Is Industrial Society on the Verge of Collapse?

[discocrisco01]

Source: Common Dreams

In his 2005 bestseller Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, geographer Jared Diamond focused on past civilizations that confronted severe climate shocks, either adapting and surviving or failing to adapt and disintegrating. Among those were the Puebloan culture of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, the ancient Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica, and the Viking settlers of Greenland. Such societies, having achieved great success, imploded when their governing elites failed to adopt new survival mechanisms to face radically changing climate conditions.

Bear in mind that, for their time and place, the societies Diamond studied supported large, sophisticated populations. Pueblo Bonito, a six-story structure in Chaco Canyon, contained up to 600 rooms, making it the largest building in North America until the first skyscrapers rose in New York some 800 years later. Mayan civilization is believed to have supported a population of more than 10 million people at its peak between A.D. 250 and 900, while the Norse Greenlanders established a distinctively European society around A.D. 1000 in the middle of a frozen wasteland. Still, in the end, each collapsed utterly and their inhabitants either died of starvation, slaughtered each other, or migrated elsewhere, leaving nothing but ruins behind.

The question today is: Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?

Diamond identified three key indicators or precursors of imminent dissolution: a persistent pattern of environmental change for the worse like long-lasting droughts; signs that existing modes of agriculture or industrial production were aggravating the crisis; and an elite failure to abandon harmful practices and adopt new means of production.


https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/is-society-on-the-verge-of-collapse?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=CommonDreams%2Fmagazine%2FLatest+Opinion

[jmbar2]

1. Good article

Elites have extracted all the excess out of the environment and the people. We are sucked dry and left holding the bag.

Eat the rich.

[MomInTheCrowd]

6. Well put.

I’ll bring the salt….

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

10. Feeds the rich while it burys the poor

(sorry, saw Guns n Roses Friday)

[Volaris]

18. Off topic,but how was it (were thinking about tickets for next month)?

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

19. Just, wow

My teenage sons play the guitar, and this was almost less GnR than it was about Slash.

Long concert - 3 hrs, no breaks, and some new releases from the day before.

Guns N’ Roses has been solid musically since original members guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan rejoined the band in 2016. (That’s also the last time they played in Pittsburgh, when they visited Heinz Field for the Not in This Lifetime tour.)

Slash, who turned 58 last month, unleashed fiery solo after solo throughout the night, with “Double Talkin’ Jive,” “Chinese Democracy” and “Mr. Brownstone” among the highlights. Decked out in his trademark top hat and sunglasses (even at night), Slash’s guitar theatrics/heroics propelled the band through a three-hour spin through all their hits.

McKagan served as a steadying force, helping to fill in the gaps on vocals. The rest of the band — guitarist Richard Fortus, drummer Frank Ferrer, keyboardist Dizzy Reed and keyboardist Melissa Reese — kept the music sounding like classic Guns N’ Roses. The stage set-up was fairly straight forward, with two giant video screens flanking the stage
With only three albums by the classic band lineup, their debut “Appetite for Destruction” appeared prominently Friday, with eight of 12 songs played. Other highlights included “You Could Be Mine,” “Estranged” and “Civil War,” which featured Rose wearing a T-shirt with a Ukrainian flag. (That was just one of at least 10 minor wardrobe changes for Rose.)

Of the band’s 27 songs played Friday night, five were covers. Of those, “Live and Let Die” by Wings and “Slither” by Velvet Revolver — which included Slash and McKagan — were the high points, while Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” seemed like it went on a bit too long. McKagan sang lead vocals on the Stooges’ “T.V. Eye,” and, for the U.K. Subs’ “Down on the Farm,” Rose busted out a faux British accent, much like he did on “The Spaghetti Incident?” album version.

[Volaris]

20. Very good info, thank you. We will now return you, to your original thread.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

21. Their opening acts are awsome too

Last edited Sun Aug 20, 2023, 03:00 PM - Edit history (1)

Carrie Underwood sings Motorhead's 'Ace of Spades'
Alice n Chains
We saw the Pretenders

[NewHendoLib]

2. I'm just glad I'm 67 instead of 27.

[Goodheart]

5. Are you crazy?

[Doc Sportello]

7. No, the opposite of crazy

If the question is serious, I would say it's sanity to grow up and live an adulthood where the environment was hospitable rather than what's coming to those who are 27.

