Is Industrial Civilization Headed for "Irreversible Collapse"?

[Jagger69]

I was thinking about posting this in the "Politics & Religion" section but, since that portion of the forum seems to have devolved into a full-scale flame-fest of the highest degree, I'd like to elicit some opinions from those other than the usual suspects about this article. Of course, anyone is welcome to comment. However, PLEASE don't hijack and morph this thread this into another endless diatribe of personal-insult gibberish. That shit gets SO tired I can't even tell you. Anyway....thanks in advance for your cooperation!

Now, before you dismiss this article as some trumped-up and politically-driven prognostication of a doomsday scenario, consider the various statistics on display at this site:

http://www.poodwaddle.com/Stats/

Given our present set of circumstances including the continued (and necessary) exploitation of the planet's finite natural resources, the ever-expanding population, ongoing and possibly irreversible environmental damage, economic crises, disease, pestilence and famine along with the ever-increasing imbalance of proportional wealth between the "haves" and "have nots"....I think the present model is unsustainable. If so, it is imperative that we make a plan to alter the present course by whatever means possible. Personally, I don't see that happening. Too many people with power are not going to be willing to relinquish control for something as noble as the common good....at least not until it is too late.

Regardless....this makes for interesting (and frightening) speculation.

A new study partly-sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The independent research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The HANDY model was created using a minor Nasa grant, but the study based on it was conducted independently. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:

"... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels."

The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."

Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.

Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharrei and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:

".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."

Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites."

In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual' despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)."

Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:

"While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."

However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.

The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth:

"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."

The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately.

Although the study based on HANDY is largely theoretical - a 'thought-experiment' - a number of other more empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance - have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen years. But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very conservative.

Source is here:

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...sation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists

 

[BlkHawk]

These types of things used to concern me. As I have gotten older, I find myself deciding it isn't my fight. I have no children, nephews, or nieces, in fact my brother, sister and I are the last generation of our family. I have nothing against making needed changes, and won't stand in the way of them, however I'm not leading the fight. I and the people I care for will be dead before most of this stuff comes to pass.

Selfish I suppose, but honest, I simply no longer have the drive to butt heads with deniers. Plus if these changes do come about within my lifetime, I belong to the economic class that will be rising up, and slaughtering the wealthy

 

[Mayhem]

These types of things used to concern me. As I have gotten older, I find myself deciding it isn't my fight. I have no children, nephews, or nieces, in fact my brother, sister and I are the last generation of our family. I have nothing against making needed changes, and won't stand in the way of them, however I'm not leading the fight. I and the people I care for will be dead before most of this stuff comes to pass.

Selfish I suppose, but honest, I simply no longer have the drive to butt heads with deniers. Plus if these changes do come about within my lifetime, I belong to the economic class that will be rising up, and slaughtering the wealthy

Yep. I made the decision a long time ago to never have kids and I'm happy with it. Once it sunk in that colonizing other planets is never going to happen I became convinced I'm right to not set up my progeny for failure.

The advent of nuclear weapons screwed everything up. There will be an eventual World War III and 80% of the population will have to be offed for the other 20% to have a chance of rebuilding anything worth having. The problem is that nukes could wipe out everyone entirely and convert what little is left to irradiated ash with a 50,000 year half life.

We insist on killing our oceans. With the exponential growth of the world's population, we actually need the oceans to hold more fish than they did 200-500 years ago. But we're going the other way, with no end in sight. Since we insist on being this stupid, again a major percentage of the human population is going to have to go so that the oceans can replenish themselves.

Sooner or later we're not going to have enough farmland, not enough livestock and not enough resources to go around. Then it's Mad Max time. But it will happen after I'm gone. As this board proves, there's no cure for stupid. I give the Earth a 50/50 chance of being completely wiped of all human life within 500 years.

 

[BlkHawk]

We insist on killing our oceans. With the exponential growth of the world's population, we actually need the oceans to hold more fish than they did 200-500 years ago. But we're going the other way, with no end in sight. Since we insist on being this stupid, again a major percentage of the human population is going to have to go so that the oceans can replenish themselves.

