Technology

We're past the point of averting the climate crisis. We're now at the point where any effort to mitigate climate change, to reduce emissions, is damage control. But there's little doubt of a global population correction, likely in my lifetime, and probably defining the latter half of my grandson's life.

The risk for human extinction due to ecology collapse is no longer insignificant. More likely we'll be reduced tens of thousands. Civilization is going to collapse, and all that we do today, culture wise, is unlikely to survive.

Others have thought about this more than I. A good deep dive is The World Is Not Ending by Sophie From Mars (on YouTube) who points out that we're more inclined to imagine the end of the world than we are the end of capitalism. She imagines two outcomes; one in which we embrace mutualism sooner and one in which we hold onto our capitalist values and grind industry until the last possible moment.

I think the general response of the international community to Greta Thunberg's call to action demonstrates pretty well what the climate response movement is up against: The aristocrats and plutocrats that control our industries and nations will not listen to anyone that doesn't drop on them with nine feet of rainfall and 115 MPH winds. And even then they haven't budged.

Now from my perspective, it's not a matter of willpower, but whether our species is capable of organizing a response to the climate crisis when it threatens established edifices of economic and political power. All signs say that we just have not worked out a sociological method to change minds who would rather die and see their own species go extinct before giving up their own wealth. It's a fox and grapes situation, and may well doom the human species.

The human animal has demonstrated itself unable to be able to choose reason when wealth and power are on the line, and then once we pry it from the cold dead fingers of our elites, we can't trust anyone else who has it momentarily not to abuse it. And that is the great filter that will kill us.