{"id":33914,"date":"2018-05-02T07:02:33","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T12:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33914"},"modified":"2018-05-02T10:24:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T15:24:55","slug":"extinction-vs-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33914","title":{"rendered":"Extinction vs. Collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Extinction vs. Collapse<\/a><\/h3>\n

Does it Matter?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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Climate twitter \u2013 the most fun twitter \u2013 has recently been relitigating the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope. It was sparked by an interview<\/a> in The Guardian<\/em> with acclaimed scientist Mayer Hillman. He argues that we\u2019re probably doomed, and confronting the likelihood that we\u2019re rushing toward collective death may be necessary to save us.<\/p>\n

The headline alone provoked a lot of reactions, many angered by the ostensible defeatism embedded in Hillman\u2019s comments. His stated view represents one defined camp that is mostly convinced of looming human extinction. It stands in contrast to another group that believes human extinction is highly unlikely, maybe impossible, and certainly will not occur due to climate change in our lifetimes. Collapse maybe, but not extinction.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s more right? Let\u2019s take a closer look.<\/p>\n

First, the question of human extinction is totally bounded by uncertainty. There\u2019s uncertainty in climate data, uncertainty in models and projections, and even more uncertainty in the behavior of human systems. We don\u2019t know how we\u2019ll respond to the myriad impacts climate change is beginning to spark, and we don\u2019t know how sensitive industrial civilization will be to those impacts.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t really know if humans are like other apex predators highly sensitive to ecological collapse, or are among the most adaptable mammals to ever walk the earth. One may be inclined to lean toward the latter given that humans have colonized every ecological niche on the planet except Antarctica. That bands of people can survive in and around deserts as well as the Arctic as well as equatorial rainforests speaks to the resilience of small social groups.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Extinction vs. Collapse Does it Matter? Climate twitter \u2013 the most fun twitter \u2013 has recently been relitigating the debate between human extinction and mere civilizational collapse, between doom and gloom, despair and (kind of) hope. It was sparked by an interview in The Guardian with acclaimed scientist Mayer Hillman. He argues that we\u2019re probably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[19435,150,287,20015,20014,6917],"class_list":["post-33914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-activist-lab","tag-collapse","tag-extinction","tag-mayer-hillman","tag-samuel-miller-mcdonald","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33916,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33914\/revisions\/33916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}