Re:Release of methane gas from the seafloor in the Southern ...
by regularfry on Wednesday September 02, 2020 @11:29PM
(#24360565)
We're not in that situation, because we've already made the choice not to muddle about pre-industrially.
But even so, that argument is flawed: we're still at risk of getting wiped out by all the same extreme natural phenomena as we were 500 years ago, only we've added some new ones of our own: nuclear holocaust, clathrate guns, runaway warming of some other cause immediately spring to mind. Probabilistically we're worse off now than we were then, just because of the additional ways things can go wrong.
We don't have the choice to stay pre-industrial. That's off the table. We do hopefully still have the choice to avoid a scenario that drops us irrecoverably back to pre-agricultural.
But even so, that argument is flawed: we're still at risk of getting wiped out by all the same extreme natural phenomena as we were 500 years ago, only we've added some new ones of our own: nuclear holocaust, clathrate guns, runaway warming of some other cause immediately spring to mind. Probabilistically we're worse off now than we were then, just because of the additional ways things can go wrong.
We don't have the choice to stay pre-industrial. That's off the table. We do hopefully still have the choice to avoid a scenario that drops us irrecoverably back to pre-agricultural.