I see a lot of people talking about the times when collapse was less obvious specifically in regards to the natural world. Obviously over time those goalposts have moved. Someone from the 1800s would think a forest in the 1960s looks totally bizarre.

But... growing up in the 2000s I haven't really experienced wiping many bugs off my windshield, seeing massive amounts of fireflies in one space, hearing a backyard sound like a nocturnal city.

Think of this as an effort of posterity for the natural world. Honestly I just want to know what I'm fighting for because in my view the world has always been *gestures vaguely* since I'm barely an adult.

"Appeals to natural greed, the restless desire to assert dominance, or some genetically imprinted competitiveness are impossible to defend anthropologically. Nothing in "human nature" can plausibly lead to the Anthropocene. After all, it arrives after 193,000 years of humans doing not much at all except migrate and struggle to survive, followed by 7,000 years of agriculture and civilization, 300 years of industry, and 70 years of rampant growth that has seen us breach the planet's natural boundaries."
- Clive Hamilton, Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene, Ch. 2 - A New Anthropocentrism. (pg. 61)

This line in the reading for my Sustainability and Culture class stood out to me. It seems like a non-sequitur. The timeline of human history doesn't seem to prove his point. If anything, he describes exponential growth (of technology, resource extraction/environmental degradation, and population) very well, which almost certainly isn't possible indefinitely on a finite planet.

I found Hamilton's take here rather unaligned with the previous part of the book so far, since he understands the severity of climate change, refers to the Anthropocene as a "rupture" (italics included) in the Earth System among other (appropriately) visceral term, and recognizes societal collapse or human extinction are not off the table.

Furthermore, from the philosophical perspective of hard determinism (commonly used to describe the illusion of free will) - the idea that you're the result of everything that came before you as everything has a cause and the deterministic laws of physics that apply to all the matter you're made of - I don't see how things could have ended up differently given the same causes if we turned back the clock to the Big Bang. A combination of environment, genetics (which also largely came from the environment due to natural selection), and human experience/collective knowledge got us to this point. All life cares about is about surviving and reproducing to continue the species, which requires competing for resources. Organisms that did not do this are gone. How are humans the exception here? What changed during the timeline, the jump from hunter-gatherers? I'd posit nothing significant, we just took a long time to invent a technology that we could tap into and dramatically change the way of life (e.g. fire, agriculture, oral & written language, capitalism, fossil fuels).

If some survive collapse, we may be able to create a culture of protecting and respecting the Earth and keep our instincts in line because we saw what happened if we don't. Indigenous peoples may be great inspirations/role models here. For examples, look to Native Americans, including the Aztecs and Inca. However, the Maya fell, and possibly many others I'm/we're unaware of, so perhaps collapse is unavoidable, given enough time.
Additionally, there's no guarantee that our instincts can be subdued forever. Culture changes over time, especially if all those who witnessed collapse are long gone (e.g. millennia later). I suppose the only way to prevent this from happening again that I can think of (ethically; no homicide or genocide, Eugenics, forced sterilization/removal of reproductive rights, poisoning food or water supplies, etc.) is antinatal extinction, where we all voluntarily stop having kids, applied universally. This is basically impossible logistically.

Let me know what you think.

I've been on this sub for some time and I've seen the general opinions here and I disagree with some of them

Power corrupts - imo power doesn't corrupt, greed + being already being somewhat unempathetic corrupts

Nuclear war is going to happen - the good ol' mutually assured self destruction. Also before any nukes get launched there are like 20 people on the hiearchy. still possible though

Humanity is going to go extinct - unless we go fucking Venus mode no lol. Technically we might evolve

Capitalism sucks - yes

Collapse is going to happen - this is the whole point of the sub but to summarize my opinions on this:

imo civilization won't collapse. Capitalism might collapse due to people going revolution but not civilization or humanity. My most pessimistic expectations are that we will experience mass revolution, climate change will wreck the planet, and then nuclear war might happen but realistically we will get back on track between 2050-2070

climate change - it just depends on how lucky we are tbh. if climate change is going kill us all by 2040 we're fucked but if climate change gets really bad anywhere after 2050 we're good.

But truth be told we have other surefire ways that can end the large scale carbon and methane output, at least for a couple of centuries. It's just that we really have to sit and wait.

