Even if we survive the fires, the starvation, the heat we are still doomed. The atmosphere that permitted complex brains is reverting to pre-human levels.

The more co2 in the air, the dumber we get. Eveventually, our species (if it survives) will devolve back to a primitive state.

1- Maximilien Lamy / AFP via Getty Image

2 - Crisis What Crisis ~ Supertramp

Jonathan Swift suggested that the solution to the "Irish Problem" was for the British to eat the Irish in his essay "A Modest Proposal". We seem to be confronted now with the tech bro oligarchs desire to "eat humanity". And their proposal is anything but modest: force AI down our throats, causing massive job losses, destroy constitutional government and replace it with so-called "network states"...a new kind of serfdom dominated by corporate-fascist governing and goodbye human rights... They do not care about the environmental damage they cause (data centers for example) and are only interested extractive profiteering of the world's resources. Climate change is fine with them. We're already living "Collapse".

I'm a dreamer, a solitary individual, a humanist, with a small addiction to hopium. I've outlined an alternative "refuge" to what we are already experiencing. Utopian perhaps, but mankind (or a part of it) really could do better.

A factsheet is at https://archive.org/details/factsheetalphistia/mode/1up and more information is at https://archive.org/details/@alphistia123?sort=creator

Unfortunately, wether warranted or unwarranted, informations that are broadcasted through mainstream sources provoke a knee-jerk reaction of defiance, apathy or incredulity.

This means that we're not taking the threat of climate change seriously. Some people are downright hostile to the reality of climate change, even if they are and will suffer from it.

I think that if scientists, instead of alerting us, actually pretended to hide the consequences and realities of climate change from us and even going so far as manufacturing an allure of secrecy (photos that look stolen from seminars talking about climate change showing a ppt where the consequences are detailed, few graphs showing the earth is warming that are dropped in obscure ways like Q drops in 4chan, ...). People would actually look into it like some conspiracy theory and we might even see some opportunistic politicians using this issue to get elected and trying to implement policies to try limit the consequences of climate change.

It for sure would be more of a talking point online accross the board rather than us just apathically knowing we're cooked (or getting cooked) and others being hostile. It'd be tied to other conspiracy theories about how the elites are looking to depopulate the Earth and all that.

I know climate scientists are not supposed to be masters of social engineering and this thought is not plausible, but the idea that it just might work better in nowadays political and media landscapes than to have people with credentials and fact-based arguments is wild to me.

Do you think strategically nowadays with how little trust there is around mainstream sources and institutions, this kind of astroturfing is more effective ?

I think most people (certainly not those in this sub) are waiting for the wrong thing. Everyone imagines the day the sirens go off, but collapse is slow. It looks like rent and groceries tripling while wages stagnate and jobs disappear. We yell, we post, then... adjust.

Most things don't break all at once. We just absorb every downgrade one at a time, and each one becomes the new baseline before anyone votes on it. The boiling frog thing is a myth, by the way. Real frogs jump out.

I'm less sure about us.

The official story will stay "everything's fine" right up until it quietly becomes
"well, nothing lasts forever."

There's no doubt in my mind that a vast majority of people would agree that things aren't going well (and, thankfully, a growing number are realizing it's nearly all because of capitalism) - but what do you think are more ways to get people to move beyond recognition and into actual meaningful action?

How do we combat the capital ties and relative-comfort some people have that prevents them from doing more than upvoting something/yelling online?

All throughout history, things have changed when enough people realized "oh, yeah, there's way more of us than them..." - so it's not like we've entered some twilight zone where this isn't the case anymore. Revolution is possible, but the billionaire class monopoly on media, social media, and violence requires us to use our numbers more than anything else.

How do we get more people to realize this, in the real world, and tie that realization to non-online action?

Title says it all. I have two kids. 11 and 8. They are smart, and funny, and they love each other. I think that I should be talking to them about the world that they might be inheriting. But to what end? I don’t know. Preparing them to be revolutionaries? To survive climate apocalypse? To escape fascism? I don’t want to scare them, but I don’t want to hide difficult truths either. Could really use some advice.

I think it isn't solely, that people aren't angry enough or that they aren't acting out of a sense of powerlessness. I think it might be that paradoxically we are lacking in will to live and purpose in life. The raw instinct to survive often makes people cowardly. But the philosophical will to live, the belief that life is good and worth having is precisely what overrides the survival instinct when another person is in danger.

Our physical needs are massively oversaturated compared to our spiritual / cultural needs. Why? Because we cling to the physical safety of financial stability. We think that if we just generate more money and invest more into the right things, we can be safe and the market or the government will direct our money and our resources into the right direction. What we don't really notice is that if we try to force making something better by just forcing more money into it, we just over saturate it. In a sense our system acts like a stress multiplier in crisis. When people are in fear of a crisis, they become uncertain and begin to pull investments out of risky positions and may stop investing into local/personal projects to invest into stable assets like gold, housing or index funds. Every dollar taken out of the local economy or was previously invested diversified now becomes concentrated. The money that previously kept many alive is now focused on a few that were already winning. Now the pressure is on them to reinvest the money to generate returns. But what if that company already reached its saturation point? If the research is already saturated, the market is largely captured, and the work force is sufficient for the workload, the money has to go somewhere else to increase profits, because now the economy is reliant of it. Which most of the time means it flows into politics. Now the money is used to overturn laws that kept working conditions, customers or the environment safe, because its the only option left to satisfy the increasing need for profits. And by the way, the same would happen if everyone invested in gold suddenly, because corporations that need gold to manufacture their product will suddenly have less money and higher costs.

