by DesuMaiden » Wed 02 Mar 2016, 20:24:31
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Timo', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', 'A')s much as I would find the death of the majority of the human population an unpleasant and undesirable experience, I think the collapse of industrial civilization might be a good thing because humanity has already gone so far into overshoot that it isn't even funny.
Honestly, I don't even care if our species is facing near-term extinction because the Earth will go on without us until the Sun becomes a red-giant and destroys the Earth. The Earth and the rest of the biosphere will probably be better without humanity.
Well, that changes everything! Thanks Desu. I'm feeling much better now.
In all honesty, I'm right there with you. It is an unpleasant dichotomy, but from all archeological records, earth was much healthier before humanity entered the scene.
Of course, the 7 billion plus humans now on Earth will not go away without a fight. They will consume almost every last bit of energy before they finally go extinct. We will probably wipe out most of the terrestrial vertebrate species before we finally become extinct.
In fact, 97% of terrestrial vertebrate biomass is already comprised of human beings and our domesticated animals. Wild animals comprise of no more than 3% of that biomass.
Humanity is like a cancer. We have now run out of space to spread, so we will eventually kill the biosphere. And with that, we go as well.
The Anthropocene era will be leave a mark on the fossil record, no doubt. In a relatively short amount of time geologically-speaking, we have changed the surface of the planet beyond all recognition.
I don't see human extinction as more than a few generations away.
With human overpopulation, resource depletion and catastrophic climate change ready to inflict the mortal blow on humanity, get ready to prepare for the worst. But it was fun while it lasted because we've created more material-wealth than people of previous generations could ever imagine
As many people on this site have already realized, no combination of renewable/alternative energies (biofuels, hydrogen, solar, wind and etc) or technology can prevent humanity from collapsing because we've depleted so many essential natural resources that no technofix can replace the resources that we used up and wasted.
Even if we could find a new energy source to replace fossil fuels, we will probably end up expanding our population even more (due to the human nature to continue expand its scale whenever extra energy is available). And then deplete other essential resources that cannot be replaced. Thereby causing our demise at a later time.
The best you can do is join VHEMT (Voluntary Human Extinction Movenment), and voluntarily reduce global human population. So that when SHTF, we can reduce the amount of suffering people endure. But that's unlikely to happen because due to human nature, we will continue to grow the population, until the resource-base is exhausted. And then the population will have to rapidly diminish.
Every 24 hours, the global human population increases by over 200,000 people. It is estimated that if business-as-usual continues, at our current rate of population growth, we will reach 9 billion people by 2050. I doubt we can support our current population, let alone 9 billion plus people.
Eventually the population bubble has to pop. As Al Bartlett once said, "the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function". Seems like that is the case, otherwise, human population wouldn't be increasingly as rapidly as it is.
History repeats itself. Just everytime with different characters and players.