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Watch this video: https://youtu.be/8DEfIqIrYpY

Its a pretty great exploration of the relevant ecology here.

Then, plant native plants in as many places as you can. This can support a huge range of organisms, even if done in a city.

>(For those that don't watch, the argument is basically: native plants can house thousands of types of insects. Insects are specialists in what they eat, and so plants that have a natural history in a place ("native") can support far more insects than can a recently introduced one. 96% of bird species that aren't devoted to fish or large animal meat are 100% insectivorous during the time in which they raise their young. The ones that are not are dependent upon things which eat insects for almost all their diet, such as fish, small mammals, or other birds. Thus, there is a direct line from native plants -> insects -> all species of bird. Furthermore, not only birds, but nearly all animals depend on insects in this way. They form ~25% of the diet of bears, foxes, etc. When, in florida, a city began reincorporating a native plant all through their city, they found a large increase in the number of butterflies that were associated with that plant, which were almost extinct. The speaker in the video wrote a book on how and why to plant native plants in your surroundings, and all the good it can do).

Here's the book he wrote on the subject: Bringing Nature Home: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881929921/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Vi3RCb3XR9QK3

Other than that, learn as much as possible about ecology. Learn to identify the plants and animals around you. Learn about disturbance and succession in forests, it'll give you an infinite number of interesting things to ponder. Or if you live where there are plains/prairies, start thinking about and researching all the soil dynamics at play. Near an ocean, start researching coastal ecology. Give yourself a full on ecological education. Not only is it very satisfying, it'll empower you to be able to forward good decision making, and honestly for me it gives me some hope as well as I study more and more.

> You seem to be forgetting the minor point of agriculture failing -- or is that no longer "your point"?

How is this not willfully obtuse, if not an outright misrepresentation?

I was the one suggesting that more northerly locations would be better situated to avoid temperatures driven to 45°C+, and you responded by pointing out that even Moscow "gets heatwaves" too.

I then demonstrated that Moscow has never experienced temperatures in the 40s. Ever.

A perfectly relevant refutation of your generalised exaggeration. That's all.

> water is going to vanish, everywhere?

Obviously not what I'm saying.

Some won't get enough, and some will get far too much. And some will even get just the right amount for some time - but at some point in a collapsing biosphere, not reliably enough in any one place to ensure sufficient crop survival and reliable harvesting to make agriculture viable.

No, I don't have a crystal ball, and can't tell you exactly where that point will be, but this extinction event is unfolding with unprecedented speed, and we are still accelerating it, so I really don't believe that ignoring uncomfortably pessimistic sources is a wise strategy.

> You're now blaming me for not engaging in threads I wasn't involved in?

Sorry, I was getting it confused with the other thread we're discussing similar matters in. I have to do all this on a crappy, broken smartphone since I don't use a computer, so no split-screen windows/advanced clipboard functionality/fancy keyboard for me.

It was referenced in this thread, not the other one.

> On the contrary, I've pointed out the "links" (really one link posted multiple times)

Since /u/Goochymayn posted the link to the projected effects here, I have posted a dozen different links that weren't this one in this thread.

> Man, you people are obsessed with this one website

Far from it, though a little stubborn in trying to encourage some sort of engagement with it on your part - it's sort of the opposite of cherry picking, to go on blithely claiming that it doesn't say what it does, and that the whole thing's just too silly to even acknowledge.

I read many websites, have read the book this summarises by Mark Lunas (FWIW, it won the 2008 Royal Society Book Prize and was turned into a National Geographic TV series, so it's not just some crappy little blog.)

And I agree it would be better if the summary had hyperlinked references. I don't post it here much/ever myself, precisely because of the lack of easy to follow hyperlinks to make it easier for people to check sources online. The book is better (books are always better than this internet rubbish.)

OK, you don't recognise it or any of its sources (though they've been bandied around here often enough,) - I will add some more links tomorrow when I've had some sleep, though it will be at the expense of speedily responding to your other posts (lots of busy-ness ATM.) I will come to them when time allows.

I accept that the descriptions of the effects at each temperature band may not be accurate. Which is why it would be interesting and useful to discuss what it actually predicts, and how much, if any merit there is to their arguments (it would be even better to discuss the book, but that's less feasible online in the temporary conversation cloud that is Reddit, given how few people have probably read it.)

