sparks wrote: ↑Sat Apr 13, 2024 5:35 pm
Not nearly enough. If the current shit is allowed to continue, it will be the ruin of our cute little civilization, followed eventually by the rest of our species.
I don't see it.
Climate change is the most popular existential threat these days. However, when that subject came up on these pages, I read the papers. In one, "existential" was redefined to mean, basically, dramatic change. There were all sorts of things in those papers that basically said, "Our data doesn't show it, but based on some level of uncertainty it might be even worse than that, so anything could happen including extinction." It wasn't even the "our data shows a 1% chance of extinction." form. It was more of the "Our models are unclear, so we can't use them to prove we won't go extinct" form.
The very worst of them would show massive climate change, resulting in a great decrease of arable land, resulting in an inability to sustain current population. This would result in wars which would kill even more people than the starvation. And......
If there are wars going on, it means people aren't exiinct. Billions of people could die. Then what? There would be a billion people left and they would have a civilization. And even a high tech civilization at that. It would suck during the phase where we transition from eight billion to one billion. That would definitely be bad. But neither civilization nor humanity will be destroyed. I don't believe seven billion people will die or that our population will decrrease to one billion by the end of this century, but even if we accpet that very, very, worst case possibility, humanity still exists, still has a civilization, and still has access to video games.
So, I agree that we need regulation of capitalism. We need better environmental protections. Producers should not be allowed to let pollution run rampant in the name of economic growth.
But.....where are the worst polluters? China.
Is capitalism really the problem?