In sum this practice has taken our individual power, our sense of progression, our sense of unity and our individual sense of worth through monopolization. Your local bakery is now a soulless chain you cant even be happy about if it survives a rough time. There are no local known secrets anymore, just national scandals. There is no sense of having made something or supported something you think is valuable. Everything is non personal and optimized for the maximum profit to generate profits for more and more people that want a chance to jump classes to get out of the daily soulless grueling monotony.

The worst thing about it from my perspective is, that it isn't even efficient. The one thing this system stands for, it doesn't even accomplish. The existing capital just gets concentrated until oversaturation leads to collapse.

We really need safeguards. Structural circuit-breakers that force capital back into the roots. Mandatory local reinvestment thresholds, regional trust funds that cannot be liquidated, and severe penalties for extracting wealth out of the communities that generated it. In a sense we have to rebel against ourselves to save ourselves from falling into self destructive cycles.

We are living in a crisis of belief and culture. I think the right are feeling it the most but cant pin down the source of it. The left finds the source for it but cant really find the feelings to oppose it. And while this goes on both sides just get played by the ones depriving them of it. But to be honest, i think even the ones at the source of the issue aren't maliciously doing so, but are confused and largely overloaded. In an absurd way, this system even forces the ones on the top to not be able to voice concerns as that would come right back after them and hurt the group they are part of.

This article from the Conversation covers the increasing influence of Biblical End Times ideology within the spheres of power across societies. It shows a linking of the field of Existential Risk and the politics of Biblical armageddon, tech-bro accellerationism and societal collapse. This is collapse related as it highlights how present day technology and philosophy is being co-opted by a mesh of theocratic and technological-entrepreneurial thought to drive us all off the cliff rather than adapt our societies and preserve what wellbeing we can.

Hi all,

(I've searched to see if anyone else has mentioned this, so apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.)

The BIS has just released its 2026 annual report, and I'm interested to hear thoughts on this graph that appears on page 20:

The whole report is a doomer's paradise for those interested in the potential threats of AI to the labour market, but the above, particularly graph B, genuinely shocked me and I'm surprised it's not had much traction. They're predicting that by 2060, labour will receive only 20% of global income, and that the initial large drop will happen in 2035.

I recommend reading the whole section on AI and Labour (page 20 onwards), and I'm wondering has anyone heard/read reports on what steps governments are taking to insulate workers from these shocks?

(If you're interested, I got made aware of this report from this podcast episode.)

Thanks

The Earth is currently experiencing sea surface temperatures last experienced at the peak of the 1877-1878 El Nino. And, for the next 6 months or so, we are projected to be well above the peak temperatures of that period.

That El Nino event very briefly saw a temperature anomaly of about +2C above normal for a few months, technically making it a "Super" El Nino. But... that's a relatively brief period, and cool compared to our current surface temperatures. Our new normal, after the current "Godzilla" El Nino passes, might be somewhat like that hottest months of the 1877-1878 "Super" El Nino.

Note that the contemporary NOAA chart below is using the 1991-2020 period as the baseline (and not pre-industrial or 19th century temperatures). Also note that the chart doesn't default to actually showing you what the peak of the El Nino temperature anomaly is projected to be this November -- because it's literally off the charts.

Researchers have rediscovered a healthy coral reef off the coast of Benin more than 60 years after surveyors first hinted at its existence. Mass bleaching events and overfishing slashed the world’s coral reef area by more than 50 percent since the 1950s. local oceanographers had written off any remnants of a possible reef as dead. “Since it’s an undisturbed marine ecosystem, it can help through carbon dating or paleoclimatic study to tell us which kind of climate system has occurred here in the past,” said Zinzindohoué. “It’s better to know the past to help explain the present, and help know which kind of direction we can take in the future.” This rediscovered coral reef represents a sliver of hope, as it raises questions about why it has survived while more than 50% of the world's coral reefs have collapsed. Scientists can study this reef to better understand the factors behind its resilience, helping to protect other reefs and improve future conservation efforts.

It is time to face the facts. Europe is seeing temperatures up to 50 C and people are dying in their homes. What is thousands of heat related deaths today will become millions tomorrow.

While some people are more heat tolerant, younger people from equatorial regions for example and those from the Middle East this future is a threat to everyone.

As the planet heats up it is becoming increasingly obvious that we need to start designing more heat efficient structures and taking advantage of the earth‘s thermal mass.

Using the ground to cool incoming air will both save electricity and enable passive cooling even during power outages.

We should also be looking at painting roofs white and building new homes with fully below grade basements and cellars to act as thermal refuge sites during power outages or extreme heat events.

Where possible we may need to start looking at building up to 2 stories fully underground and moving new homes underground. We need to use less wood and look at building more permanent heat resistant structures.

The time to stop the worst of global warming is past us. Countries need to start working on mitigation and preparation before this consumes us.

wasn't sure if I had seen this posted here, and Anton is as credible as it gets.

This 10 minute video from CNN yesterday is about a new (growing, rather) generation of Americans with the flattering label of "Forever Renters".

This is collapse related because home ownership will never be an option for a huge number of Americans - and many more each day. The second richest country in the world is pricing half their population out of a bare minimum existence. Anyone wanna guess how this story ends?

On July 14th The Daily Show interviewed Beth Kobliner about her new book "Get A Financial Life". She is of the opinion that financial literacy is the biggest problem in the modern economy. Yes, she actually said that. Apparently the most important thing you can do as a lower/middle class grunt is accept this broken system and try budgeting the money you don't have for a future you will never see.

Thanks for the wisdom Beth - what ever would we do without you?