[NewHendoLib]

8. Indeed. I've loved my life - still do, because I don't watch TV

So can enjoy my wife, dogs and cats, hiking, etc

I am not optimistic for our species due to dangerous cult formation.

Even our 2 daughters tell us how lucky they think we are.

[Doc Sportello]

13. I'm 69 and things weren't always easy growing up

We had the Cold War and Vietnam and assassinations, etc. But the 60s and 70s saw a flowering of culture that was historic. Reaganism and Friedmanomics began a descent that helped cover up the climate warnings of Gore and scientists, and led us to where we are today.

People can mock the ideals of the 60s and childhoods that included for many of us riding our bikes everywhere and playing outside all day in the summer. But like you, I wouldn't trade what I had growing up for all the smart phones and Instagram posts and climate denialism of today and growing crises of the future.

[NewHendoLib]

15. Perfectly stated. Thx!

Just went out and picked 125 lbs of tomatoes. Gazpacho, sauce and canning this afternoon. Ran 2 area tomato tastings this week. No politics discussed. Just friendship and community. Life can be great!

[Mr.Bill]

47. I'm 70 and feel the same way. n/t

[CrispyQ]

63. Back when we still valued community.

The digital revolution hasn't helped our sense of community any, isolating us from our real time life, letting us virtually hang out together with like minded people while sitting at home alone. It's easy to fall for us vs. them when you never see or talk to "them."

[honest.abe]

12. I hear you but I worry about what my six year old will have to deal with.

He is a very happy kid now now thinking life is fun. It will be sad when he realizes it isn’t.

[Kaleva]

27. What are you doing to help him adapt?

To what climate change will bring?

[honest.abe]

51. What would you suggest??

[Kaleva]

57. First, find out reputable experts predict will happen in your area

If it's really bad where you are now, you could build up finances to assist him and his parents in moving.

Do some research on how climate change will impact individuals and our society and help him aquire skills and knowledge that will help him deal with that

Encourage and assist him in learning basic skills. Carpentry, electrical, bushcraft, animal husbandry, gardening and food preservation, first aid and such

[honest.abe]

58. Good grief.

There is no way to predict what this climate crisis is going to do this planet. Even if you could it’s unlikely you could actually prepare for it adequately. Are you a doomsday prepper?

[flamingdem]

48. Agree wholeheartedly

We were lucky to live in sweeter times.

[NickB79]

3. Yes. That's an easy question

The planet has more CO2 in the atmosphere than any point in the past 4 million years.

The last time it was this high, forests grew in Antarctica, alligators lived in Minnesota, and seas were 75 FEET higher.

8 billion humans can't all survive in this new planetary condition.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

24. The only reason 8 billion can live today

is only from oil.

That's it.

No oil, no extra 6.5 billion people, and oil is running out

[hunter]

30. The problem is that fossil fuels ARE NOT RUNNING OUT.

I used to be extremely optimistic about "peak oil." Bring it on, the sooner the better!

Alas, we now know there's more than enough coal, gas, and oil to completely obliterate the natural world as we know it.

I consider natural gas the greatest threat to our civilization, mostly because people think it's "clean" and it's an essential component of their renewable energy fantasies.

I'm not a person who thinks, "Oh, well, billions of people are going to suffer and die and it probably won't be me, so whatever. That's just the way it is."

We know what we have to do, so let's do it.

Be an example of what your want your neighbors to be.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

32. but peak "cheap" oil is running out

Even Shell said they're well past peak production.

NG is still 1/3rd the CO2 emissions, so better than coal.

Coal, yeah that's the biggie... couple hundred years of reserves on that one.

[NickB79]

36. NG is worse than coal

The escaped methane from production and shipment offsets it's lower CO2 emissions.

And the sulfur emissions from coal, while causing acid rain, also helped cool the planet by reflecting solar radiation.

Natural gas doesn't get a free pass.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

41. Not at all

escaped methane from NG is a small fraction of what is going out by nature - even coal and oil production release methane as a byproduct.

#1? 40% are natural emissions, next is agriculture including meat production and rice production.

Biggest problem is the permafrost melting - no stopping that.

I guess what I'm saying is that we must have an energy source, again, aside from nuclear, NG is the best there is of the bad apples.