Sooner or later we're not going to have enough farmland, not enough livestock and not enough resources to go around. Then it's Mad Max time. But it will happen after I'm gone. As this board proves, there's no cure for stupid. I give the Earth a 50/50 chance of being completely wiped of all human life within 500 years.

Pretty much agree with all that, with out people choosing to have fewer kids I don't see us making the technological breakthroughs to maintain the Western worlds standard of living for even another 100 years. There is just too many of us using to many resources.

 

[zeeblofowl_1969]

Pretty much agree with all that, with out people choosing to have fewer kids I don't see us making the technological breakthroughs to maintain the Western worlds standard of living for even another 100 years. There is just too many of us using to many resources.

Wish I could tell you the future but I cannot I will be gone from this rock in 40 or 50 years hopefully and it wont matter to me one small bit.
Hoping the politics section gets it act together but I do not believe it will until one of our members, and we all know who that is, stops using it as his own personal trollathon.

 

[Mayhem]

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Very cool site that is relevant to this thread. One interesting point that I did not expect to see:

•During the 20th century alone, the population in the world has grown from 1.65 billion to 6 billion.
•In 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now.
•Because of declining growth rates, it will now take over 200 years to double again.

Population in the world is currently growing at a rate of around 1.14% per year. The average population change is currently estimated at around 80 million per year.

Annual growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at 2% and above. The rate of increase has therefore almost halved since its peak of 2.19 percent, which was reached in 1963.

The annual growth rate is currently declining and is projected to continue to decline in the coming years. Currently, it is estimated that it will become less than 1% by 2020 and less than 0.5% by 2050.

 

[Rattrap]

The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."

As a student of power engineering, I want to stress this point: historically, only one thing has consistently lowered energy consumption (and I would wager this extends to other forms of consumption as well): price. Double a car's fuel efficiency? People drive twice as much. Double the price of gas, though, and you see consumption drop accordingly.

Energy must and will cost more to be sustainable. The question is: will we ease ourselves into it or wait until it's forced upon us abruptly and painfully*?

* This isn't really a question. As folks in this thread have already pointed out, we're on the whole pretty fucking stupid, so the latter is undoubtedly the route we'll take. Just imagine what would happen if any politician started saying, "Well, we need to raise your electricity bill..."

 

[Philbert]

Wish I could tell you the future but I cannot I will be gone from this rock in 40 or 50 years hopefully and it wont matter to me one small bit.
Hoping the politics section gets it act together but I do not believe it will until one of our members, and we all know who that is, stops using it as his own personal trollathon.

Too bad for you, Jagger, but Troll Commando zeeblowschickens is here and ready to get stupid....please don't wait 40 or 50 years to relieve us of the burden of carrying just another dead weight around...tomorrow is a good day to expire. Please go.:wave:

