Bread and Circuses on Nostr: Dire predictions from Umair Haque about where our civilization is going... ...
Dire predictions from Umair Haque about where our civilization is going...
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Phase One: Our living standards peak, after *centuries* of rising. They begin to fall — but it’s a slow, gentle descent, like a glider. Right now, you can maybe keep up, if you struggle — the way most are. You can try to maintain some semblance of yesterday’s living standards by going deeper into debt, or adjusting your consumption basket, or changing your habits here and there, like shopping at cheaper places. But prices are skyrocketing, inflation’s ultra high, interest rates are crippling. We hit our limits of supply at a civilizational level, but demand of course keeps rising.
Phase Two: We cross the threshold of planetary tipping points, on a mega-scale. There’s plenty of evidence that’s already happening, for many of them — from the Amazon, to the boreal forests, to the polar ice. When we cross that threshold, things get much worse. Warming speeds up. That’s when things really begin to fall apart. Inflation. Shortages. Interest rates. Bank failures. Water and food systems just… fail. Living standards begin to crash, hard and fast. That gentle, glider-like descent becomes more like a jumbo jet going into free fall. Where do you keep your money if you don’t know which bank will fail? What do you do when there’s just no food on the shelves? Where do you live if nobody will insure entire regions and states?
So what happens in Phase Three? It’s anybody’s guess, really. Probably, at that point, democracy’s a distant memory, the world’s made of nations which are more like fortresses, mega-weather decimates them regularly, rendering any kind of industrial age living standards a luxury only for the giga rich, and the rest live something much more like people did in the early industrial age. Think of Dickens novels and you get the picture. Then cross them with Orwell and Arendt, because remember, there’s no more democracy. Then cross them with Atwood, because the fanatics take over. And that’s being kind, I think.
That’s a lot. Don’t focus on Phase Three. That’s when we’re deep, deep into Extinction — and through inaction and folly, we’ve let things spiral out of control. Right now? Our job is still trying to prevent Phase Two, runaway warming, tipping points really being hit any harder than they are currently. If we do that, there’s something to salvage. If we don’t, though — well, that’s where we are now.
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The above is just a brief excerpt from a long, convincing, and disturbing essay. I hope you'll read the whole thing.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.is/E4XoV#selection-943.0-971.1
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Collapse #Extinction
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Phase One: Our living standards peak, after *centuries* of rising. They begin to fall — but it’s a slow, gentle descent, like a glider. Right now, you can maybe keep up, if you struggle — the way most are. You can try to maintain some semblance of yesterday’s living standards by going deeper into debt, or adjusting your consumption basket, or changing your habits here and there, like shopping at cheaper places. But prices are skyrocketing, inflation’s ultra high, interest rates are crippling. We hit our limits of supply at a civilizational level, but demand of course keeps rising.
Phase Two: We cross the threshold of planetary tipping points, on a mega-scale. There’s plenty of evidence that’s already happening, for many of them — from the Amazon, to the boreal forests, to the polar ice. When we cross that threshold, things get much worse. Warming speeds up. That’s when things really begin to fall apart. Inflation. Shortages. Interest rates. Bank failures. Water and food systems just… fail. Living standards begin to crash, hard and fast. That gentle, glider-like descent becomes more like a jumbo jet going into free fall. Where do you keep your money if you don’t know which bank will fail? What do you do when there’s just no food on the shelves? Where do you live if nobody will insure entire regions and states?
So what happens in Phase Three? It’s anybody’s guess, really. Probably, at that point, democracy’s a distant memory, the world’s made of nations which are more like fortresses, mega-weather decimates them regularly, rendering any kind of industrial age living standards a luxury only for the giga rich, and the rest live something much more like people did in the early industrial age. Think of Dickens novels and you get the picture. Then cross them with Orwell and Arendt, because remember, there’s no more democracy. Then cross them with Atwood, because the fanatics take over. And that’s being kind, I think.
That’s a lot. Don’t focus on Phase Three. That’s when we’re deep, deep into Extinction — and through inaction and folly, we’ve let things spiral out of control. Right now? Our job is still trying to prevent Phase Two, runaway warming, tipping points really being hit any harder than they are currently. If we do that, there’s something to salvage. If we don’t, though — well, that’s where we are now.
_______________________
The above is just a brief excerpt from a long, convincing, and disturbing essay. I hope you'll read the whole thing.
FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.is/E4XoV#selection-943.0-971.1
#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Collapse #Extinction