[NickB79]

45. I'm comparing NG directly to coal. Nothing else

And due to it's high rate of methane escape, converting from coal to natural gas actually makes climate change worse, as crazy as that is, because we have been greenwashed into thinking it's cleaner.

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/14/1187648553/natural-gas-can-rival-coals-climate-warming-potential-when-leaks-are-counted

This analysis compares gas and coal at varying methane leakage rates. We find that very small methane leakage rates from gas systems rival coal's greenhouse gas emissions," said Deborah Gordon, co-author of the analysis and a senior principal at the environmental group RMI, formerly Rocky Mountain Institute. Scientists from NASA, Harvard University and Duke University also contributed to the paper.

That finding holds even if leaks amount to a tiny fraction of the methane in the country's gas production and supply system, as low as 0.2%, according to the researchers. The paper highlights recent surveys that found leak rates far above that, of "0.65% to 66.2%."

The study takes into account all stages of production and uses for both gas and coal in making the comparison.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

49. Wow, thank you! I spent the last half hour running through the paper

It's a whole other aspect to the puzzle.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ace3db

For example, reducing US gas leakage system-wide from 3% to 0.2% can reduce as many GHG emissions as removing 40% of the cars off America's roads [42].

So methane leaks are about 3% in the US according to the paper, and the break even with coal is about 5%. Broadly, I think regulation and heavy penalties for leaking NG should come into play. I mean, they can monitor it from satellite, so let's get some DAs involved.

As an aside, W PA had a huge problem with acid rain from high sulfur coal plant from Ohio that was killing the trout streams and the environment. Not too keen on coal

As an aside, a recently released paper showed a very high correlation with NG fracking and cancer here:

Joint Pitt, state studies find link between proximity to fracking and increased cancer rates, asthma attacks, low birth weight
While the studies, commissioned in 2019 to research communities near fracking in Southwestern Pennsylvania, did not identify the cause of the health problems, they did conclude that there were numerous correlations.

One study found that children living within a half-mile from a fracking well had a higher chance of developing cancer. The results showed that the chances of a child developing lymphoma “were 5-7 fold greater when living within 1 mile of a well compared to children with no wells within 5 miles.” The study concluded that those living closest and among the “highest density” of fracking activity were at the highest risk for developing the rare cancer.

https://www.publicsource.org/fracking-proximity-cancer-asthma-southwestern-pa-pitt-wolf/

[hunter]

40. People know coal is bad.

That doesn't make natural gas any less dangerous.

If all the oil production in the world literally came to a halt in the next decade, no more oil in the tap, we'd simply switch to fuels made from coal and natural gas, and those fuels wouldn't be significantly more expensive than fuels made from oil.

Ordinary gasoline is, even today, a largely synthetic product, not a natural distillate of petroleum.

The only solution to this problem is to ban fossil fuels entirely. That's inevitable.

Or we can wait until our civilization becomes so decrepit from global warming that large scale fossil fuel production and global distribution is no longer possible because the tools are no longer available.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

42. I've an open mind

but as a chemical engineer who worked in the field, do you have a reference for this ?

Ordinary gasoline is, even today, a largely synthetic product, not a natural distillate of petroleum.

A vast majority of gasoline and other fuels are distilled from crude.

And I have to disagree - if there were no oil tomorrow, all of human society would come to a screeching halt. There are a great many real-world necessities based on oil, and oil alone.

[hunter]

52. Heavy crude oils, which are essentially gooey tar, are cracked and hydrogenated to make gasoline...

... and other fuels.

Lighter crude oils are subject to similar refinement to produce more valuable products than their raw distillates.

Gasoline hasn't been a simple distillate, the elementary science book description of oil refining, for a long time.

It's not this:



It's cat cracking, hydro cracking, and a whole lot of further chemistry to maximize final product value.

You know that. The days when the Nazis or apartheid South Africa were struggling to make gasoline out of coal, or the Australians gasoline from natural gas, are long past. The technologies for synthetic fuel production are mature and well established and commonly used in everyday production.

If we knew the oil was going to run out in ten years we'd be hell-bent on replacing it with natural gas and coal and we'd certainly succeed.

It's too bad we don't feel the same urgency about global warming. How horrible do things have to get?