It's less productive in the extreme, to only ever see it analysed by McPhersonite fanboys, too busy obsessing about the doom to look at it with a critical eye. But if they are accurate, then farming will self-evidently NOT be possible, because we will all be too extinct to practice it.

Other interesting topics exist of course, but they're pretty academic if we're looking anything like +7°C by the end of the century.

That too is an interesting topic in itself, and one I would like to see more people engaging in disputing, rather than just avoiding having to consider it at all on the one hand, or obsessively and unproductively doom-mongering about on the other.

They both seem like less productive (if understandably human) approaches.

I find it convincing enough to have committed to taking the measures I have anyway, though I try to keep an open mind.

> doesn't say what they claim it does. It literally doesn't say it.

It doesn't say exactly QUOTE farming will not be possible UNQUOTE, but FFS, it's predicting the sky effectively catching fire because of the methane content, superstorms at least as extreme as the ones that caused the Permian-Triassic extinction, with ""super-hurricanes” hitting the coasts [that] would have triggered flash floods that no living thing could have survived."

It says: "That episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space.” On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs."

And you think agriculture will be possible in this?

It is true, this is at 5+°C, but they also state "Chance of avoiding five degrees of global warming: negligible if the rise reaches four degrees and releases trapped methane from the sea bed."

You've made no effort to refute any of this - you just refuse to engage with this source.

It explains the inexorable runaway temperature effect that will be (possibly has already been,) initiated, and so 4°/5°/6°/7°/+ is largely irrelevant - it's going up, up, up.

And the methane is already being released in observably huge quantities already at <1.5°C, so this does not look so unlikely that it's sensible to simply dismiss it to me, considering the fucktons of the stuff there is down there.

But hey, you've got potatoes and trees, so you'll be fine.

I (and probably other less optimistically- inclined folk here,) would be really interested in knowing why you, or other more optimistic folk, think this is not going to happen.

IF (and I freely admit that is not certain, but if) we're looking at anything like these projections coming to pass this century, then at some point this century, agriculture WILL fail.

And IF the runaway effect from all these tipping points we're burning through is real, then over some timespan, that's inevitable.

> A little emotional, aren’t we? The part where "the world" = "modern civilization"?

No. The part where everything bigger than a lystrosaur, including very probably humanity, is rendered extinct.

And actually I don't get emotional about it - I'm past that.

I get stubborn, and start building an Ark.

> The article they keep linking to doesn't say what they claim it does.

It claims unsurvivable, extinction-level conditions are coming, so yes - it does say what they claim (whether or not it's well-founded - that is a different argument. One you seem unwilling to engage in.)

> I've said that multiple times to them. They have no response for me. And neither will you, I expect. Read the goddamn article.

I have. And I can understand what it's saying. I'd like a reason to disbelieve it, but you're evidently unable to provide one.

I recommend reading the book (I ought to buy another one - lent it out, and never got it back.)

Personally, I think the American Empire is declining. Sir John Glubb had a wonderful write up of this, and I have copied his conclusion below. The full PDF can be found here and it is only 27 pages long.

Glubb looked at eleven empires over the course of history. I copied a relevant summary from the end. The pdf is online here.

> As numerous points of interest have arisen in the course of this essay, I close with a brief summary, to refresh the reader’s mind.

> (a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.

> (b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness.

> (c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. Does it represent ten generations?

> (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great
nations seem to be:

> The Age of Pioneers (outburst)

> The Age of Conquests

> The Age of Commerce

> The Age of Affluence

> The Age of Intellect

> The Age of Decadence.

> (e) Decadence is marked by:

> Defensiveness

> Pessimism

> Materialism

> Frivolity

> An influx of foreigners

> The Welfare State

> A weakening of religion.

> (f) Decadence is due to:

> Too long a period of wealth and power

> Selfishness

> Love of money

> The loss of a sense of duty.

> (g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.

> (h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes.

> (i) History should be taught as the history of the human race, though of course with emphasis on the history of the student’s own country.

The real question is how technology will either speed up, slow down. or prevent the same thing from happening to America.

