Collapse

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This is the place for discussing the potential collapse of modern civilization and the environment.

Collapse, in this context, refers to the significant loss of an established level or complexity towards a much simpler state. It can occur differently within many areas, orderly or chaotically, and be willing or unwilling. It does not necessarily imply human extinction or a singular, global event. Although, the longer the duration, the more it resembles a ‘decline’ instead of collapse.

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The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major ‘Population Correction’ Is Inevitable (www.mdpi.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (5 children)

The industrial agriculture that supports our current population is entirely dependent on fossil fuels.

At some point humanity is going to have to face life without fossil fuels, whether that be by a far too late attempt at curbing climate change, or due to climate change/water shortage related reductions in population that reduce production, or just due to dwindling EROI as we have to drill in more difficult places to keep the oil pumping.

A study in the research journal Nature Geosciences concluded that fertilizer made from synthetic nitrogen and ammonia was responsible for feeding more than 50 percent of the global population in 2008 (Kinder Morgan, 2020).

Here’s that study: https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/wps/cato/0028024/f_0028024_22818.pdf

Seems pretty clear that if the use of a finite resource is the only way we can sustain the population - we’re overpopulated. Not to mention that said finite resource is also actively killing us and making agriculture more difficult due to extreme weather.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You have a reasonable argument, but then the solution should be to stop all fossil fuel consumption except for the production of life-sustaining products, like food.

According to this link, food production accounts for only 26% of total carbon output. There we go, problem solved. We can cut total carbon output by 74% and still produce the same amount of food.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I didn’t say there was a solution. Stopping fossil fuels, along with plummeting quality of life, means less global dimming, which would accelerate our impending BOE, and the loss of albedo from that would further accelerate warming. We’re way past any possibility of a solution.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

Hahahahaha oh man you are just mentally imprisoning yourself for no reason

Resource consumption is not a linear function of population you complete dunderhead 🤣

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