[Kosh]

Recently ran across this.


It's a sort of docudrama about the life of a fictional person born in 2009, about how climate change is going to cause drought, famine, pandemics, eventually leading to a total collapse of all civilization and a new dark age with everyone living in medieval like conditions.

Spoiler:

Frankly so much of it smacked of fear mongering. I recognized a couple of the experts they brought in, namely Howard "Y2K" Kunstler and Richard "Pol Pot" Heinberg. Both of these clowns are well known for Peak Oil doom mongering and making all kinds of bogus predictions and disbelief in any sort of new technology or investment in existing alternatives  to fossil fuel based transit. Personally I don't think the end is nigh and while there certainly are challenges, thankfully we have the industrial capability and the capital to build stuff like desalinization and water pipes for the southwestern cities, medicine and medical procedures to limit the potential death toll from pandemics, etc, etc. The whole fights over gasoline thing in the next 10 years? Electric cars are becoming available now, as well as electric agricultural machinary. I think you see where I'm going with with, we already have most of the solutions, it's just a question of economics. If there are gas shortages, then people will switch to electric. Simple as that.

[Flipside]

This clip has been blocked in my Region....

[Kosh]

Youtube alternative

[Flipside]

Heh, you know, before YouTube, people like that just used to stand around in shopping centres with sandwich boards... The Internet gives them a veneer of legitimacy, but you don't have to scratch far below the surface to see the sandwich board is still there.

They start off with the wrong concept, they think humanity designed a civilisation and then went and got the resources to build it, which is entirely the wrong way round, civilisation has constantly changed and shaped itself around resources, and, at the dwindllng of a resource, then some societies may suffer, but humanity as a whole will adapt to the new environment, and will maintain a civilisation, because that's our nature.

Too many of these prophets of doom confuse lifestyle with civilisation, our lifestyle may well change emphatically in the future, the whole 'throw-away' generation is going to have to unlearn the culture it was raised in, I think we are going to have to re-learn respect for longevity in our products, and how to maiontain them, I think we are going to have to discover new power sources, but then, it has been historically shown that mankind is only really at its most inventive when there is an overpowering requirement to be so, at this moment in time there isn't.

To put it bluntly, civilisation is what it is defined as by it's members, it cannot 'fall' as such, it sounds to me like this video is far more worried about the loss of luxuries in their own country than a global catastrophe.

[Kosh]

Originally the video aired on ABC, a major american tv station.

[Flipside]

Doesn't really matter where it aired, most TV stations are just as bad as the sandwich-board people, doesn't make the thing any more accurate

And considering how many TV companies make their money by advertising, it's not, on reflection, difficult to see why they wouldn't want people to stop living a life of 'buy it, use it, bin it', they also are making a fortune from that mentality

[Bobboau]

yeah, but ABC was around "before YouTube".

[StarSlayer]

Recently ran across this.


It's a sort of docudrama about the life of a fictional person born in 2009, about how climate change is going to cause drought, famine, pandemics, eventually leading to a total collapse of all civilization and a new dark age with everyone living in medieval like conditions.

Spoiler:

Frankly so much of it smacked of fear mongering. I recognized a couple of the experts they brought in, namely Howard "Y2K" Kunstler and Richard "Pol Pot" Heinberg. Both of these clowns are well known for Peak Oil doom mongering and making all kinds of bogus predictions and disbelief in any sort of new technology or investment in existing alternatives  to fossil fuel based transit. Personally I don't think the end is nigh and while there certainly are challenges, thankfully we have the industrial capability and the capital to build stuff like desalinization and water pipes for the southwestern cities, medicine and medical procedures to limit the potential death toll from pandemics, etc, etc. The whole fights over gasoline thing in the next 10 years? Electric cars are becoming available now, as well as electric agricultural machinary. I think you see where I'm going with with, we already have most of the solutions, it's just a question of economics. If there are gas shortages, then people will switch to electric. Simple as that.

Nice to know all the 1st world top tier nations have their escape plan.  To bad for all the high population poor countries though that really haven't been contributing to a potential ecological crisis but won't have the resources to cope  

[Kosh]

Nice to know all the 1st world top tier nations have their escape plan.  To bad for all the high population poor countries though that really haven't been contributing to a potential ecological crisis but won't have the resources to cope Tongue  

The fact that they have allowed themselves to breed out of control actually has contributed to the crisis. Slash and burn farming as well as cutting down forestland to make way for more unproductive subsistence agriculture have had big effects. Trendy as it is to blame everything on western countries, the fact remains we are not the only culprits here.

