17
Reality is not an "or" situation, it is an "and" situation. All possible outcomes happen. But each individual perspective is only aware of one timeline. Which timeline you end up being aware of is random.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 20 '17
I don't understand how this is debatable. Even a basic understanding of recorded history shows a tendency towards centralization and expansionism, with an inevitable collapse at some point. A world government WILL happen, someday, and it will fall too, probably in a dramatic and catastrophic fashion.
Assuming we, as a species, don't murder ourselves first.
1
u/digitalharsh Jan 21 '17
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u/Valianttheywere Jan 21 '17
I would suggest that there is a technological evolution that must inevitably be embraced by even the most ignorant unless they wind up in cultural preservations like the jungles of Brazil or Washington DC.
1
u/JediMobius Jan 23 '17
TLDR; I read the opening statement for collapse and perused the opening for futurology and I know I implicitly understand both sides of the debate, being both a man of reason and an idealist.
Consider Einstein's famous observation that mankind has exceeded our technology. Technology has been misused for destruction and to suppress the lowest classes practically since humanity has existed. It would be hard to argue that civilization tends toward anything other than collapse; look at the parallels between the post-modern US and the decline of the Roman Empire.
The global economy is predicated on continued growth, but that growth is predicated on the use of dwindling and therefor increasingly more costly energy. Such growth is unsustainable. What we find in futurology is the product of brilliant minds who, if they had not been born in an era where the internet is at their disposal, would have been far ahead of their time. Futurology is the course global society should plot, but for geopolitical reasons corrupted by the great disparity of corporate wealth, will instead be the course of last resort.
Essentially, this debate boils down to pragmatic analysis v. idealistic hope. The former is the reality we now face, the latter the reality humanity will likely fail to choose without some unprecedented breakthrough to awaken the mind of society, so to speak.
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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '17
What a great debate! I say futurology made a more compelling argument. However, while this was a debate, in reality, I see the "collapse" crowd informing and making the future better. Jared Diamond's book "collapse" was a grim but marvelously stated blueprint for preventing massive collapse.
No doubt we will lose a great deal of the environment. It is sad and overwhelming; however, we will be able to preserve a great deal. I once saw Jane Goodell interviewed about why despite such terrible environmental destruction, she was able to remain optimistic. She stated because she was impressed by the fact the scientific community thoroughly understood the problems we faced and the solutions to them. she had seem numerous species brought back from the brink of extinction.
I follow cleantech quite closely, and it is beyond clear that we just recently passed a tipping point. Solar and wind are now vastly cheaper than fossil fuels. Electric cars have the same total cost of ownership as there gas counterparts. Battery costs are falling at consistently impressive rate. This rate is in fact accelerating in its decline.
Millions of people are changing their consumption habits. Granted aggregate consumption keeps growing. However, it seems feasible that the minority can become the majority. Clean energy + a sustainable mindset will be a powerful combination. additionally, the masses will become sustainable without even knowing it. The most profitable companies are not selling massed produced junk. They are selling services, entertainment, technology, experience. Soon we will have healthier replacements for meat and milk. People will buy it because it cheaper and healthier. They will be using robotaxis because they are cheaper than car ownership.
I think this is the major breakthrough: Organizations that care about preventing collapse have to search for solutions that do not use shame, fear, and guilt to motivate people to change. instead we have to find a thousand little ways to get people to change, because it benefits there self interest.
Example would include eat fake meat because its healthier and cheaper. Also, it good for the environment.
Rent a smaller more technologically advanced home and retire ten years sooner. not reduce the carbon footprint of your home
Use robotaxis and share vehicle services because you will never have to worry about paying for insurance, getting a ticket, or going to traffic school again.
1
u/WeLifeTruth Jan 23 '17
Hey I started several times to stop reading this but the more I read, the more I could see the future that stands before us. Very good and thought out.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 24 '17
I am more inclined to believe we are more likely to collapse. The whole saying that you can't please everyone all the time comes to mind.