I also recommend the following books:

The Collapse of Complex Societies, By Joseph Tainter

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, By Jared Diamond

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary Change

Finally, when it comes to survival information, I highly recommend www.survivalblog.com. To me, they are the best of the best.

I also would like to plug Radio Free Redoubt (podcast) as well as AmRRON (American Redoubt Radio Operator's Network).

If you haven't already, you should definitely read The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age by John Michael Greer.

It doesn't exactly discredit collapse, but it does differ from the "sky will fall tomorrow" crowd, in a very rational way.

I agree with the user comment: "He begins with a clear explanation of our energy predicament, and makes the novel claim that this is not a problem to solve - it is a situation that we must adapt to. The author does an excellent job of disarming two common responses to Peak Oil by bringing their myths to the surface: the myth of progress and the myth of apocalypse. The point is made that allowing one single narrative to rule over your identity is dangerous."

And if you like his book, you should check out his blog too: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/

Your story really resonates with my own growing up in Oklahoma.

I guess a lot of people on here look at their analysis as totally novel and "the thing" that will help save us all, if only everyone else could see it their way. I don't think that is the case, and nothing I say I will "save us," frankly I don't understand who it is that needs saving or why?

Cognitive Bias's are just fun little things that can help you see the world a bit differently, like a pair of glasses that makes things sometimes less blurry. I think they are also useful for your mood, at least for me, It puts me in a better mood when I can filter information a bit better and not get emotional about it.

For Climate Change, I recommend you read at "Hot Earth Dreams" if you happen to be looking for a possible picture of the a climate change ridden world, where not everyone dies, but there is no Utopian happy motoring left either.

https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392

yes. you should read this book for perspective on what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed. .. basically people got up the next morning and went about their daily lives as best they could, but their culture was VERY different from what we have in the US (they were already used to hardship, already farmed, etc). The book talks about using vodka and gasoline for bartering... one of the best things for bartering throughout history has been some form of alcohol. Other things like toilet paper, light bulbs, motor oil, etc.. stuff you'll use anyway and won't go bad.. are also a good thing to stock up on in case of natural disaster or societal collapse. If nothing bad happens, you just use the stuff.

and yes, inflation will impact things like whiskey, vodka, etc.

I find it very encouraging that our sub has attracted a lot of new people.


Many seem to be fixated on the climate portion of systematic collapse, when it is actually just a small portion of a much larger problem. I've found JMG to be our greatest resource when explaining this things.


Please help me post more JMG and similar content to bring new folks into the fold!


New folks: If you enjoyed this post, take the plunge and buy one of his books. Dark Age America is a good place to start.
https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Age-America-Cultural-Collapse/dp/0865718334

Plants pull CO2 out of the air and use around half of it to build their bodies. They exude the rest of the carbon into the soil as simple sugars to feed the microbes that live in the soil. The microbes eat the sugar and excrete acids into the soil, breaking down the rock to get the minerals they need in addition to carbon to build their bodies. When the microbes die, the plants can absorb the minerals the microbes collected.

People have degraded topsoil so much that we have a huge opportunity to remove CO2 from the air and store it in soil by restoring soil health, which would happen if we could/would restore the native ecosystems. David Mongomery has some great books and videos explaining where we are and how we got here.

Trees have an enormous amount of solar collecting leaves powering the photosynthetic machinery that converts atmospheric CO2 to wood and carbon in the soil. Compare that to the photosynthesis a lawn cut a few inches high can do. People need to plant as many trees as possible, and even more importantly save every bit of old growth ecosystems we can.

By the way, for those interested in reading the original Limits to Growth, the Donella Meadows Institute released it free online this past June:

http://www.donellameadows.org/the-limits-to-growth-now-available-to-read-online/

I'd also strongly recommend reading LTG: The 30 Year Update.

I agree. I think Argentina and Russia are closer examples than Armageddon. Surviving the Economic Collapse is probably more useful than trying to learn how to live like you're in the stone-age.

Loosed Upon The World - The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction - Great collection of mid-collapse or post-collapse short stories from good authors. Edited by John Joseph Adams, who also was involved in editing the 3-pack compilations of "The End is Nigh", "The End is Now", and "The End has Come". My favorite story series in those books is Spores by Seanan McGuire, which focuses on a GMO fungus that eats the world.

