Anthropocene Calamity, part 11: Humanity can survive!

This is the last part of an 11 part series. For the introductory post to set the tone, please see Holy shit things are super bad.

Okay, this is the end of my series! Nothing new in this post, I’m just going to sum up the situation as succinctly as possible.

I think there’s a high likelihood that without spending military-level budgets on the problem and without changing the very nature of our economy, things will look like Mad Max levels of civilization collapse within the next 10-20 years. I think this is a data driven opinion, and I’m not alone in having it. The climate situation, and our civilization’s resource use overshoot, is real and extremely severe. Our global conversation is so far behind where the data currently is that looking at realistic outcomes feels crazy. Doing our best to avoid Mad Max levels of disaster on both a personal and global scale should obviously be everyone’s top priority, right now. I wish I meant this with any hyperbole, but I genuinely don’t. Humanity’s very survival is on the line. We need to be raising every fire alarm in every conversation. We need to apply every position of leverage we each have.

Even though we could still win the war, no matter what we need to prepare for the consequences of the battles we have already lost. While we dramatically cut emissions, we must use the time and resources we have to coordinate a just and equitable migration out of areas becoming uninhabitable to areas that will be somewhat spared. Thanks to climate science, we have the benefit of foresight! If you like classic sci-fi, now is the time to set up Asimov’s Foundation, except on a less-bad place on Earth instead of Terminus. Even if you don’t like sci-fi, we’re literally journeying to an alien planet together. Let’s pick the right locations on the planet and get ready. You can do this without waiting for the government to do something. Let’s move.

Once you know the magnitude of our predicament, it can be pretty disheartening and have a pretty large mental health cost. But community helps! We’re all in this together, and finding others who care and are working to make a difference really helps take a huge load off mentally. Take some time to grieve, and then let’s grow these movements together!

While there are many potentially predictable outcomes, Rome didn’t fall in a day. We still have time to act and make a difference before we kill all the plankton and all of our oxygen generation is gone! With effort and luck, we could parachute out of our current civilization gracefully towards all working on each other’s family farms or something else fun and awesomely solarpunk.

So let’s do that, and make sure you’re raising hell the whole time!

We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness.
It saves us from ambiguity.
It has an answer for every question:
“There’s just no point.”
Hope, on the other hand, is messy.
If it might all work out, then we have things to do.
We must weather the possibility of happiness.
- Jarod Anderson

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Anthropocene Calamity, part 11: Humanity can survive!