You make a great point, but I believe many humans are going to suffer, especially those of the global south, as a result of the global effects of industrial civilization collapse. We definitely need a reset, but I don’t believe it will be painless.
Doomer, Collapse-spotter, Anti-capitalist, Anti-Human Supremacist, born at 320 ppm with population at 3.3 billion, It’s the Overshoot, stupid. Humanity may be doomed, but we don’t need to lose our humanity.
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You make a great point, but I believe many humans are going to suffer, especially those of the global south, as a result of the global effects of industrial civilization collapse. We definitely need a reset, but I don’t believe it will be painless.
Aren’t they shutting these arrays down soon!
I agree. This societal indifference and ineffectiveness is happening regardless what a few Doomers believe. Doomer bashing seems to make whoever feel good about themselves and score points with their social groups. Doomer beliefs threaten their own weak beliefs.
I’m at an age where I don’t know if prepping is worth it for me. I’m just going to go down with the ship.
We can also thank the likes of: Emily Oster, David Leonhardt, Monica Gandhi, and Michael Levitt who were not challenged by MSM.
Marine-climate interventions are part of collapse by 1000 “interventions.” Highest priority should be winding down petroleum and all energy use. These “interventions” give cover for the continued use of energy. We need to restore what we’ve destroyed, but must stop the cause of this destruction.
They have been everywhere in NJ and PA for many years. I saw them when I went back to visit family in the summer. They were definitely striking, large, and ubiquitous.
“But Americans haven’t reacted to this price bump by eating less beef. Instead, they’re eating more imported beef — which is a problem for the environment, as cattle farms abroad are significantly less carbon-efficient than they are in America.”
Non-doomers talking about doomerism are like a priests teaching sex education. Neither has any idea what they’re talking about.
I thought COVID would bring about the Great Awakening where humanity would abandon individualism and embrace working towards a common good. Not going to happen. Unfortunately, we’re not wired for it.
Thanks for writing this. Her generalization of doomers is so 2021 based on that climate scientist’s book, “The New Climate War.” She had years to develop a deeper understanding of doomers. I believe she decided to go with what would be better accepted by the wider public.
😂
I just needed to see Matt Yglesias‘ name first on the list to know that this is going to be garbage. Left. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”
Every time someone says “we must not despair,” I end up doubling my despair. I start with just my despair over our collapse. Then I start to despair over the fact that I shouldn’t be despairing over it. Thanks for that, hopium cultists.
I love this article. It helped me make sense of my own grief/collapse process. I’m having a difficult time getting out of depression phase. I didn’t realize I needed to deal with the people stuck in the hopium/bargaining phase. Being surrounded by them makes for a somewhat lonely existence.
Hugo, this is brilliant. How was “Atlas Shrugged” ever popular? Ayn Rand had such horrible views of society and nature. I guess she is just a reflection of who we are.
This book is published by the Cato Institute. That’s a Koch libertarian think tank.
It’s not all unfolding as predicted. There are so many unpredicted twists and turns that are horrific but also fascinating at the same time. Very surreal times these are.
This is similar to California’s CARE court which was initially implemented about 2 years ago. Even my State, liberal California, was going in this direction. We are blaming the unhoused for being unhoused and punishing them instead of seeing this as a result of a failing society.
It’s so retro. We love to relive the “glory days” of the past, until we are forcefully reminded that the past wasn’t so great. Future's not so great either. We are so screwed!
There are so many moving parts that keep our ecosystem functioning. I believe human knowledge has just scratched the surface, yet we believe we’re more knowledgeable than we actually are. Humility would serve us better than our belief in human supremacy.
Algae and fungi should get a turn. Humans have dominated long enough.
“More than 40 million Nigerians are facing the threat of losing their means of livelihood due to worsening desertification, which now affects 43 per cent of the country’s landmass, the Federal Government has said.”
"this glow marks the explosive growth of one of the ocean’s most dangerous microorganisms — Noctiluca scintillans.” “with every surge in their population, the ocean loses oxygen and becomes less habitable for marine life.”
I love how none of these people call out the people who are indifferent about it all. That’s where the real inaction comes from. Doomers didn’t cause them to be indifferent. The denialism and indifference caused my doomerism not the other way around.
