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Buckle Up. Climate Change Could Destroy Half Our Economies
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
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They're also very likely underestimating or only looking at a fairly short time window. Worse yet, climate change and its results are only effects of a still deeper cause: using a very temporary surplus of non-replaceable resources, we overshot the planet's ability to indefinitely support human life, culture, economy, technology, everything human -- by nearly an order of magnitude. As we continue to refuse to reduce unsustainable rates of non-renewable resource consumption, we will cross scarcity thresholds that are expected to result in about 90 percent (or more) population attrition; not in a short time but still within just a couple of generations. It's nearly impossible to imagine any economy beyond very local economies surviving the transition.
Edited to add: It's unfortunate that the vast majority of coverage of our modern predicament in widespread sources of news and commentary focuses only on the climate change part of the situation. Because that strongly implies to most people that there could be solutions which would avert or greatly mitigate the coming (and ongoing) disaster, if only we can reduce or even reverse human contribution to climate change quickly enough. But in fact that is a luxury we do not have, not even nearly. We are so far into overshoot that nothing we can do -- even if everyone were on board and like-minded -- can now prevent the attrition that lies ahead, coming at us through any combination of low birth rates, starvation, war, disease, weather events and 'disasters', and failure of infrastructure including health care.
For those who believe it's as simple as accomplishing a green energy transition, there's ample information online from reputable sources that explains how we don't actually have that outlet, as much as we certainly wish we did. The current population is essentially 90 percent made out of and enabled by cheap fossil fuels in ways that go far beyond just energy. Even waking up tomorrow with a perfect solution to fusion energy would not save us from the coming nitrogen shortage and a long list of other irreplaceable current materials and practices.
Great write up. It should have been the emergency alert in the states today lol.
When you look at most reources you will find that the richest 10% make up about half of the global resource consumption. That is not just true for energy, but also for things like food due to meat. At the same time there is a minimal base for resources and we are going to adapt to new circumstances. Especially with resource constraints not being a total cut, but a slower process, this is bound to happen.
It becomes even more striking, when you look at how resources are disributed globally. Brazil for example is in a decent state. Able to provied enough food for its population and has a good bit of renewables. Obviously poverty and crime is common today, but it is certainly a workable position. Europe as a whole might be able to just cut down and survive for a bit. Nearly 29% of primary energy of the EU come from low carbon sources and the EU is food independent, with massive overconsumption of energy and food. So cut backs and some adaption might make it work.
Poin is that it is that a 90% death rate is very likely massivly overstated. Some regions will be in trouble, but not everybody will be.