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    Re: ‘We’ve created a civilisation hell bent on destroying itself – I’m terrified’, writes Earth scientis Archived Message

    Posted by dovetailjoint on June 3, 2019, 3:09 pm, in reply to "‘We’ve created a civilisation hell bent on destroying itself – I’m terrified’, writes Earth scientis"

    I think we have to acknowledge, out of necessity, that the world isn't run for the benefit of the many or even the majority, but for the benefit of the few. This means we don't live in democracies, not really.

    Civilization is a way of living, and this goes back for thousands of years, back to the Egyptians, Chinese and Persians, that supports the rule of the few over the many. That the people at the top of the social and economic pyramid have always lived lives that were vastly more pleasant and luxurious than the vast pyramid of people below them ever did. Polarisation of wealth and power is nothing new, and today it's increasing and widening to levels last seen in the Middle Ages.

    What this boils down to is the following. That, given, society and the economy is primarilly configured for the 1% and 'controlled' by them and their narrow interests... the techosphere will continue to expand and growth with it, until the effects of climate change begin to really hit the lifestyles of the 1%... hard. By then of course, it will all be too late to radically change course and hundreds of millions will have died and the environment will be totally ####ed as will the climate, with horror to follow, our great civilisational legacy to all life on Earth... mass extinction. Hopefully the Earth won'g be turned into Mars, but some advanced life will go on, only without us.

    But, perhaps there's light up ahead! The Great Positive. And that's because there's a good chance that our economy will collapse before climate catastrophe really kicks in, as the sea levels rise and the great coastal urban areas fail their stress tests. Then the optimism the markets rely on, the idea that the future will make everything alright and the mountain of debt will finally get paid ect... will be crushed by reality. Perhaps our best hope is the total collapse of market confidence in the future triggered by threat of rising sea levels. This leads to a semi-permanent economic slump with hundreds of millions unemployed across the globe. How will people in the great cities of our urbanised civilisation live then? Without the technosphere how will we all live? Do we just return to the Middle Ages or something worse? We don't control the system anymore, but neither can we stop it from collapsing brought down by its own weight, which is a kind of optimism, no?

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