First off, before I get started with the heavy stuff, I hope that you and yours have had a wonderful holiday season and I wish you a Happy New Year! OK, now onto less celebratory and more serious material.
There are people who want to cling to civilization because this is the only life they’ve ever known. Then, there are others who realize that this way of life CANNOT be continued, period. Attempting to continue this set of living arrangements WILL cause the extirpation of our species, along with countless other organisms. Even if we attempted to end civilization right now, there is no guarantee that there is a tomorrow for our species. Let’s say an EMP takes out the electrical grid in the USA, which proceeds to end industrial civilization as we know it. Over the following months, billions of people would die from starvation, disease, predatory behavior, and other issues caused by collapse. Climate change would possibly be stymied for a short period of time by the massive amount of aerosols released from burning of wood and plastics caused by millions of people trying to stay warm and cooking any available food, but once these aerosols are washed out of the atmosphere, climate change would be supercharged with the additional carbon dioxide produced along with an absence of aerosols from fossil fuel burning (the aerosol masking effect). Ultimately, we’re in a double bind, which means that most people will probably decide to live in as much comfort as possible until the end. I have little doubt that some people will go against the grain and follow a more ecological path, especially those who understand ecological overshoot. Trying to predict a precise outcome, of course, is a fool’s errand; too many interconnecting and interacting processes are involved.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