“The model also forecasts Arctic Ocean warming as high as 5°C and intense rainfall strengthening over areas such as the Himalayas, Andes, and eastern Asia. This jump in detail, made possible by high-powered simulations”
“The findings make a direct and clear link between geologically rapid carbon release, ocean acidification, major ecological disturbance and in this case, mass extinction, the researchers said.”
“A mix of drought, insect damage, and overcrowding from younger trees appear to be the main causes.”
“Over 55 million Americans are being advised to prepare for extreme heat in the coming days as unusually hot weather is forecast to affect the Midwest, South, and Northeast this week.” Doesn’t seem unusual anymore.
"We may be approaching tipping points regarding the impact of climate change on Earth's animals" “disappearance of more than 10 billion snow crabs from the Bering Sea since 2018, the deaths of 7,000 humpback whales in the North Pacific, and the loss of 4 million common murres”
“They (peatlands) are burning, too. But the scale of emissions from fires in the peatlands is not accounted for in current government statistics.” “Peat fires also smoulder over longer periods (than forests), rather than going up in one giant flame.”
That’s a very unconvincing and weak article. I would love to have someone change my mind about my doomerism. These types of articles instead further convince me that my doomerism is justified.
They are bad faith actors through and through.
Poor Sam!
Dry lightning storms are now very dangerous. Stay safe everyone.
“Investigations … revealed that companies are falsifying documents and mislabeling products on a massive scale. Non-sustainable materials, including virgin cooking oil and fresh palm oil, are falsely labeled as waste streams” Humans are going to be human. We’re can’t overcome this.
“A natural remedy that has previously helped counter oil spills will be too slow to ‘do any useful work’ if there's a spill in the Canadian Arctic” Translation: We are going to keep extracting as much oil as possible and will put the environment at even more risk.🤑
Hopium Addicts tout how great it is that China is using so much “renewable” energy, yet China had the largest carbon emissions by far in 2023. I know many countries have outsourced the manufacturing of their shit to China, but how can anyone think China's use of renewables will stop our collapse?
“Climate change is increasingly affecting the survival capacity of numerous species unable to adapt their needs to new environmental conditions (migrating, changing their behavior patterns or through genetic modifications, which entails a very high temporal space)”
This seems true for San Francisco and most Bay Area cities. The tech industry has forced the low income/working class to live in the burbs. The stores are becoming more and more high-end.
People react in different ways to being collapse aware. We’re all human & it’s a devastating experience. I just take the NTHE people with a grain of salt. I am always furious over those in power manipulating society for their own gain using any means available to intentionally destroy us all.
Had to deal with smoke in CA in the fall of 2020. The skies turned orange and ash came down like snow. We wore smoke masks to deal with the smoke if we left our houses. I am sorry that you’re going through this.
“479 deaths were reported due to environmental heat from 2011-2020, mostly among workers in landscaping, ag, manufacturing, & construction.” “OSHA is one of the agencies required ... to cut 10 old regulations for every new one issued.” “How they do that should be left up to the employers.”
“many of those sites—all military facilities—are near population centers & important eco areas. Approximately 3 mil people live within 1 mile of a federal Superfund site, and about 13 mil are within 3 miles” “If cleanup remedies fail or are impaired, that may result in the spread of contaminants”
“It’s the kind of statistic, several experts said, that is both eye-opening and likely to become more common because of climate change.” “It is a mathematical certainty that as the atmosphere holds more water, it can also discharge more water in an instantaneous fashion”
That’s crazy! PragerU is a nonprofit?! B.S. It’s definitely anti-intellectual rightwing propaganda. Being a teacher seems to be getting tougher and tougher.
Nice but sad to hear the truth from a prominent scientist. Prof Suzuki has firsthand experience with awful governments: "The government sold the Suzuki family's dry cleaning business, then interned Suzuki, his mother, and two sisters in a camp at Slocan in the British Columbia Interior."
So much for that whole free market thing. So many companies are getting filthy rich off of our dime. The Pentagon has more money than god.
It’s going to take a lot for society to become aware of our collapse. I try to explain the situation to people I know, and they just think I’m out of my mind. It’s going to have to get really bad until there’s a true acknowledgment.