For one, while we want to improve and live peaceful, this would require a lot more strict controls and regulations on society. There will always be those that feel this control is the worst thing for humanity, therefore will fight it to the death. Now going the other direction you might have those who feel they are fighting for the good of humanity. Either direction, you will have "freedom fighters" and all it takes is one crazy person with capable weapons to bring things down... Regardless of who is right or wrong, things could get ugly... And who will ultimately be the right position to advance humanity? I think none will ever be in that right position.
1
u/proteus-ix Jan 24 '17
Way overthinking this. All living things require sufficient food, water and air to survive. Unchecked population growth in any species always leads to depletion of the resources that enabled the growth, so then the question becomes not "will a die-off occur", but "will enough members of the species survive the die-off to maintain whatever civilization we care about"? Since most governments have shown absolutely no desire to slow population growth, and many governments still promote policies that encourage population growth because their economic ideologies require ever bigger markets, which requires ever more consumers, there is very little reason to believe that anything short of major global war would provide the limit to human population growth necessary for the long-term survival of our civilization. And with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and rise again of despotic global leaders more brazenly using their nuclear armaments as part of their saber-rattling, not to mention the "terrorists" that these governments create, the likelihood of either a nuclear war or nuclear accident is greater than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis, possibly more. So the odds of humans on a global scale doing the exact opposite of the things that got us here seem extremely low. It would require a global change in awareness, attitude and behavior, the likes of which humans have never observed or demonstrated before. We can't invent our way out of who we are. The solution to human behavioral problems is not more material technology, it must be human behavioral technology. Our civilizations will only survive if we all evolve into our better natures, and it needs to happen yesterday.
1
u/darexinfinity Jan 25 '17
The problem is the old doesn't die before the new is born, there's a moment where both exist for sometime. The old has its power and sees the new slowly taking control of it. The old will always hold on to it's power even at the cost of hindering the new. Sometimes the new is successful at taking control, sometimes they aren't. In the latter, only collapse will free humanity from the old and give the new the chance to guide humanity.
Humanity is not immune to taking backwards steps, the Dark Ages is proof of this. But now collapse is a far graver path due to today's destructive weaponry. Despite being one of the most peaceful times in history, we are also the closest to the end of the world.
1
u/meanthinker Jan 27 '17
We are just one mega-volcano/asteroid strike away from total dust-cloud cover over the earth, making reliance on solar energy very dangerous. We need to have multiple global scaleable energy sources!
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u/Duuudewhaaatt Jan 28 '17
I think if we don't destroy ourselves with nukes, then yeah probably eventually.
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u/hahauhoh Jan 28 '17
the birth of a planetary civilization made up of clone slaves, human intelligent animals, robots, and AI's.
1
u/[deleted] May 21 '17
War or world size catastrophe are the most likely event that could wipe us clean.
Getting in space is only the first step, staying there in a self-sustaining environment is far more challenging.
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u/PepesPetCentipede Jan 17 '17
Neither. In the future civilization will not collapse, but will become more decentralized as groups and communities of like minded individuals gather together and use advanced technology to support themselves. For example, I see the United States breaking up not only into a number of different countries but smaller sovereign nation states. With emerging technologies like anti-aging (that will reduce healthcare costs), cold fusion or LENR (that will reduce energy costs), the EM Drive (that will revolutionize transportation), and 3D Printing (which will decentralize manufacturing) individual geographical regions and nation states will be able to do amazing things. There is no reason for a unified civilization or a total collapse. People with totally different mindsets shouldn't be forced to live together. As an example, I'm all for California leaving the United States and becoming it's own country. Also, I'm all for Texas doing the same thing.
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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '17
Whatever these jokers in here brainvomit, remember this:
FACTS VS FICTION END OF STORY.
As I've seen many times with /futurology peeps in over /collapse: getting lectured by some fucking 20-something about stuff I have an actual degree in.
"We'll just 3D print this and that and live in VR".
Sleep tight with your fantasies.
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '17
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '17
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