If we're only getting the right tech when certain cartels feel like making money off it, that's going to kill us.
What's your model for what to do (or not do)?
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There is also pretty clear second-order effects of any sort of ecological collapse:
Bunch of technical debt going to be paid for in full, and a lot of need for new solutions for all kinds of current tech.
Those are almost certainly engineering problems + (very) local politics.
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While climate scientists are almost certainly right about a lot of the bigger picture stuff, a lot of models will be inadequate with this amount of cascades.
Another engineering problem.
(Again, I think the God-Emperor Musk stuff is garbage. But we'll have to face this.)
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My best guess - and it is a guess - is we will not have a fraction of the safeguards we could have in place, and in any case they'dbe inadequate.
Millions or billions die because our supply lines break, and there is almost no redundancy or independency in the system.
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If anything, this will do more to slow climate change than any current activity. Fossil fuels require too much industry to sustain at scale.
Again, all a guess. But unless I die young I suppose I'll find out.
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One potential good outcome of climate change:
Baseline human ingenuity should increase massively within a few generations, if we survive in sufficient numbers.
Climate change is set to wreck the planet, but we've been wrecking ourselves since agriculture.
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People today really are lazy and despondent in ways it will be functionally impossible to survive in a post-collapse society.
It's extremely hard to predict what sort of non-arrogant solutions people will come up with for their local problems, even if we lose mass manufacturing.
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It's not even our fault: you are punished heavily for divergence from this mold.
But that will not hold if we lose all we look set to lose within the next few decades.
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I can't begin to imagine what they will eat.
Human caloric requirements are high.
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There will be food on the planet for quite some time, AFAIK.
But yes, I was just about to say "but any such change would be wrought on a devastated population".