Actually, a chicken is sorta appropriate here, as I read Chicken Little philosophy here...the Roman Empire didn't have electricity, instant communication, data storage, or a hundred things that are game changers in a historical perspective.
Just using hydroponics as a source of food production could double the square foot production of the food the world needs...famine is more a product of Third World war, greed, and a stubborn desire to keep the ancient ways going as long a possible...women as property, one ruler living it up as the population continues to exist as props and fodder for the small elite tribe or members of the better armed ruling class.
Islam is a stumbling block for modern civilization, it holds it's populations in check through fear and religion, but in the end they will not be able to cash purchase enough raw materials to keep that going.
The West and East have higher tech entities who can produce enough of everything to continue to grow into the future.
Each American, Brit, Frog, or whoever, can grow enough food at home to supplement the as of now huge amounts of food available , and with the inevitable collapse of the One Ruler economies around the globe elites are usually, as a group, smarter than the lower "classes" when it comes to long range planning.
As evidenced by 2 posts here already...
So...no study using factual historical structures to predict the End of the World As We Know It is useful as a true predictor of collapse...
As humans become more amd more fed, protected, and insulated from the reality of survival of the fittest, the only collapse coming is of the unprepared and uneducated (by choice) masses who need lots of stuff but produce very little on their own except more undereducated offspring.
As I observed in the Third World, automation isn't necessary while millions of hands are for rent cheap.
Road work is done by 50 guys with shovels and picks working for nothing, and here in the West roads are made lickety split using high tech graders, and excavators, and all the big equipment that keep our vast empires rolling along.
Things downshifted with the large influx of uneducated and relatively unskilled labor into the USA, we were becoming more and more tech based and more and more service jobs were being created by people who wanted to leave the "wage slave" environment.
Now, illegals and poorer strata of the US keep working at low wages and it's cheaper to hire many hands to do (slower) work instead of investing in Millions in heavy equipment.
Try and keep a small business going in the US using full wage Americans with illegals (20 to a household) offering the Third World labor at a low price.
Grapes of Wrath kinda thing.
Hopefully the planet (it's nowhere NEAR capacity) will be a better place to live after the implosion of unprepared societies and the cleanup after...I'm cool with that.
There has never been a time in the history of the world that populations have NOT found every way possible to continue existing, and along the way things have been "discovered" that made huge differences in the way thing are.
BTW...the Polar ice ISN't melting any time soon.:rofl2:

 

[Chopper3000]

I was thinking about posting this in the "Politics & Religion" section but, since that portion of the forum seems to have devolved into a full-scale flame-fest of the highest degree, I'd like to elicit some opinions from those other than the usual suspects about this article. Of course, anyone is welcome to comment. However, PLEASE don't hijack and morph this thread this into another endless diatribe of personal-insult gibberish. That shit gets SO tired I can't even tell you. Anyway....thanks in advance for your cooperation!

Now, before you dismiss this article as some trumped-up and politically-driven prognostication of a doomsday scenario, consider the various statistics on display at this site:

http://www.poodwaddle.com/Stats/

Given our present set of circumstances including the continued (and necessary) exploitation of the planet's finite natural resources, the ever-expanding population, ongoing and possibly irreversible environmental damage, economic crises, disease, pestilence and famine along with the ever-increasing imbalance of proportional wealth between the "haves" and "have nots"....I think the present model is unsustainable. If so, it is imperative that we make a plan to alter the present course by whatever means possible. Personally, I don't see that happening. Too many people with power are not going to be willing to relinquish control for something as noble as the common good....at least not until it is too late.

Regardless....this makes for interesting (and frightening) speculation.



Source is here:

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...sation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists

My response to your question is 'no'.

 

[Rey C.]

Whoa... deep subject! This would take awhile to study and consider.

I just pulled this out:

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."

Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.

Much like during the industrial revolution, I think technological achievements are actually helping to create a more stratified society (in the U.S., if not the western/developed world in general). Only those who can or will take advantage of the opportunities that technology offers will be pulled along. Others will be left further & further behind (IMO). And when the gap grows wider for too many people, eventually there will be a push for societal changes... sort of like from the early 1900's to the 1930's all around the world. From Russia to England to the U.S., think about how much changed as a result of people waking up to things that had been "wrong" for a long time.

That's just my guess though. Maybe as long as people don't wake up to the fact that (or don't care that) this republic has dual economic, educational and legal systems (and there is not liberty and justice for all), and the NFL game of the week doesn't get postponed over something silly (like the State of the nation address)... society can remain fat, dumb & happy. Panem et circenses (bread & circuses) worked for the Romans, to keep the common peeps in line... and it seems to be working now. :dunno:

 

[Will E Worm]

Is Industrial Civilization Headed for "Irreversible Collapse"?

Let's not hope any time soon.


Looks more like they want to make everything into massive monopolies, and turn the world into a 1984 type of scenario.