​

Another editor of those 3-pack compilations was Hugh Howey, a great author that wrote the "Silo Series" - A post apocalyptic series based on the only survivors of a nanobot "grey goo" attack that wipes out the human race.

The Long Descent was JMG's most lucid and best work. But, it like a lot of similar works from the time were predicated on Peak Oil (peak everything, really, which is the title of another book by Heinburg). How these works are going to be viewed historically is hard to say.

After The Long Descent, JMG focused more on Druidry, Geomancy and outright nuttery. He wrote some online short stories that utterly lacked credibility and undermined most of his earlier works by going full Druid.

I'd still recommend reading The Long Descent, and just ignore most of what came after.

Its a good book to show just how much food you can grow on given sizes from 1/4 acres and up etc.

Good books: Back to basics / Encylopedia of country living /

http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Country-Living-Carla-Emery/dp/1570615535/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323093223&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Back-Basics-Complete-Traditional-Skills/dp/1602392331/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323093275&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Book-Self-Sufficiency-John-Seymour/dp/0751364428/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323094521&sr=8-1

I am pretty sure op is talking about the book by Mark Lynas.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001RKFU4I/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Yes. This follows the roughly 80-100 year pattern Strauss and Howe lay out in the Fourth Turning. Highly recommend the book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory

Ah yes, the Canfield Ocean. Purple anoxic ocean under a green sky, such pretty colors. To see such a thing, would be both beautiful and cosmically horrific.

I thought this was required reading for r/collapse, but this is an excerpt from Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life by Neil Strauss.

I highly recomend this one, trying to get the wife to read it now.

In a ruined and toxic future, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside.

I don't know if these are essential, but I have Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies and Too Smart for Our Own Good: The Ecological Predicament of Humankind, but I can't comment on the quality of scholarship in these books. I'm at the mercy of their perspectives. Also, we're not "too smart for our own good". We're just smart enough to be incredibly stupid.

The Foxfire book series is really good.

https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/193149858X

No growth means...no growth

e; I'm not saying don't save, just don't trust that money to continue to exist as life goes on. Convert to non-depreciating physical assets often.

Some good starting points

https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Nature-Economics-Survival-Mattered/dp/0865716730/

https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Economic-History-Geerat-Vermeij/dp/069112793X/

https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Civilization-History-MIT-Press/dp/0262035774/

https://www.amazon.com/Overshoot-Ecological-Basis-Revolutionary-Change/dp/0252009886/

https://www.amazon.com/Environment-Power-Society-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0231128878/

https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X/

http://bpeconomics.org/

https://biophyseco.org/

Foxfire series would be a good one to have if you have the money.

Try John Michael Greer's *The Long Descent.

Or the Transition Movement has some stuff that sounds like what you're looking for. Try [the Transition Companion](http://www.amazon.com/Transition-Companion-Community-Resilient-Uncertain/dp/1603583920/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343657353&sr=1-1&keywords=rob+hopkins)*.

Yes. I read Peter Ward's Under a Green Sky when it came out in 2008. I remember wondering why everyone wasn't talking about it.

I'd recommend the 30 year update.

This may or may help you relax. ;)

First, collapse is already underway. My parents could afford a house and middle-class lifestyle on one salary. I can't afford a house on two salaries. There has been a real and significant decline in the standard of living in Canada and the US (can't speak for anywhere else). We tend not to consider it a collapse because it's happening slowly and instead just seems like change.

Second, after much research, I now live in the Camp of Probabilities:

• Collapse seems most likely to occur as a "punctuated decline." John Michael Greer. That is, the ride down will occur as short, steep drops, followed by years of a reduced standard of living, then the next drop.
  
• There is a significant probability of a sudden, severe collapse, as nearly happened in 2008 when the banksters crashed the economy and the price of oil spiked to $140+. Had this spiralled out of control, there might well have been runs on the banks and a general collapse into depression.
  
  How to prepare? Make as much money as possible while you can, and put it to good use. Join Transition Initiative.; you're far more likely to do well if part of a like-minded community than solo-cabin-in-the-woods. In TI you will find people creating
  
  >small-scale local responses to the global challenges of climate change, economic hardship and shrinking supplies of cheap energy.
  