If Earth’s age was compressed into a single year, modern humans do not arrive until approximately 11:36 pm on December 31st. Only a terrorist could do so much damage in such little time. open.substack.com/pub/georgets...
The U.S. empire will not allow the international community to act.
Choose your poison: Amazon rainforest, biosphere and humans, Greenland, West Antarctic, coral reefs, AMOC, or human mindset. That’s easy. The existence of humans is the worst tipping point by far.
If we're asking, "Is there still time?" at this late point, then you've got to realize the answer is NO. "Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources, told me in an e-mail. 'Best-case scenarios from a decade ago are, unfortunately, probably off the table.'"
All we need to do is convince 8.2 billion people to come together and overcome all of our differences, then finally “take action.” How many people do you think will read this article? 5000? How many people of influence will read this article and then change their ways?
Car Soup!😆😆😆
"it took hundreds of thousands of years for the world population to grow to 1 billion – then in another 200 years or so, it grew sevenfold. In 2011, the global population reached the 7 billion mark ... it’s expected to grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, & 10.9 billion in 2100."
Dumping our shit into our oceans and then swimming in it “can result in gastrointestinal illnesses, respiratory issues, skin rashes, and infections of the ears and eyes. Although most cases go unreported, researchers estimate that around 57 million such illnesses occur nationwide each year.”
“One clip shows a house collapsing and being pulled downriver, while another captures debris smashing into a small bridge before submerging nearby roads.”
Wildfires in France, Spain, Greece, Turkey, and Syria!!!!
“The study estimates that about 2,300 people died in the extreme temperatures across the cities, from Lisbon to Budapest. If the climate hadn’t been heated up, there would be about 1,500 fewer excess deaths, meaning climate change is behind 65 per cent of these excess deaths.”
“not incorporating the effects of a shrinking winter snowpack into Earth system models likely leads to overestimation of carbon sequestration of north forests ... by at least 50%” “The increased freeze/thaw cycles appear to have caused enough damage to tree roots ... to impair their carbon uptake.”
“They help him answer questions such as when is the last frost so he can plant, is it going to be dry, and importantly, what conditions are other Midwestern states facing that he should take into account when marketing his commodities. “…do I want to grow corn or beans”
“Fireflies are quickly vanishing, & the biggest culprit is habitat destruction. … In Asia, polluted waterways & the loss of mangroves for shrimp farms … Pesticides & mosquito sprays … lawn chemicals poison the soil where they live. Light pollution is blinding male fireflies”
“The official warned about pessimistic c.c. scenarios, stating that if current conditions are not controlled & temperatures rise by 8 degrees, many major cities bordering deserts such as Yazd, Kerman and Isfahan will no longer have suitable living conditions & will become practically uninhabitable.”
“By 2035, an estimated 34% of copper used in semiconductor production may be at risk of disruption due to drought.” Our scarce water supplies must be used for copper production for our out-of-control technological "advances."
“the most advanced models running on some of the fastest computers on the planet, and yet climate scientists now admit they don't really know what's going on. There are so many things left out of the models that the models aren't capable of capturing the nature of reality”
Love this song! Going to enjoy it. Why the hell not.
“the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ rocketed, and a five-million-year heatwave followed.”
“The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda” People should consider the backfire effect—much of politics is just petty reaction. So petulant!
Somebody thought this was a good idea. From the Musee Mechaninque, an antique arcade game.
Don’t you know that you’re causing the collapse because you had bad thoughts. Positive thoughts will save us.🤪
I’ve always wondered how a country could possibly head down a dark path. This is how it happens. I don’t know what to do at this point.
Didn’t Maynard Keynes say that technological advancements would lead to a reduction in working hours without necessarily causing widespread unemployment or lower income? He must have thought that humans were rational and not oppressive by nature.
Arndt says this thawing permafrost is often not accounted for in global climate models, which means climate plans based on these models may underestimate future warming. Scientists are also working to better understand a phenomenon called “abrupt thaw,” where permafrost thaws very quickly.