[Flipside]

Nice to know all the 1st world top tier nations have their escape plan.  To bad for all the high population poor countries though that really haven't been contributing to a potential ecological crisis but won't have the resources to cope Tongue 

The fact that they have allowed themselves to breed out of control actually has contributed to the crisis. Slash and burn farming as well as cutting down forestland to make way for more unproductive subsistence agriculture have had big effects. Trendy as it is to blame everything on western countries, the fact remains we are not the only culprits here.

True, but it does also need to be borne in mind that at least in some areas, that's because a Religion based in Rome tells them that contraception is bad, even if it might save their lives. I've got nothing against Roman Catholics, but that will always confuse me.

[StarSlayer]

To be a total jackass I would wager without the West's influence, subjugating their people, exploiting their resources and exporting the above mentioned religion many of those nations probably wouldn't be in the state your blaming them for.  Though I admit that's stretching the argument for it's own sake and alas I stray from the topic. 


Canada enjoy being an independent nation, since ounce you become the bread basket due to climate change we're coming for you, Canada!   

[Kosh]

To be a total jackass I would wager without the West's influence, subjugating their people, exploiting their resources and exporting the above mentioned religion many of those nations probably wouldn't be in the state your blaming them for.  Though I admit that's stretching the argument for it's own sake and alas I stray from the topic.

Africans were busy enslaving and subjugating each other long before the Europeans showed up. As for exporting religion? As ****ed up as christianity is, often times it can't compare with the crazy **** they already believe. Before colonization, except the North Africans, the others were largely living in conditions that resembled the stone age. Africa today in many ways now largely resembles the 18th century in Europe. They are still centuries behind, but even without colonization they would still have had a population explosion like today.

[Flaser]

Heh, you know, before YouTube, people like that just used to stand around in shopping centres with sandwich boards... The Internet gives them a veneer of legitimacy, but you don't have to scratch far below the surface to see the sandwich board is still there.

They start off with the wrong concept, they think humanity designed a civilisation and then went and got the resources to build it, which is entirely the wrong way round, civilisation has constantly changed and shaped itself around resources, and, at the dwindllng of a resource, then some societies may suffer, but humanity as a whole will adapt to the new environment, and will maintain a civilisation, because that's our nature.

Too many of these prophets of doom confuse lifestyle with civilisation, our lifestyle may well change emphatically in the future, the whole 'throw-away' generation is going to have to unlearn the culture it was raised in, I think we are going to have to re-learn respect for longevity in our products, and how to maiontain them, I think we are going to have to discover new power sources, but then, it has been historically shown that mankind is only really at its most inventive when there is an overpowering requirement to be so, at this moment in time there isn't.

To put it bluntly, civilisation is what it is defined as by it's members, it cannot 'fall' as such, it sounds to me like this video is far more worried about the loss of luxuries in their own country than a global catastrophe.

I beg to differ: A civilization *can* fall. It's the people who will adapt and make a new one, not necessarily the civilization. Read this book:

Joseph Tainter - The Collapse of Complex Societies

Let me redraw what collapse entails: it's not widespread destruction, but sudden, unmanageable degradation of complexity. Many complex civilizations existed throughout history and several of them finally collapsed. Ours is no different, even with our technology. The reason is, the causes of collapse are not mere factors of resources and capabilities, but of organization and complexity as well.

A society *can* become too complex. When a such a society faces a challenge it tends to create even more complexity to meet it.... however after a given level, no new output will come from further complexity and it will eventually be a net-drain.

[Kosh]

So you think climate change and peak oil will be the end of our civilization?


I've heard this type of argument before, especially with regards to easter island.


There's also been other prophets of doom like mike ruppert and orlov, and these guys have been wrong over and over again, yet people still take them seriously.

[Flipside]

Also, any society that is succesfull will pass on those memes that worked to other cultures that they dominate. Even if the core of the original Empire falls, very, very much of the essence of what made it successfull in the first place will remain. The mistake people make is to assume that a 'Civilisation' is similar to an 'Empire', even historians don't always make the distinction properly. A Civilisation is an ongoing process, constantly changing and shifting and adapting, an Empire is like Milestone in a Civilization, it where a vast collection of memes come together and something happens.

That's why the English Empire was actually a mish-mash of Romano-Greek, European and even Far-Eastern cultures.

An Empire or two might crash, if all the Oil ran out, then certainly, most large Empires would fall, but the memes that make a working society would continue, they might struggle to adapt to the change, but adapt they would, they've been doing so for thousands and thousands of years, and those Empires that arise would be based on the societal memes, or Civilisation of its members.

[Mongoose]

I claim the Lolcats Empire!

[cloneof]

And I the Time Lord Empire!