  You can take - or give - classes, or join a group in actively creating just about everything from knitting to local currencies.

Indeed. I seem to remember that from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1

Avoiding the next ice age is a good thing, right? ;)

I'm a big fan of this book. Covers a lot of topics.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0895779390

Six Degrees by Mark Lynas. Great book, he read 3000 papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, with extensive references. One chapter per degree C.

At 3C it just looks disastrous. At 4C the survival of modern civilization starts to look doubtful. At 6C it's hard to imagine our species surviving to any meaningful extent.

These pocket sized guide books are worth having a copy of too if there's one suited to your location.

Tainter wrote an excellent book called The Collapse of Complex Societies

Here is the mobile version of your link

Are we talking story type books or 'how to' books?

If 'how to', here's a couple to get you started:

The Forager's Harvest: A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting, and Preparing Edible Wild Plants - Full colored pictures of edible plants found in the wild

Back to Basics: A Complete Guide to Traditional Skills - I haven't picked up this book yet but it's been quoted in a few SHTF books I've read as a point of reference.

Get at least 2 copies of this book..

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1602392331/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1303161105&sr=8-16

"Back to Basics" its just about all the information you need.

It comes from a book called The Fourth Turning.

I'm basing this on Mark Lynas' book Six Degrees

https://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Civilizations-David-R-Montgomery/dp/0520248708

Check out Peter Ward's Under a Green Sky. Here's a talk.

Haven't read this yet. Bu tI can only imagine you will find it relevant.

I have this book coming to my doorstep: Emergency!

Recommended reading

Hey OP! This isn't a new idea, actually someone started collecting most all of the knowledge you'll need in the 60's?

Anyway, the book series, and you'll want hard copies, is called Firefox.


He's a link to the collection: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00MRH3RYU/ref=mp_s_a_1_1/180-5596677-6772356?qid=1450495707&sr=1-1&keywords=foxfire+books+complete+sets

I think you're spot on. I recommend John Michael Greer's book The Long Descent, in which he describes the aftermath of peak oil and what he calls "catabolic collapse" into a post-industrial society. He predicts that the collapse will happen over several generations as you mention, and in several waves between which things will seem to be improving again.

As someone who recently got their DNA genetic test thingy, it's hard to say what % of your genetics you have from your grandfather. I thought I was a quarter native American -- but I have like less than 5% Just depends on how the deck gets cut. My last name geneology goes back to England and English colonists to the US, but I have the same % English as I do native American. Although it is my last name, that makes up a small sliver of my genetics. Which when you think about the genetic tree, the farther you go back, you have so many ancestors, it's crazy.

That said, people with my last name seem to uncannily have similar interests/career paths/obsessions as me. (e.g., someone with my last name has published a book on environmental collapse)

https://www.amazon.com/Son-Also-Rises-Surnames-Princeton/dp/0691168377

Reminds me of Ferfal's book about conditions in Argentina after the economic collapse there in 2001:

blog
book

Read Tainter on the Collapse of Complex Societies, and then come back here:

https://www.amazon.ca/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Joseph-Tainter/dp/052138673X

Different ones but also this: http://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Civilizations-David-R-Montgomery/dp/0520248708

He claimed that Mesopotamia went through cycles of salinification and topsoil loss which coincide with the cultures coming and going. Many cultures in Mesopotamia have collapsed and disappeared, you know. It's not an unbroken chain of culture there.

At least Montgomery makes the point that the Greek valleys went into decline after a few hundred years of farming and took the larger civilization there into decline with them. After about 300-1000 years natural erosion and wildlife would have replenished the soil again enough to restart the civilizational cycle. (The length of the cycle depends on the climate and soil types.) Top soil loss doesn't mean that everyone dies. It just means that a few valleys can no longer sustain a city of 20000 people and the farmers supporting it.

Dr. Joseph Tainter has researched this issue!

He's an anthropologist who notably wrote: "The Collapse of Complex Societies."

Jump to this YouTube video to listen to a discussion of this.

> Basically that things aren't great, but they aren't catastrophic either, and that we actually are kind of on the right path, or at least a path good enough that we'd 'only' heat the planet up another 2-3deg in the next 50 years instead of the near fatal ~8deg statistics I've seen. We could be doing a much better job as a species, but we'll still be OK.

