Death by 1000 cuts

I try very hard to stay hopeful for the future. But it's hard to stay optimistic when even the good news is actually bad news.

Collapse related because when the rich tell the poor "the solution to inflation is tighten your belts" it means your country is fucked. Austerity, y'all.

In the early 20th century, people (notably in the United States) could conceivably have stopped the proliferation of automobiles by focusing on improving public transit, thereby saving enormous amounts of energy, avoiding billions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and preventing the loss of more than 40,000 lives in car accidents each year in the U.S. alone. But we didn’t do that.

In the mid-century, we might have been able to stave off the development of the atomic bomb and averted the apocalyptic dangers we now find ourselves in. We missed that opportunity, too. (New nukes are still being designed and built.)

In the late 20th century, regulations guided by the precautionary principle could have prevented the spread of toxic chemicals that now poison the entire planet. We failed in that instance as well.

Now we have one more chance.

With AI, humanity is outsourcing its executive control of nearly every key sector —finance, warfare, medicine, and agriculture—to algorithms with no moral capacity.

If you are wondering what could go wrong, the answer is plenty.

If it still exists, the window of opportunity for stopping AI will soon close. AI is being commercialized faster than other major technologies. Indeed, speed is its essence: It self-evolves through machine learning, with each iteration far outdistancing Moore’s Law.

And because AI is being used to accelerate all things that have major impacts on the planet (manufacturing, transport, communication, and resource extraction), it is not only an uber-threat to the survival of humanity but also to all life on Earth.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/7967232

PMeanwhile, Johan Rockström, the driving force behind the whole Planetary Boundaries framework, is now spelling it out as starkly as it needs to be:

“A 2.5°C global mean surface temperature rise is a disaster. It’s something that humanity has absolutely no evidence that we can cope with. There would be a 10-metre sea level rise. There would be a collapse of all the big biomes of planet Earth – the rainforest, many of the temperate forests, abrupt thawing of permafrost, and the complete collapse of marine biology. Over 1/3rd of the planet around the equatorial regions will be unhabitable because you will pass the threshold of health, which is around 30°C. It’s only some parts of the Sahara Desert today that has that kind of average temperature.”

Remember to get screened next time you're at the doctor 🙃

"Savoring,” the screen says, in a black font over a green block of color. “Close your eyes and think about something that makes you happy.”

Used to be "prepping" as a lifestyle was linked to right wing and conspiracy theory ideologies. But as the economy and the ecology crumble, more and more people of all political views are making plans to withdraw from society and protect their own.

The future of power in America is obvious. State governments will make corrupt deals with data centers and factories to keep their electricity costs low, and raise prices on residential users to compensate until poor families are priced out.

Buy your solar panels now. Before electricity changes from a right to a privilege.

Not mine, seen on Reddit. I dropped it into this instance because I thought it was a good guide on ways climate change is breaking things - relevant to collapse - as well as basic thoughts on how to prepare for those challenges.

Degrowth might save us. Tech won't.