As I say here frequently, like it or not, nuclear power is the only energy resource capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely, which is something we must do.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

54. But we're not talking gasification

but real distillation plants, and run on oil - and everyone wants anything but heavy Venezuelan oil, or tar sand from Canada that do need additional processing. Without oil, we simply cannot produce what that current need is

...and nuclear, I can't be more of an advocate on that.

I mean, a single aircraft carrier has a reactor that could power over a million homes for what, a decade, replacing almost 7 tons of CO2 and particulate and acid rain per year, and we've successfully ran those for what, 50 years?

Westinghouse just started an AP1000 reactor down south that could provide 1 million homes with power, but the Chinese already bought, what, 4? We're way behind.

[CrispyQ]

4. Yes, we're on the verge of collapse & no, our elites won't perform any better than past elites.

This time is different cuz we're changing our environment to the point where it's inhospitable to human life in many areas or at times of the year. There is no new frontier to exploit. Six billion miracles is enough. I bought that bumper sticker sometime around the turn of the century.

[HardPort]

9. Diamond's Gibbons-esque myopia hamstrings his scholarship.

Chaco society didn't collapse. Its people moved on to new pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico, and they are still there today and could tell Mr. Diamond all about where Chaco and Mesa Verde fit into their history and cosmology if he cared to know. But, Eurocentrism.

Same goes for the Maya. Despite the massive population collapse that followed the introduction of Afro-Eurasian pathogens, and despite centuries of colonialism, the Maya are still there, severely marginalized by modern governments but still keeping alive ancient histories and technologies in which Mr. Diamond really isn't interested if it doesn't help him build the nonsensical "Rise and Fall" narrative he inherited.

And Norse Greenland. Really? That was just a colonial outpost that was really never going to last. But saying it marked the end of Norse civilization is like saying Athenian civilization collapsed because of its failed colonization project in Sicily.

Fact is, civilizations and empires don't fall. Not even Rome. The empire went through centuries of change until it was no longer recognizable as what it had been, but it didn't fall. Eddie Gibbons just couldn't fit all that in the title of his book.

[Doc Sportello]

14. Chaco and Mayan societies as they were did collapse

The people of those societies are still here but the ruins in the Americas and the fact that their civilizations no longer contained large urban centers that ruled those areas is factual. True, rise and fall isn't accepted anymore but to say their empires or that of Rome didn't fail is not true. They changed but losing their political and economic power, as well as much of their knowledge, is a collapse of those societies.

[hunter]

31. Who will remember the conflicts of GREAT MEN if civilization collapses?

That's what this has always been about.

Mock them all.

The actual foundations of our civilizations will be found elsewhere.

[Recycle_Guru]

50. this word "fall"--I do not think it means what you think it means

[HardPort]

60. Derp. Simp for the patriarchy elsewhere. "Fall" is a Eurocentric narrative. Period.

Please visit us here in the pueblos and we will do our best to disabuse you of your colonial mindset.

[Recycle_Guru]

61. an amusing take

just laughing at the clearly obvious "fall" of Roman empire during the period around 450 CE when it was sacked by European invaders. Romans continued to live and have a civilization, but the city and empire had most definitely fallen from once great heights.

[ananda]

11. Yes. Human society is generally collapsing everywhere.

I could go on a long screed about greed and exploitation,
but I've already beaten that horse to death.

[NewHendoLib]

16. Greed, lust for power, narcissism doing us in.

[Sky Jewels]

17. I hope humans will stop most breeding.

Let the population dwindle down drastically. That's a much better scenario than mass starvation, etc.

I bred and produced two humans, but they were born when there was still a lot of hope that we could/would get a handle on global warming. My son has said he will not have children. I don't know about my daughter. But it just seems so unfair and almost cruel to a baby to bring it into the world now.

[ananda]

22. Overpopulation leads to chaos and collapse.

A way long time ago, maybe in the late seventies or
early eighties, I read an article by a scientist who
studied what happens when population reaches a
certain density according to the sise of the area.

I forget the percentage, but the studies showed
human psychology breaking down, leading to
violence, disorder, and chaos.

We are there.

[Sky Jewels]

23. Sadly, I think you're right.

There's too much competition for all resources, and a handful of billionaires are making billions of people scratch and claw each other over the crumbs they allow to fall to the ground.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

25. Alternate view here

It's not (just) the billionaires that are killing the planet, it's the countries with exploded populations that they can't sustain without oil and food.