There's a book on global warming, Six degrees. It has six chapters, one for each degree of warming. There's no need for a seventh chapter because there won't be any humans left in that scenario. According to the book, if we exceed +3°C, industrial agriculture will collapse (more or less quickly, depending on the region), and billions will starve.

We're currently on the trajectory for a warming of roughly +3.4°C. I imagine that the despair that comes with the early consequences will push down this path down to something like +2.8°C. Still, the lives of roughly five billion people are very insecure on that path. That's apocaplyptic enough for me.

I recommend reading the book 1177 B.C., about the bronze age collapse. It seems that its aftereffects were a bit slow to get to other places in Europe, like this Ireland case, so the process was actually gradual, but indeed that collapse was something to think about; a sort of global economy, a resource base being depleted, climate hardships, global unrest and wars...

Orlov has some decent theories on how the US will be quite different from Agentina and Russia though. But even he stresses that even if the US government collapsed people would get up and go to work the next morning. Life goes on.. people want normalcy and they'll work hard to get back to it.

Even if you don't believe "Venus" is the worst case (which is reasonable considering that Earth is not Venus already despite massive climate change over its history), this is still a pretty bad scenario.

Again Gregory Clark dispels this myth.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691168377?keywords=the%20son%20also%20rises&qid=1458508769&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

--

The 3 gen rise is a myth. No one really rises from peasant to lord unless it was a time of troubles, and they do 'regress to the mean' within 3 gen.

Those who do reach the top from lower ranks usually start in at least at the 'second base' (top 10-20% rung of socioeconomic ladder), not from bottom.

They don't know what they are doing.

They core of the power elite are Religious Fundamentalists.

We had so many close calls, they truly want to usher in the apocalypse via nuclear war or environmental catastrophe.

I absolutely do not buy the "but the .1% have planned this all along, they even created the various recent crises, to include GoM Oil Volcano and Fukushima, they are omnipotent!"

No. They are stupid fucking religious zealots.

This should speak a thousand words:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861/text

Youre probably spending too much time on the internet. This is a popular, but grossly erroneous meme right now, that the .1% have planned all of this for decades, that it's an extremely sophisticated multi-faceted plan to deal with human overpopulation.

Try reading some conventional literature on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Thy-Will-Done-Rockefeller-Evangelism/dp/0060927232/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1487442325&sr=8-4&keywords=thy+will+be+done

https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487444280&sr=8-1&keywords=the+collapse+of+complex+societies

(The .1% of the Mayan Empire managed to trick their subjects into similarly believing that they were in control of things, that they were in direct contact with the Gods and that they could avert crop failure / food shortage by increasing human sacrifice in conjunction with the intensification of monumental architecture, right up until the very end, RE: Jared Diamond, Joseph Tainter. I'm sure members of their populace were also subscribing to a similar meme: "No, they have everything under control, they are secretly behind the maize crop failure because they want to satisfy the gods...." some other mumbo jumbo)

The narrative you espouse does nothing but continue to empower the ruling elite. This is the mythos that they wan't you to subscribe to. That THEY, through pure technological ingenuity, have command of the climate and other life-systems on this planet, and that we are powerless, and that they have a grand plan for Humanity.

They don't.

Things are spiraling out of control.

They TRULY believe in a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible.

Read this again and let this sink in, THE CORE OF THE POWER ELITE, THE SHADOW GOVT., BELIEVE IN A LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE.

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Truth-Forbidden-Steven-Greer/dp/0967323827/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487444452&sr=8-1&keywords=hidden+truth%3A+forbidden+knowledge

And you think they have a handle on what's going on?

I want whatever youre smoking dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjR7AWSmI6o

http://www.salon.com/2017/01/30/president-trumps-right-hand-man-steve-bannon-called-for-christian-holy-war-now-he-is-on-the-national-security-council_partner/

Joseph Tainter suggests Rome collapsed because the increasing complexity of the bureaucracy required to organise it couldn't be sustained. Our society does depend on cheap energy; whether it will be the collapse of the energy supply that brings society down, or the collapse of organisation (possibly as a financial collapse, as Nicole Foss suggests) is going to be one of those things that's only obvious after the event.

