It Doesn't Matter: Civilisation Is Collapsing

Plastics are low quality products intended to give people cheaper access to historic luxuries and everyone knows it on some level, so ultimately my prediction is that as energy becomes cheaper and more abundant we will move back to natural or seminatural materials which, combined with a decreasing steady-state population, should extend the runway on oil.

Since you can grow chicken in a lab now, why not research growing synthetic ivory to make combs, for example?

Since glass bottling was mostly abandoned over the weight of transport and brittleness, why not move back to glass and make it tempered glass as energy becomes cheap?

We know how to make quality things, what's lacking is the input energy to democratize quality. Hence, plastic.

Then, there are energy intensive but available pathways from the carbon in the atmosphere back to the input chemicals to petrol products.

I just don't buy civilizational collapse.

Basically all of this is based on the scientific principle of “eh it just seems like it should be like that”, which I’m not a huge believer in. Like;

  by the time children being born today are in their eighties, if they live that long, a drastically reduced world population will almost certainly be living in tiny villages 

That is an incredibly specific and short time frame for resource collapse. Citation needed that we’ll “run out” of petrochemicals by then, assuming we can’t make new ones from biomass or recycling landfills. Eventually it does boil down to this directly;

  Even with miraculous new batteries that run on plentiful chemicals11 the whole system — all of its roads, wires, fertilisers, switches, sealants, pipes, rails, processors, diodes, engines, turbines, cartons, and so on, and on, and on — requires resources which we do not have. It is nothing short of a belief in magic to assert otherwise.

The citation is to some vaguely sketchy — but real and credentialed - scholar’s website. I haven’t read all his papers, but based on a quick scan, I feel like a lot of them contradict “we’re all gonna die for sure no matter what” on a basic level. Big claims require big evidence… perhaps the linked video interview is convincing, but I sorta doubt it. I’m gonna go on believing in the scientific consensus as I see it, personally; we face long term challenges and omnipresent existential risks, but we are in no way “collapsing” beyond a hope of salvation.

Despite my disagreement with the premises, I must admit that they’re certainly a powerful writer! Two side notes that made me chuckle: 1. That coronavirus wasn’t “real”, and 2. That Greta Thunberg, the teenager, is bribing climate scientists.

Yes, maybe, but we don't know until happens. Similar to Schrödinger's cat, we won't know until we get there. It's easy to be a pessimist but you gain nothing by following that train of thought. I'm one who thinks that it's best to be an optimist since you lose nothing but gain a whole world by working with others towards the best outcome.

Doomsayers are a regular part of society. Be careful who you listen to and who you believe.

Btw, even if civilization did collapse, it wouldn't be the first time. It's happened many times throughout history. Yet, we are proof that it's not the end.

I recommend you don’t commit suicide based on claims that have 100% predictive failure.

But, that’s just me…