That has to be stopped, along with the environmentalist religion.


http://overpopulationisamyth.com/

I belong to the economic class that will be rising up, and slaughtering the wealthy

The people who really need to be taken down are the politicians and monopolies.

Not people who gained wealth themselves by working for it or inheriting it.

Let's not be jealous.

 

[BlkHawk]

The people who really need to be taken down are the politicians and monopolies.

Not people who gained wealth themselves by working for it or inheriting it.

Let's not be jealous.

I was thinking more along the lines of Paris Hilton, and not slaughter so much as having her clean gas station toilets for the next 50 years. I'm not really violent, but I can be petty!

 

[Mayhem]

I was thinking more along the lines of Paris Hilton, and not slaughter so much as having her clean gas station toilets for the next 50 years. I'm not really violent, but I can be petty!

Well, for the record, what's wrong with Paris Hilton (besides the obvious)? She and her sister are rich because daddy was a mega-success. Well, parents become rich so that their children and grandchildren will be rich. Even as a Liberal Dem, I'm not fond of the Death Tax. And I don't hold it against subsequent generations for being the offspring of the wealthy.

Now if you'll pardon me, in the wake of defending Paris fuckin' Hilton, I must now go shit my guts out.

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

Now if you'll pardon me, in the wake of defending Paris fuckin' Hilton, I must now go shit my guts out.

And I will manage a fap.






Not bad, not bad at all.

 

[Ace Boobtoucher]

Indeed I do think civilization is on a precipice. Mores and taboos are falling by the wayside and things once considered abhorrent are now celebrated. Kids are being pussified by political correctness before our eyes. Don't get me wrong, I love everyone with an open heart because of my faith but being too open minded lets one's brains leak out, I'm afraid. That, and the shitty political climate around the world have filled me with a resigned dread for the future. I blame Madeline Murray O'Hare. And the jews.

 

[Rey C.]

Well, for the record, what's wrong with [NOBABE]Paris Hilton[/NOBABE] (besides the obvious)? She and her sister are rich because daddy was a mega-success. Well, parents become rich so that their children and grandchildren will be rich. Even as a Liberal Dem, I'm not fond of the Death Tax. And I don't hold it against subsequent generations for being the offspring of the wealthy.

Now if you'll pardon me, in the wake of defending Paris fuckin' Hilton, I must now go shit my guts out.

I'm no expert on the Hilton family, but I thought her daddy, Rick, was just a slightly more intelligent (wouldn't take much in her high school drop-out case) trust fund baby than his herpes-carrying, slut daughter. I know he's in real estate, but I thought he just used family money to float that operation. I think his dad, Barron, was very sharp... kind of like his dad, the OG of the family: Conrad Hilton. But as often happens, by the time you get down to the second or third generation, they're just winners of the Lucky Sperm Club. True of Tony George (of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway), the Hilton sisters, the Ecclestone sisters (F1 Bernie's little sluts), oil heir Brandon Davis (Paris' greasy fuck buddy) and so many others of that ilk.

To wind this back to the OP, what I don't like about these celebrity trust fund babies is that they tend not to be productive members of society and they present a bad example to young people with their poor behavior. Sure, they have a right to exist. But usually they're just oxygen thieves. They tend to destroy wealth and jobs, not create them. And at some point, especially in cases where wealth is transferred out of this country or out of the productive economy, as the middle class continues to struggle, the day of reckoning may arrive sooner than these people realize... or maybe not. Panem et circenses.

As for the death tax, like many other taxes, by employing clever (often foreign based) trusts, the super wealthy are able to legally pass on their wealth and not pay as much in taxes as many think they do. But the government/congress will continue to make special rules for these special people... because the average person struggles to figure out the difference between real taxes and what's withheld from their paychecks (had a sad conversation with a young man yesterday who said that he didn't want to make "too much", otherwise he'd have to pay more taxes). But he likes his football games. And he and his girlfriend have a little present from the stork on the way. God bless him though. Needs more cowbell... and panem et circenses. Keeps 'em happy & content. :yesyes: