What you are saying is true.

However never before have we humans been on the cusp of ecological collapse.

Check out the global temperature record. [1] In particular this [2] is the temperature from ice core readings for the past 800k years. Modern humans evolved sometime around 300k years ago. Can you imagine going through such sharp changes with negligible technology? They were surviving through these changes with little more than furs and basic woodworking. Consider the first evidence of something as trivial as metalworking. It's required for basically any other meaningful task and can be achieved very easily. All you need is mud, ore, and fire. Nonetheless, it was incredibly difficult to discover. The first evidence of metalworking doesn't appear until around 11,000 years ago! And this is just the macro scale. Local game extinctions, droughts, disease, and so on were a constant and often fatal occurrence.

So you might say that we're now just living through the first highly publicized possible collapse. Yet once again this also would not be true. While we now find these things laughable, at one time people took doomsday predictions very seriously. And throughout the centuries there are invariably influential religious figures (including, for instance, popes) that have offered doomsday predictions. So seriously were these taken that some figures have even been punished for making such predictions and then them not coming to pass. There were also things like the 'Great Conjunction of 1524'. This was an event that based on astrological reading that predicted the world would end with a new great flood. This led tens of thousands of Londoners to abandon their homes and head for higher ground.

Ultimately, humans thinking they're all going to imminently die because of something outside their control is not a new phenomena. However, mass media is.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/med...

Sigh.

I think you are trying to point out that we were wily enough to survive past swings with a fraction of the technological arsenal we have today. Is that fair?

We know some humans survived history. How many? Where did they live? Did the survivors stay in a single place called "home" for thousands of years, change be damned? Did the survivors follow good weather and food? Did they live near the ocean, where all temperature variations are smoothed out? Did they migrate for adventure, or follow the whims of season and climate?

When they moved to a new place, were there already humans there? Was there enough space, shelter, and food for both groups? Did they welcome each other, or fight?

It's not that I think you're wrong. We're creative, resourceful, persistent, stubborn, and adaptable. But I think the picture you're making leaves something important out. For most of that graph, we were smart, rare, small-group primates that used wit, teamwork, and basic tools to overcome our natural environments.

It's probably no coincidence that metalworking turns up so near the emergence of our early social and organizational super-organisms. You don't need bronze tools to hunt shellfish, fruit, or rabbits. Our super-organisms needed them to raze forests, clear land, excavate rock, and make war.

Surviving climate change is not be about overcoming our environment a final time. I agree, that is a fight we could win. Surviving climate change is about overcoming our nature as individuals, the nature of the social and organizational super-organisms we form, and the historical accumulated impact of both with interest.

Apologies here for the length here. As Twain might say, I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.

I was simply responding to the statement that "never before have we humans been on the cusp of ecological collapse." That is not an accurate statement. Ecological collapse was very much an everyday reality, and battle, for humanity through much of its existence. And in more modern times, people lived through decades waking up each day knowing that nuclear war could very realistically end the world, as they knew it, at any moment. And indeed it very nearly did, multiple times!

Outside of that I fully agree with almost everything you've said. The 'almost' part comes primarily because I think you're not considering the imbalance of power that would result from the current mitigation strategy of reducing CO2 emissions. Developing nations and those who dependent on carbon output for revenue, such as China and the Mideast would be asked to entirely change their developmental trajectory. Developed nations, by contrast, need to do little more than possibly accelerate the trajectory they're already on. To deal with this inequity the Paris agreement, for example, proposed the developed nations subsidize the developing nations. This sounds reasonable on paper, but in practice what you're talking about is places such as China rolling back its development and then becoming dependent on US handouts to regrow and simply sustain itself. That's a relationship that could and would be abused, once established, to further our ends. This is a nuance that places such China are not going to ignore.

This certainly falls under the blanket of overcoming our nature as individuals, whether individual means a single person or a large group acting as an entity. But it also reframes the problem in a way that I think is somewhat more realistic than a rallying among equals to do their part for an equal outcome. This is why I increasingly think that technological solutions, such as carbon scrubbing, need to be playing a bigger role in the discussion. For instance imagine the US (and other developed nations) greatly subsidized the research, rollout, manufacturing, and deployment of carbon scrubbing industry in developing nations. This is something that I think could see real effect since there's a more equitable relationship. The developing nation is not only able to continue on their current trajectory, but to develop even faster through the further expansion of their energy/industrial facilities. And the developed nation is able to use little more than their great economic might to effect positive change. And there's less room for abuse of the relationship. If the developed nation pulls funding, they suffer due to the lack of scrubbing. And if the developing nations tries to use scrubbing as leverage (or misappropriate funds) they suffer for identical reasons. Interests are aligned with no imbalanced leverage.

For instance our current CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels is about 37 billion tons a year. One new technological solution [1] proposes an atmospheric removal of CO2 that could cost as little as $94 per ton. That's $3.5 trillion, 4% of the global GDP, to reach 0 carbon emissions. And that not only doesn't cripple developing nations but could greatly accelerate and strengthen them. I don't entirely understand why stuff like this isn't a more significant part of the conversation.

[1] - http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/ne...

Thanks for responding, and for correcting my takeaway. I agree it's not an accurate statement.

We might be chasing our tails at this point. Power imbalances (current and historic legacy) is a big component of what I mean when I say this fight is against our super-organisms and their accumulative impact. I'm optimistic about what technology can do, but skeptical of anything that sounds like an excuse for anyone with economic or ideological incentives to write off emission-reduction strategies.

All approaches to climate change have to be implemented through a complex adaptive system in which billions of human individuals and superorganisms that have their own concepts of what is/isn't in their best interest, constantly recalibrating behavior against each other.

Will impoverished people be willing to stay that way just because the fossil-fuel bonfire is passé? Will there be clean alternatives for them to improve their lives? Will they be able to afford them? If not, will other actors with sufficient capital finance them? Will they suspiciously reject gifts from colonial powers?

If we're unable to avert the collapse of some ecosystems, will the people living in/around them placidly endure misery and await death? Will they chase better weather and food?

Will people in areas relatively enriched by shifting climates help pump the brakes, or step on the gas? If some of these are the same developed powers largely responsible for emissions to date, will they have enough internal support to actively reject this boon and take responsibility for the actions of earlier generations?

When primary fossil fuel demand peaks, will countries and landowners sitting on large fossil fuel deposits and companies producing them ease off to hold prices steady, or lean in to force prices down, undermine the short-term profitability of renewables, and extract as much wealth as possible before the party is over?

What if individuals and superorganisms that invested in profitable atmospheric CO2 capture iterate into technology that supports profitable extraction far below ~278ppm?

How many superorganisms will make the bet that they can make short-term profit by externalizing costs and some conscientious third party who'll feel compelled to pay $94-232 per ton to capture extra emissions?

Will superorganisms acquire companies that invent potential carbon capture technologies like this in order to extort rents from the patents, or repurpose the technology for some other application with little urgency to support the original intent?

Will rumors proliferate on the internet that large carbon capture facilities are a secret plot to poison or pacify the population?

With respect to your first point, life expectancy during those times was age 20-30. Their standards of living were more akin to the standards for animals in zoos than modern humans.

Climate change isn't a religious doomsday prophecy. Since modern humans evolved 300k years ago, we've industrialized and created technologies that are accelerating the pace of the destruction of Earth. The claims in the article are based on verifiable science.

I don't know that this is true. Do previous ice ages not count? Or how about the plague? It seems that we've been near extinction at least a few times:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

I'd also add that until the 1990s the threat of total nuclear annihilation of the human race (and probably other stuff) was very real. That was anxiety inducing.

I agree, and this time we have a lot more knowledge and tools for coping with ecological disasters.

It would still be very much preferable to not have to do it.

> humans are the best off we have ever been

This is too broad to be true. It's easily disproven with a single counterexample.

I could guess what you actually meant, but the tiny details in sentences like these change so much meaning I better let you clarify if this was an important point you're making.

Especially since you seem to be aiming to dismiss concerns about people who are not safe, I think it's important you be more specific.

Ok here are some of the areas where we are better off than ever looking at humanity as a whole:

* Infant mortality * Life expectancy * Maternal mortality * Global poverty * Opportunities for women * Global literacy * Ability to control pain * Knowledge

Here is a more concrete example. Imagine you are going to be born as a baby girl in a random family on earth. In what other time would you have a better chance of having a decent life?

Thank you for clarifying, this is much easier to have a discussion about.

I have two open questions, I won't try to make a counterclaim (that 2019 is worse), but I can point out where your position feels hollow to me and needs to be shored up.

1) If I accept what you're saying that for the average person life is better in 2019 than in 1950, that doesn't generalize to all humans. My assessment is that life has been pretty good for the average human regardless of the time period, and good governance is more about how bad we let it get for the marginalized few than how good it is in the average case.

2) You listed things that are better for the average human... Are you claiming that there is not an equal (or larger) set of things that's worse? For example: depression, loneliness, anxiety. If your children are all living but you rarely speak to them and are cripplingly lonely, is that a better outcome than having 7 children, four of whom died, and you live in an intact healthy family unit?

(Also, as a side note knowledge is not monotonically increasing with "progress". The Catholic Church tried and partly succeeded at destroying all native language books in Central America, and replaced them with books that seemingly include much less knowledge. Social knowledge loss is one of my biggest concerns with modernity: More knowledge accessible to any individual, less knowledge stored in the overall system. Less culturally usable knowledge for most individuals. Another example: we're probably only just getting back to the same level of total beer making knowledge that was embodied in the system before the mass market beer system.)

>My assessment is that life has been pretty good for the average human regardless of the time period.

Here is where we fundamentally disagree. My assessment looking at history is that life for the average human, especially, the average female human, was horrible. I would guess our current 10th percentile is better off than the 50% percentile in the past.

The average human was a farmer. They had to do hours of back-breaking labor. They were many times just a bad harvest away from starving. They were routinely preyed on by the more powerful. A significant portion had personally lost a child/spouse/parent due to childbirth. They were illiterate. Child marriages and involuntary marriages were the general rule. The distinction between you and elite was directly coded into law.

A lot of what you are talking about here is still the case in much of the world. In other parts of the world where it is no longer true, it will absolutely make a comeback unless we can halt and reverse the damage being done by the levels of inequality we have.

> If your children are all living but you rarely speak to them and are cripplingly lonely, is that a better outcome than having 7 children, four of whom died, and you live in an intact healthy family unit?

Yes, unless you have an extremely convincing argument that being lonely is worse than being dead.

Ok, I'll try: being lonely hurts and being dead doesn't.

What's your argument that it's better?

Whilst the data you are referring to is correct, so is the data on climate change and the various degrees of impact that humanity will have on the hospitality of our planet for our own human race.

In other words: some things are getting better, but others are getting so much worse that it might be for nothing.

Anxiety sells and social media enables every person to play a part in signal boosting it.

Read "Factfulness" (one of Bill Gate's Top 5 books)... or Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker (or just watch the 15 min TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_is_the_world_getting... )

In most places, in most ways, the world is getting massively better than it even was 20 or 30 years ago...

Sure, if you conveniently exclude the environment.

I completely agree.