Carrington event? Yes. Miyake event? Hell yeah. A mile wide asteroid that can cause nuclear winter? Yep. Supervolcano? Hopefully. AI going nuts and decides to shut down everything? Possibly. Stuxnet on steroid? I wonder why this didn't happen already.

So there are several ways that can probably stop or delay the collapse of planetary ecosphere. It's just that they won't happen even people try hard.

People around the world, except Korea, are very concerned and interested in overpopulation and overcrowding.

But Korea seems to be an exception.

Surprisingly, if the world's population density were at the level of Korea, it would be close to 70 billion people. This figure surpasses the current world population of 8 billion people.

but...

Despite this, many people in Korea feels non-overcrowded even capital seoul.

In the field of congestion,

Foreigners rated korean local metropolitan cities feel as super low crowd compared to foreign large cities.

they said Even San Francisco is hectic, but Korean big cities have been evaluated as spacious and non-crowded.

even if you are a small or medium-sized city in Korea or Sejong City, you will hear the sound of a ghost town.

Anyway, it's strange to see that Korea has a one of the most highest population density in the world, and there are so many mountains, but they said it doesn't feel that way when you live in it, and it seems very far from overpopulation.

Therefore, I think that if the world makes plans using Korea as a role model, concerns about overpopulation and overcrowding will disappear.

I’ve been a long time lurker and I mainly see articles and post about today and the future, but I am curious about the past as well.

When I say long time, I mean before the 2000s, but this is open to anyone really. What was climate/society like during your childhood/early adulthood? How were climate scientist/protesters treated then? What were some major events and changes that have stuck in your mind? I’m just genuinely curious about what its like being collapse aware for a long period of time and want to hear other perspectives.

EDIT: Thank you for all the responses! I even have some events I can do research on now! :)

This is only for those who care to try. I realize that there's an argument to be had over whether that's even advisable.

Having actually done this successfully myself, albeit in one very difficult case, I thought I should "pay it forward" by offering some tips to the community here, considering how rewarding it can be, if only within a narrow social context. You're not going to like my advice, but nobody ever said that evangelism was comfortable or fun. You really have to make an effort to put yourself into the other person's shoes if you're to have any hope of reaching them.

You can shoot this messenger all you want, so long as you actually read this whole submission statement, but this "formula" actually worked on a friend of mine with a background in general relativity and a distaste for the far left. Here goes:

* Don't shut down "denier" arguments out of hand. That's the fastest way to get someone to ignore you. Censorship is gasoline for conspiracy theories, so suck it up and start by listening. After all, science is about the scientific method and evidence, which has nothing directly to do with social consensus, and indeed sometimes overturns it. It's also about reproducible measurements, not in-silico simulations of a future that hasn't happened yet. Only with this humble grounding can you move on to point out that, for example, that it doesn't really matter whether we're right about human activity causing the majority of postindustrial warming, because even if that hypothesis is wrong, reducing waste and controlling emissions can only help.

* Avoid "exponential" language. Things are bad enough as it is with even gradual increases in CO2 emissions. Literally no chemical species in the atmosphere is increasing exponentially, and indeed not temperature itself. The singular exception to the latter, if there is one, would be the near-term cessation of aerosol masking. (I don't include BOE because Artic albedo is definitely not decaying exponentially, ice losses notwithstanding.) That cessation could create a step-change in warming that might be misinterpreted as exponential thermal runaway. But it's a one-shot slap in the face, not a long-term trend. (I also happen to doubt that it will happen so quickly, given that we just broke the record for annual coal-fired power generation while transportation is taking its time phasing out dirty diesel.) Yes, +4C or worse might already be in the cards (looking at James Hansen), but that's over several centuries, and assumes that we do nothing to remove GHG over that time period, nevermind possible technological compensations. Let it go. Nobody's going to listen to an "exponential heating"
argument which contradicts atmospheric physics. Last but not least, you can't actually prove that a trend is exponential because the exponential function never exactly fits real world data, whereas polynomials always can.

