r/collapse • u/LetsTalkUFOs • Aug 02 '19
How long does humanity have to avoid collapse?
This is different from our upcoming question “When will collapse hit?”.
What degrees or levels of collective action are necessary for us to avoid collapse?
How unlikely or unfeasible do those become in five, ten or twenty years?
You can also view the responses to this question from our 2019 r/Collapse Survey.
This is the current question in our Common Collapse Questions series.
Responses may be utilized to help extend the Collapse Wiki.
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Aug 10 '19
How long does humanity have to avoid collapse? -10 to -40 years. Ideally -120 years but that's just ideally. And obviously we can't go negative years, so...
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u/moon-worshiper Aug 09 '19
30 years ago, it was 100 years. There is no general collapse. Collapse is going to be small scale at first, then large scale, then planetary scale. Collapse will be in limited regions, then larger regions, then planetary.
The looming recession is going to be the first, possible England, Germany, France, suddenly no longer able to provide cradle to grave health care. France has basically been in a recession for 15 years, and their banks are getting wobbly. Germany banks are starting to sway. With Brexit, England will start having financial, insurance and banking sectors start crashing.
The initial indicators are starting to happen. There is no way Muchkin gets the US Treasury stabilized. What is going on now is an economic incompetent in charge of running the economy. It is obvious he knows he never learned how to juggle.
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Aug 10 '19
The looming recession is going to be the first, possible England, Germany, France,
As a latin american, I feel safe to say that developed countries will not be the first to break. As soon as they start to feel the collapse, they'll take everything from underdeveloped countries and hence these will break first.
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u/jbiserkov Aug 09 '19
“The future collapse is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.
The Economist, December 4, 2003”
― William Gibson
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Aug 09 '19
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u/thecatsmiaows Aug 10 '19
greenhouse gasses have a much more profound effect on the climate than variations in solar activity- there won't be a "little ice age" this century, nor for many more centuries to come.
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u/jbiserkov Aug 08 '19
“The future collapse is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.
The Economist, December 4, 2003”
― William Gibson
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Aug 08 '19
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u/Carbonistheft Aug 08 '19
Yep. This is the only answer... And right now we are somewhere in the middle of this. The beginnings could probably be argued to have been in the early to mid 90s.
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u/collapse2030 Aug 08 '19
Seems to be when society started going super downhill. Those nauseatingly brainwashing type of advertisements for kids, resultant rampant consumerism as the only way to be happy or successful.
Then again some people the other day on another sub were saying the entire 80s were like one big infomercial. So I dunno.
But I do know we used to have this idea that things were getting better, and that ended some time in the last couple of decades. Now all we have is wistful synthwave with quotes about our place in the universe.
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Aug 08 '19
Dread is coming slowly we got a lot of time but the times before imminent collapse will be horrible as well.
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u/Antifactist Aug 08 '19
Look at this chart: https://www.carbonbrief.org/media/392683/emissions-trajectory-1-_600x811.jpg
This is only what we have to do with CO2, and doesn't consider resource depletion, or other ways we are poisoning the earth and sea and sky.
Based on the available data, the only chance for survival of your species and human civilization past 2100 is the immediate implementation of a global totalitarian regime.
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Aug 08 '19
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u/3thaddict Aug 09 '19
With you there, rebel. I think quite a few of us are like that. I'm certain Greta is like that even. It's like the biggest cognitive dissonance possible. I'm quite confident (say, 99.999999999999999%) we can't turn this around, but I'm trying regardless. One of the benefits and reasons I decided to protest anyway was that I can meet like-minded people. However I've discovered there's way too many people even in these movements who still don't get it. They don't get the urgency or the fact that this is basically a last-ditch effort which really has a small chance of working even if we go all out. They're still acting like there's time when there isn't. A lot also don't even understand the point of these movements, especially with XR (still trying to tell people to make personal changes etc.) Pretty depressing but I also can't bring myself to give up. I've just stopped stressing over it as much.
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u/FieldsofBlue Aug 09 '19
5 years and a couple months isn't long enough for your average developed nation citizen to even reach the point of acknowledgement that there's a crisis, let alone start to fix it. Strap in, buackaroo!
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u/LovecraftianBeyBlade Aug 08 '19
You're already dead OP
You're duh spoo'py ghost in The Sixth Sense
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Aug 07 '19
Any political solution is ten years away - and we haven't got ten years. Maybe in five years or so the oligarchs might allow a few mealy-mouthed social democrats of the Clintonian / Blairite persuasion to take power, but I very much doubt it, either way they've got their black hearts set on continuing business as usual. As for the general public they are even more clueless. People won't see the need for change until it is too late - and it's probably too late already.
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u/fortnite_burger_ Aug 07 '19
I wouldn't call (either) Clinton a social democrat. Bill was a socially moderate neoliberal, and Hillary was a socially liberal neoliberal.
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u/WeAreBeyondFucked Aug 07 '19
We are already dead we just don't know it yet
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u/-_David_- Aug 07 '19
This. A partial societal collapse is ongoing. Total societal collapse has not yet occurred, but is likely inevitable. I know there are some here who don’t like defeatism - but the writing is on the wall. We are f***ed. I think most of us in this subreddit know this, but some might want to hold up hope. The rest of society just doesn’t know it yet, but they soon will.
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u/NevDecRos Aug 10 '19
Collapse are meant to happen. They can't be avoided, merely postponed. All civilisations collpased at one point. Some rebuilt later on of course, but all collapsed eventually.