[Sky Jewels]

33. Yes, that too.

[MineralMan]

26. More likely it will slowly fizzle out over multiple decades.

Nothing sudden.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

28. It's generational, complicated with climate change and peak oil this time

I'd say this body of work best describes what's going on now.

Against this background we have the publications of Neil Howe’s “The Fourth Turning Is Here” and Peter Turchin’s “End Times.” Both books affirm the idea that we are in the midst of a major crisis and use history to predict how the crisis might be resolved. Both authors had predicted, by a decade or more, that a period of great crisis would arrive around 2020.

Turchin is a former theoretical biologist and a self-described specialist in “cliodynamics,” a variety of Big Data analysis that makes predictions by applying mathematical models to a huge database of prior historical crises stretching back several millenniums.

He proposes a cyclical scheme of societal rise and subsequent disintegration based on a “wealth pump,” whereby elites get richer and ever more entrenched. Inequality, if left unchecked, grows to the point that the system fragments and has to be rebuilt from the ground up. Such is the situation today in America, where oligarchy has become so extreme that a huge redistribution of power needs to take place.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/books/review/the-fourth-turning-is-here-neil-howe-end-times-peter-turchin.html

[Hortensis]

29. An antidote argument to end-times despair and fearmongering:

The organizing subject is also intense worry arising from big change -- the biggest: climate change. But this is the antithesis of "Common Dreams" pro-socialism political agitation. No illiberal, anti-establishment agenda, no political buzzwords at all, just offers a big perspective to view the present and future more clearly from.

From Ezra Klein's "Your Children Are Not Doomed"

Over the past few years, I’ve been asked one question more than any other. It comes up at speeches, at dinners, in conversation. It’s the most popular query when I open my podcast to suggestions, time and again. It comes in two forms. The first: Should I have kids, given the climate crisis they will face? The second: Should I have kids, knowing they will contribute to the climate crisis the world faces? ...

But one thing I’ve noticed, after years of reporting on climate change: The people who have devoted their lives to combating climate change keep having children. I hear them playing in the background of our calls. I see them when we Zoom. And so I began asking them why.

“I unequivocally reject, scientifically and personally, the notion that children are somehow doomed to an unhappy life,” Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at Columbia, told me.

To bring a child into this world has always been an act of hope. The past was its own parade of horrors. The best estimates we have suggest that across most of human history, 27 percent of infants didn’t survive their first year and 47 percent of people died before puberty. And life was hard, even if you were lucky enough to live it.

As Dylan Matthews writes at Vox:

What today we’d characterize as extreme poverty was until a few centuries ago the condition of almost every human on earth. In 1820, some 94 percent of humans lived on less than $2 a day. Over the next two centuries, extreme poverty fell dramatically; in 2018, the World Bank estimated that 8.6 percent of people lived on less than $1.90 a day. And the gains were not solely economic. Before 1800, average life spans didn’t exceed 40 years anywhere in the world. Today, the average human life expectancy is more like 73.

No mainstream climate models suggest a return to a world as bad as the one we had in 1950, to say nothing of 1150. Was the world so bad, for virtually the entirety of human history, that our ancestors shouldn’t have made our lives possible? If not, then nothing in our near future looks so horrible that it turns reproduction into an immoral act. ...

I worry, writing this, that it will be taken as a dismissal of the suffering climate change will unleash. It’s not. An appreciation of how bad our past was should deepen our fury at how recklessly our future is being treated. We have done so much to build a sea wall between us and the pitiless world. We have done so much to make the future better than the past. To give back any portion of those gains or even to prevent the progress we could otherwise see is worse than a tragedy. It is a crime. ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/opinion/climate-change-should-you-have-kids.html

We all have before us the duty to the present and future that people have always had. That's not changed.

[NickB79]

34. The first mistake is trusting climate models

No mainstream climate models suggest a return to a world as bad as the one we had in 1950, to say nothing of 1150

That's because NONE of the climate models are accurate. All of them are woefully optimistic.

How do we know this? Because we're seeing effects today that weren't predicted by the models for another 50 years. 110F in Washington State? A month of 100F in Arizona? The Canada wildfires? Record low Antarctic ice? 100F ocean water off Miami? None of this was predicted until after 2050.