“The scale of these emissions is so large that they are likely to create a feedback loop, says Kyle Arndt, The extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will make the planet warm faster, which then causes more of the Arctic to thaw.” From MIT Climate
M. Mann insists, “It all goes back to this erroneous argument that we’re committed to this massive release of methane from the Arctic that will lead to runaway warming. There is no credible scientific evidence whatsoever for that.” This in reaction to Jem Bendell.
So much new and terrifying info that I keep up! Looks like there’s a lot of climate model updating that needs to happen.
Charles Koch is really got his money’s worth when he founded the CATO institute in ‘77. Still spewing their BS 47 years later.
Some good news to help cheer me up.
“I’m not giving up on the immediate years, but the focus on politics, economics, & law are all destined to fail because they are based around humans. ... we’ve left out the foundation of our existence, which is nature, clean air, pure water, rich soil, food, & sunlight.”
That may be offensive to pond scum.😜
Capitalism doesn’t miss a beat.
Opinion: Bluesky is a dangerous echo chamber because no one wants to hear from me, specifically
From Peter D Carter INCREASED ARCTIC WETLAND EMISSIONS Copernicus surface methane 1 July 2025 Global warming feedback methane emissions IPCC does not account for wetlands. This can only increase with accelerating warming, highest in the Arctic.
“The European Union’s demand for electric vehicles may lead to the deforestation of 118,000 hectares” “As some mining activities clear large forested areas, they contribute significantly to increased atmospheric CO2 levels, thereby exacerbating climate change,”
“The review highlights how tropical peatlands, when drained and cultivated, shift from greenhouse gas sinks to powerful sources of N₂O and CO₂.“ “Although peatlands cover a relatively small fraction of global agricultural land, their impact on greenhouse gas emissions is disproportionately large”
“These corporations — which collectively generate $420 billion in revenue — are responsible for roughly 8% of global methane pollution, mostly through (believe it or not) cow burps and manure, though many mistakenly believe it's mainly cow farts.” IT’S FROM THE DAIRY PRODUCTS THEY USE!!!
“‘I caught some heat for suggesting this, that long-term, moose don’t have a chance in the state of New York,’ he said. ‘The reason is climate change.’ Moose are adapted for cold climates, and they also struggle when their habitat overlaps with deer.”
“Long-term outlooks from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center show no widespread relief over the summer months, which means drought conditions will continue to deteriorate, and the threat of wildfires will gradually increase.”
“As the climate warms, more ice shifts to liquid, increasing the amount of heat emitted from the clouds” “The more liquid water the clouds contain, the better they are at trapping heat. But many climate models have a large bias in representing this ratio, causing incorrect predictions.”
“The study suggests that traditional methods for estimating the likelihoods of extreme storm surges have underestimated hazards levels at 85% of tide-gauge sites nationwide.”
So fly far and fly often because "it’s good for climate change"! One great reason, if tourists don’t frequent some wildlife refuges, poachers will murder more wild animals. Aren’t humans just dandy?!!!!!
Reminds me of the story where a Zen monk was chased off a cliff by tigers. He’s hanging onto a branch as mice chew the branch. He’s going to die no matter what. He finds and eats a strawberry.
From comments: “Michael Mann is a Hero, all my Love & Respect goes out to Michael Mann. You all show some Awe, there are a lot of people deserve our respect, Mann is for sure for everyone in the Top 10, …, there has to be a Monument with Michael Mann pointing onto a Diagram and this is no joke”
“Families were forced to abandon their ancestral land due to chronic water scarcity, migrating to seek a new beginning. “This abandonment is not an isolated incident.”
Funny! I was ready to join the climate movement 4 years ago. I was shocked to see that there really wasn’t one in my area, and then wider movement wasn’t very effective.
What are these fossil fuels you speak of? And how do we phase them out?
Bill McKibben, Greta Thunberg, Naomi Klein, and Joanna Macy! They’re not doomers!
You said “despair” in the comment not “discouragement.” I don’t believe semantics is going to make a difference in trying to stop runaway collapse. You’re free to believe what you want. In the U.S., we couldn’t even get people to not vote for Trump. That’s a very low bar that we couldn't clear.
Other people sharing their despair about what’s happening in the world helps me immensely. So many people like you scoff at other people who express their despair. This causes some who feel despair to believe there’s something wrong with us & that we’re causing the problems. Thank you, realists!