* Acknowledge that this isn't a human extinction event (at least, not any time soon insofar as climate threats are concerned). The planet has been here before, most recently in the Pliocene (+3C or thereabouts with broad deserts despite some forested bands in the tropics). It's a hard transition in the blink of an eye, though. This means that the unprepared will die, or more accurately, lose literally billions of years of life, to say nothing of our nonhuman cohabitants. But remember: you're talking to someone who is at best concerned, but will do no charity. Just like on the Titantic, there are only so many lifeboats, and to survive, you must be willing to use them at everyone else's peril: nuclear power (convnetional, small modular, and potentially thorium or fusion), strong border controls (so you don't need to "waste" precious resources saving anyone but yourself), stopgap fossil fuels (until nuclear becomes sufficiently available and economical), reverse osmosis desalination and/or radar-enabled groundwater hunting (looking at Namibia), indoor agriculture (electric horticulture, ultimately nuclear-powered underground vertical farming), aggressive resource recycling so as to minimize import dependencies, and last but certainly not least, a massive arsenal, hopefully conventional in nature. And don't forget to make compassionate speeches about how "we all need to do more to save the Global South". This is what the Collapse Winners' Circle looks like. I'm sure we can all pull a few textbook examples of such countries from the news. So there's little point in pretending that we're all going to join hands and revert to the Bronze Age in order to save everyone.

* If at all possible, avoid getting into political debates. Then you become "that Marxist person" (whether you are or not) and the whole discussion shuts down. To put it another way, choose to fight the battle that you might win (acknowledgement that Collapse is real and is dominated by climate problems which are somewhat actionable) than the battle you won't (pushing a conservative to the far left over dinner, if ever).

* Now, having laid the foundation above, explain how climate migration is going to threaten to move local politics to the left (because of migrants flooding the workforce, starting crime waves, gaining voting rights, or any of the usual conservative arguments) and how the only reasonable response is therefore to enhance one's security by bolstering one's self-reliance (broadly, engaging in off-grid living) and decreasing mobility, especially of a transnational nature. Think permaculture and solar panels, not so much bunkers.

On the downside, winning the argument might convince your conservative friend to double down on selfish behavior, but on the plus side, it would probably also push them into a more insular life, with less travel (which is riskier in a socially destabilized world) and more household resource reuse if not actual onsite farming (to protect against inflation and supply chain shocks). Being a realist, I think I'd call that a victory. Convince the right person, and you save a hundred people's worth of annual emissions.

Feel free to scream and yell now.

SS: Does anyone have any knowledge of the governments and large corporations being aware of collapse? There must be a few of us in the upper echelons of large corps and had to have seen some preparations. Im not talking about bunkers built by the wealthy.

Personally I think when Trump wanted to buy Greenland he had a briefing about how it would be one of the inhabitable zones

This has been brought up before here: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/sc68uj/what_do_you_think_of_a_space_sunshade_or/

But we have now some "realistic" proposals from academics. "A few trillions USD". It also have a section for environmental impact due to production, launches and fuels.

Do you think this coupled with fosil fuel burning consumption (big life style changes including degrowth in many dimensions of our society) could give as hope for survival?

From what I've seen, people on this sub are either expecting Mad Max tomorrow or a gradual collapse.

Being "collapse aware," are you altering your life plans to adjust to that? And if so, what are those plans?

No filler here. I'm a 40-year-old factory worker who makes a really decent wage in a low-cost of-living area.

I think prepping for long-term is stupid. You're just saving stuff for someone else to take, and it's also a lot of stuff that you can't move around if you need to go mobile. Prepping for the short term makes sense.

What I'm doing is trying to amass money while the system still exists. And I have a grand idea for my outpost. Some of you may not be familiar with what is called thicket or bush. It is stuff that you cannot walk through. And you wouldn't attempt to walk through it unless you knew there was something really good across it.

People talk about building compounds and whatever. But eventually someone is going to see that dirt road or whatever and there's going to be a mob that comes along to take everything you have.

Far-out idea but I'm thinking of at least two miles of bush and thicket surrounding my compound. Essentially the compound would be self-sustaining and all of that has its own details which are outside of the scope of this post.

Any would-be bandits would see the endless landscape of bush and thicket and trees and just move on. It doesn't guarantee no invasion, but I think it's a really great PASSIVE deterrent.

Super simple idea. It would take a lot of time to implement, and money as well. But if you really want to survive post-apocalypse, do you want any dirt roads or trails leading to your compound?