became a science fiction writer. Itâs a position from which, ironically, Iâve had more influence on actual scientists than I ever did as an academic â admittedly a low bar to clear.
And weâre expecting the exhaustion of all arable land around 2050, which is actually kind of moot because studies from institutions as variable as MIT and the University of Melbourne suggest that global civilizational collapse is going to happen starting around 2040 or 2050
Weâre headed for the cliff, and not only have we not hit the brakes yet, we still have our foot on the gas.
no-technological-solution problem.
technology is not going to save us, real or imaginary.
Sal and I have adopted a position that we should not be talking about sustainability, but about survival, in terms of humanityâs future.
As evolutionary biologists, we understand that all actions carry biological consequences. We know that relying on indefinite growth or uncontrolled growth is unsustainable in the long term, but thatâs the behavior weâre seeing now.
Herbert Spencer was instrumental in convincing most biologists to change their perspective from âevolution is long-term survivalâ to âevolution is short-term adaptation.â
Now, Homo sapiens of some form or another is going to survive no matter what we do, short of blowing up the planet with nuclear weapons. Whatâs really important is trying to decide what we would need to do if we wanted what we call âtechnological humanity,â or better said âtechnologically-dependent humanity,â to survive.
We think that, in fact, most of humanity is committed to business as usual,
why it is that human beings are so susceptible to adopting behaviors that seem like a good idea, and are not.
One is that human beings really like drama. Human beings really like magic. And human beings donât like to hear bad news,
There seems to be a mismatch within our brain â this is an ongoing sort of sloppy evolutionary phenomenon. So thatâs why we spend so much time in the first half of the book talking about human evolution, and thatâs why we adopt a nonjudgmental approach to understanding how human beings have gotten themselves into this situation.
âWeâre hoping that people will begin seriously thinking that our short-term well-being is best served by thinking about our long-term survival.â
Everything that people did at any point in time seemed like a good idea at the time;
our way to survive better in the short term, ironically, is now based on a better understanding of how to survive in the long run.
oh my goodness, the pool is drying up! We should probably get those fish to evolve lungs.
The Democratic Party is a party of big cities; they donât want to lose population. The Republican Party is the population of the rural areas; they donât want people from the cities moving into their areas.
âYou have to understand that in the American situation, the two greatest obstacles to rural revitalization and climate migration are the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
This is why Joe Bidenâs, you know, âthe climate president,â but heâs not doing nearly enough. Not even close.
Set up solar panels and the utility will charge you for âinfrastructure maintenanceâ because by opting out of the grid, youâre not paying âyour fair share.â Drive an electric vehicle and you might be subject to an additional âroad taxâ because, by not paying for gasoline, youâre not paying for road work. The system actively works to make these initiatives fail.
We are not allowed to beat up the cops; the cops are allowed to beat us up.
Sal and I do not think such local initiatives will be easy or that they will mostly succeed â at least not until things are so bad that they are the only workable option.
if we recognize trouble early enough, we can opt to begin surviving now. At the same time, during climate perturbations, lots of organisms do not make it, so we need as many individual efforts as possible to increase the chances that someone will survive.
50 percent of human beings now live in large cities in climate-insecure places, is for those people to redistribute themselves away from climate-insecure areas, into population centers of lower density,
What people need to do is have a commitment to survival, decide what their assets are and their local carrying capacity, and then go about doing the right thing as quietly as possible.
Generally speaking, the larger the population, the smaller the number of people who actually control the social control institutions.
So you have five different language groups in the city, but somehow it turns out that the people in charge of the religion, or the banks, or the governance only represent one of those language groups.
in retrospect, as a result of too many people, too high a population density. So you live in circumstances where people cannot identify the sociopaths before theyâve taken control.
Not post-apocalyptic: post-collapse.
the biosphere would be best served if humans were maximally separated from the wild lands.â
large cities as places of refuge and safety during a crisis.â Just putting up my hand, I can vouch for that, having written my share of apocalyptic sci
large cities as places of refuge and safety during a crisis.â Just putting up my hand, I can vouch for that, having written my share of apocalyptic sci-fi.
all of human history says that whenever we interact with nature, we pretty much fuck it up.
What has been the actual historical record of humans for the last 3 million years?
cities are basically wasteful, unsustaining, pestholes of disease and so on â Daniel Brooks: That benefit a few people a lot, and treat the great majority as a disposable workforce.
we still are dealing with a planet in which 94 percent of mammalian biomass on this planet is us and our livestock, so how does that kind of biomass integrate intimately with what remains of our natural environment without just crushing it
Homo sapiens doesnât crush the biosphere. Homo sapiens interacts with the biosphere in ways that alter it.
This is the neo-protectionist language â that any change is going to collapse the biosphere.
Iâm also increasingly sympathetic to the human extinction movement. I think most people are hoping for recovery in less geological terms, timescale-wise.
We know now enough about evolution to be able to alter our behavior in a way thatâs going to increase the odds that weâll survive.
whatâs going to happen in 3 million years â youâre right: Thatâs not important. But what happens tomorrow is not important either. Whatâs important is what happens in the first generation after 2050. Thatâs whatâs important.
