We’re Not Going to Make it to 2050

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Top Highlights

• Harvests for everything from cocoa to coffee to wheat to sugar to mustard are beginning to decline. They’re not going to stop, because neither is the heat. The crops our civilization depends on? They can’t survive the killing heat, either.

• Prices spike. Shortages break out. Both of those are beginning to happen now.

• What happens as prices spike? Inflation roars. And what happens as a consequence of inflation? People get poorer. What do people who are getting poorer not have the money to do anymore? Invest. They can’t afford to pay the taxes which fund modern social contracts. And so societies simply begin to fall apart. This is the vicious cycle many, many civilizations have fallen into before us, essentially. Poverty breeds an inability to take collective action and make collective investments. All the systems of a golden age? They simply begin to crumble, break down, fail

• We’re not going to make it to 2050. Not even close to that far.

• The temperature’s already rising so fast that most models didn’t expect it to get this hot until 2050. So how hot is going to be in 2050? Actually, forget that. 2040. No, forget even that. Let’s just try…2030. We’re already at 45 degrees Celsius in Europe. 50 degrees in Asia. That’s for a few days here and there. At this rate? By 2030, that’s not just a few days anymore — it’s weeks at a time, maybe, spells of weeks at a time

• Collapse is happening faster and harder than we imagined it would. Than the models said it would.

• We are a civilization struggling to provide the basics right now. We are definitely not going to make it to 2050.

• What we are doing is inadequate. You don’t have to think too hard about it. Our civilization’s attempts to combat Extinction so far have resulted in…this. This dystopia we currently live in, where Europe’s on fire, inflation’s spiking, Covid never goes away, and all the rest of it. Our efforts are self-evidently inadequate. Things are this bad right now. Go ahead, and think about 2025. And shudder. Most of us can’t even imagine the world in 2030, or 2040

• We all know what needs to be done. What’s missing is the will.

• Everyone should understand. We’re not going to make it to 2050. Until and unless we change. Demand better. Alter our own societies, habits, attitudes, expectations. Transform our social contracts and economies and polities. Stop overthinking, cowering, debating, and get it done. Begin doing what we all know needs to be done — sure, there are a few lunatics who’ll still “debate” it. But the rest of us know. It’s now or never, my friends.