The models didn't have positive feedback loops incorporated either, so the carbon from thawing tundra and burning forests wasn't accounted for. Gigatons of carbon will vent from previous carbon sinks now.

The models assumed we'd be working to reduce fossil fuels use by now. Instead, we burned record amounts in 2022.

That's the nature of climate modeling though. You always err on the side of caution with regards to onset of climate chaos for fear of being called an alarmist. Then another climate researcher uses that research as a data set for their work, and another one after that. All being conservative in their estimates. It snowballs into an absolute joke.

I'd suggest you look at the outlier models at this point, and prepare accordingly.

[misanthrope]

56. Yes, it is part of the responsibility in science

They were simply being conservatively prudent to avoid the appearance of bias.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

39. I like Ezra, but the thesis is wrong on one, big way

cheap oil is the only reason we had an explosion of the global population from about 2 billion, to 8 billion in the past 100 years - all now wanting to live (consume) like the US.

The sole reason for that is cheap oil. With it's energy density dwarfing solar and every other renewable (unless you want to count nuclear), there is no way the 6 billion lives have enough energy to live on. Remember, petroleum is essential for medicines, consumer products, and especially fertilizer since we've killed the soil with agent orange and "modern" agriculture practices that destroyed the farmlands around the world - and is absolutely dependent on fertilizer.

I'm not at all so optimistic

[Hortensis]

44. He's NOT wrong in reporting that all the climate experts he's

been speaking with for year believe this world will continue to be worth bringing children into.

Open your mind and consider they might be right. They're hardly ignorant of what you speak of, after all, and most have participated in well funded studies and written books on various critical aspects.

Perhaps one should not weigh political arguments designed to push an ideology over the fund of knowledge experts in many nations have accumulated.

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

46. But the numbers don't add up

Was the world so bad, for virtually the entirety of human history, that our ancestors shouldn’t have made our lives possible? If not, then nothing in our near future looks so horrible that it turns reproduction into an immoral act. ...

The entirety of human history didn't have this many mouths to feed except in the past 100 yrs - like exponentially more mouths to feed. This is due to cheap oil. Of course there will be kids, but whether you should have an increasing population, yeah, that should be a big issue.

Will Western society be better off (especially the US with our resources), sure, but there's no doubt APAC and Africa are so overpopulated that if oil were to go away, you may think twice before having kids.

[Hortensis]

53. They do for experts in the related fields. No one should

read "Common Dreams" to become informed about various achievable paths industrial society may take in future. Publications of political organizations promote their ideological beliefs and growth of their power, literally their reason for political existence.

Undermining support for genuine actions that can be taken by existing governments is terribly wrong and has caused enormous damage to humanity, from both right and from left. Perhaps more so from the left because of greater power to subvert belief in the organizations working to do do it.

[PufPuf23]

35. Human Industrial Collapse is a matter of time now at tipping point. nt

[BannonsLiver]

37. Sorry to disappoint

But given the average age of posters here it’s unlikely anyone will be alive to see it.

[Kennah]

38. Turn out the lights ... the party's over

[BlueIn_W_Pa]

43. In the US, near term, probably not

It's APAC and Africa that will bear the brunt of the pain

[Kennah]

55. I suspect

That remote, undeveloped areas will be able to adapt more easier than the U.S.

[onenote]

59. Nope.

At least not unless and until someone defines what they mean by "on the verge". In the next 5 years? 10? 20? 50? 100? 200? 1000?

[elocs]

62. Imagine...for some young people alive today, these will one day be the good old days

compared to what they will be experiencing 40 or 50 years from now. That's a scary thought.

I wonder, if in the time of the collapse and fall of the Roman Empire there were any who anticipated or thought it would happen?
I, too, am glad I'm an old, retiree now (in great health) because being a realist, I don't believe the nations of the world are ever going to have a "come to Jesus" moment where they work together so solve any problem of global proportions. They will adopt the GOP motto: YOYO (You're On Your Own).

Will the last one left please turn out the lights or snuff out the torches as the case may be.
The Earth will abide, even as a barren rock hurdling through space. Maybe someday evolution will occur again and next time result in truly intelligent life.

[hunter]

64. It's likely my ancestors hated the Romans and celebrated the collapse of their empire.

Who will cry for the fossil fuel billionaires when their empires fall?

Nobody.

All the suffering and dying will be blamed on them.