Oh, we've certainly lost as a society, but we'll likely survive as a species for a few hundred or thousand years, albeit at vastly reduced population levels. We're scrappy as a species.
We kicked in a climate shift that's triggering an unstoppable mass-extinction event that'll wipe out 99.9% of all species. Historically, recovery from mass extinction events like these take 50 million years for a new ecosystem to develop. We might survive through that, but it's longer than we've even existed as a species so we'll be nothing like what we are now.
I was a Gen X'r. My 9-year-old has started saying that he's Generation Omega - something he picked up from youtube - He believes that he's a member of the last generation (and I think I concur... things will get bad enough that by 2030 or 2040, people won't want to have kids because the death of the ecosystem and civilization will be a lot more obvious and something that impacts their daily life)
In anticipation of this, I moved to a region of Upstate New York that prediction models indicate will handle the climate impacts a little more gracefully. The goal is to build a self-sufficient homestead with longevity and extremes in mind.
Humanity cannot survive as a species like that though. We really need to start thinking of how to build town-sized or city-sized "arcology" habitats while we still have the resources and energy to do so.
Arcologies should be viewed as a backup plan to trying to save the planet. A sort of civilization time-capsule. If we fail to save our ecosystem and climate, then arcologies could provide a shelter for a few million people for a few thousand years while we figure out what to do next (engineering our biology to handle the environmental changes? terraforming? going off planet? expanding underground? engineering a new ecosystem?).
Sadly, arcologies are too expensive and would take so long to build that they're politically untenable with governments that either don't believe in climate change, or change every 4 years. Norway could probably do it with 25% of their Sovereign Wealth Fund.
I know it's fatalistic, but I honestly only see our chance of survival at this point is if someone cracks inexpensive and easy fusion power. With that, we could power a lot of carbon sequestration concepts that are just currently impractical. That, or a benevolent AI that takes over and forces a lot of uncomfortable changes to our society "for our own good"
We kicked in a climate shift that's triggering an unstoppable mass-extinction event that'll wipe out 99.9% of all species. Historically, recovery from mass extinction events like these take 50 million years for a new ecosystem to develop. We might survive through that, but it's longer than we've even existed as a species so we'll be nothing like what we are now.
I was a Gen X'r. My 9-year-old has started saying that he's Generation Omega - something he picked up from youtube - He believes that he's a member of the last generation (and I think I concur... things will get bad enough that by 2030 or 2040, people won't want to have kids because the death of the ecosystem and civilization will be a lot more obvious and something that impacts their daily life)
In anticipation of this, I moved to a region of Upstate New York that prediction models indicate will handle the climate impacts a little more gracefully. The goal is to build a self-sufficient homestead with longevity and extremes in mind.
Humanity cannot survive as a species like that though. We really need to start thinking of how to build town-sized or city-sized "arcology" habitats while we still have the resources and energy to do so.
Arcologies should be viewed as a backup plan to trying to save the planet. A sort of civilization time-capsule. If we fail to save our ecosystem and climate, then arcologies could provide a shelter for a few million people for a few thousand years while we figure out what to do next (engineering our biology to handle the environmental changes? terraforming? going off planet? expanding underground? engineering a new ecosystem?).
Sadly, arcologies are too expensive and would take so long to build that they're politically untenable with governments that either don't believe in climate change, or change every 4 years. Norway could probably do it with 25% of their Sovereign Wealth Fund.
I know it's fatalistic, but I honestly only see our chance of survival at this point is if someone cracks inexpensive and easy fusion power. With that, we could power a lot of carbon sequestration concepts that are just currently impractical. That, or a benevolent AI that takes over and forces a lot of uncomfortable changes to our society "for our own good"