It seems really quite doable if our society was to buckle down and just set our mind to it; I have seen one estimate that a WWII style buildout and dedication would get the problem solved in about a decade (assuming that spectres likes EROEI don't sink it).

It seems to me that we are currently in a standard of living anchoring trap where no one wants to take the pain to fix the problem; and that the long term road to prosperity means short term pain.

Too much of the American psyche is about keeping up with the Jones, and not enough about long term investment in society. Hopefully some of sociologists that study generations are right and the time will be right within the decade to really buckle down and look at solving our problems - watch for percentage of baby boomers in congress. I don't think it's a coincidence that the massive drop in congress's effectiveness happened to coinicide with baby boomers become a majority there.

I'm a determinist - evolution & thermodynamics so the stuff I like best deals with the big picture - Why are humans the way they are?. Most can't deal with it and that's not a choice either.

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Straw Dogs by John Gray (book)

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15 Big Ideas From Straw Dogs And John Gray (The Philosopher)

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https://selfhacked.com/2014/10/07/review-straw-dogs-john-gray/

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Adventures In Flatland - 4 Essays by Dave Cohen. Chocked full of links to relevant research that demonstrates the humans are not in control of anything.

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1. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/10/adventures-in-flatland.html
   
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2. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/10/adventures-in-flatland-part-ii.html
   
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3. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/11/adventures-in-flatland-part-iii-1.html
   
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4. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2017/03/adventures-in-flatland-part-iv.html
   
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   Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind by Ajit Varki and Danny Brower (2013)
   
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   https://un-denial.com/denial-2/book/
   
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   Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid
   discharge of the earth-space battery foretells
   the future of humankind
   
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   https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/pnas-2015-schramski-1508353112.pdf
   
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   Specific examples - The Collapse of Complex Societies
   by Joseph Tainter
   
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   https://www.amazon.ca/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Joseph-Tainter/dp/052138673X
   
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   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI
   
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   There's more, but all that is needed is to understand that the humans are abstract and insatiable reward seekers incapable of turning it off. Nobody's fault, just evolution. Sure there are some who are behaving badly and will cause much harm to others, but that too is part of the human condition. Has always been there and always will. I think that the humans being at there very best could only have ever resulted in stringing out the industrial cancer a handful of decades longer. Seriously, a creature who was ruled by logic would have stopped destroying their life giving and sustaining biosphere a long time ago. Humans are not that creature.

Collapse = A society can be said to collapse when it undergoes a rapid and substantial loss of an established level of socio-political complexity. This, according to Tainter, is always a political process. It stems from the destruction and decay of social organisations and institutions. He gives a list of the kinds of things you can expect to see less of in a society undergoing collapse. These include: less social stratification and differentiation, less economic specialisation, less centralised control, less trading and economic activity and less production of ‘cultural epiphenomena’ such as monuments, buildings, and artworks (Tainter 1988, 4)

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It's not my definition twit. It's the definition according to Joseph Tainter which any collapser worth their salt would fucking know. I'm done here. Go somewhere else, you do not belong. You don't even know the definition of this place.

Before I ever knew about global biosphere collapse, I was already looking into the decline of (the United States of) America. Morris Berman is such a pessimist he left the nation and moved to Mexico, but his books on American Collapse (Dark Age America trilogy) and particularly Wandering God helped put reality in perspective. By the time I found r/collapse I knew things were not going as well as the media wanted me to believe. I was already wondering how to live my life, given that the American dream was a vapid sham built on the backs of poor people, and finding out the Dream was also killing the world redoubled my efforts to live correctly.

Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush was pivotal in realigning my thinking. Accepting collapse is not so much a question of survival as much as "how do I want to spend my time being alive on this planet?"

"Climate - A New Story" by Charles Eisenstein goes into all of the reasons the world is collapsing but his take away is different from most. He argues that focusing only on reducing carbon consumption leaves all the other problems unchanged. Well researched and multilateral.

What Would It Mean to Deeply Accept That We're In Planetary Crisis? This article was just beautiful and spoke to the reality of the times we live in.

Uncivilization - The Dark Mountain Manifestio Written by Paul Kingsnorth in 2009, this is some early but profound thought on collapse.