When we can see into the abyss, we must make changes, change our direction, speed, or we will go in.
Our mortality is a major abyss. Overeating is only one way. Plankton die off is the other.
Population/Co2 production is another. As the plankton die off, the sunlight produces heat rather than Co2 buffering through photogenesis. The higher Co2 is killing the plankton, so we have gone to the edge of the abyss, and some have looked over and know what is there. If a major correction is not made in the next few years, we are in for heat like we have never known. The middle hot dry latitudes will be in for drought, and major population die off. Oh well.
The earth is only able to handle 1960 level population and Co2. Until this is a well known, obvious to everyone, few will make the changes necessary. What are those changes: Birth control, education, lowering of expectations, acceptance of the reality of life in the present conditions, a cleaning up of morality and of living in general, a clear understanding of virtues, and living by them, acceptance of facts, benefits and limits, downsides of our technology.
As the Co2 continues to clime, as the ocean buffering is dyeing off, and drought is everywhere inland, we will experience water shortages, food shortages, unrest, unemployment, and much political change as society devolves. Oh well. The spoils of war will go to the survivors, whoever they may be.
What is the timetable: Ocean collapse underway now, complete by 2050. Drought started 2015 and continues. The technology to fix this is not ready, but we can turn off non-essential stuff. Agriculture (organic carbon capture) should be untaxed and encouraged. Soil building should be the agricultural past time, as should water capture so that short cycle rain can happen, but the drought will still be with us in many parts of the world.
When we recover in a few hundred years to about the 1960 population.... there is room for a novel or two there.
But what do I know?
The scariest movie I've ever watched was the documentary "Collapse" by Michael C Green... Easy to write him off as a tinfoil-hat nutball, esp since he succumbed to despair & committed suicide a few yrs ago, but he made many similar compelling points (more focused on collapse of society following depletion of crude oil reserves)
ReplyDeletebased on the book by Jared Diamond. I have not read that one, but have watched his Ted Video on Why do societies collapse. Also have read Guns, Germs, and Steel.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that people will not change until the conditions gets real bad. Solar energy technology is not advanced enough yet, not economical enough yet, nor is electrical storage.
I think that heat, shortage of O3 oil, and shortage of protein as the oceans die is going to be the collapse sequence.
Thanks to Google, I immediately found FREE PDF of Diamond's "Collapse" book - already skimmed a few chapters, prob will purchase on Amazon (I think listed in paperback for about $10)
ReplyDelete