Climate Change Truths
(that Will Make You Hoot, Holler, and Yodel)
Joe Moncarz November 2022
We know that if a government made contact with aliens from outer space that they would never tell us. They know it would freak out everyone. We'd start imagining all the weird and scary creatures from movies, like “E.T.,” “Aliens,” and “The Henry Kissinger Story.” And we know that if they discovered an asteroid or comet that was on a collision course with Earth, that they wouldn't tell anyone, because then no one would go to work anymore, kids would stay home from school, and then parents would have two reasons to go crazy. We know that governments routinely hide information from the public – especially any information that could excite us, such as the number of holiday homes, holiday mistresses, and holiday planets our “public servants” own.
Governments always look to “manage” the public. They want to keep us obeying and behaving, never getting too worked-up about anything. Just like if you manage livestock, you want the animals to remain calm, or else they're liable to break a fence. And who wants to fix a broken fence? No one!
That's why they will never tell the truth about climate change.
But here, in the interest of igniting widespread hooting, hollering, and yodeling, I will state these truths.
The first truth is:
The government will NEVER, EVER, EVER do anything beneficial regarding climate change.
Sorry, that's just the way it is. Governments are owned and controlled by fossil fuel companies and all the other corporations which are dependent on fossil fuels – which is ALL OF THEM. Corporations, some of which are the most powerful organizations on the planet, much more powerful than many governments, will never allow a reduction in fossil fuel use. Their wealth depends on it. In fact, many of the wealthiest corporations in the world are oil companies.
A reduction in fossil fuel use means a contraction of the economy. Corporations, the elite, and governments will never allow that. They freak out over recessions and depressions, which are relatively minor contractions. Thus, government leaders know that they can never legitimately do anything about climate change (or risk being assassinated), but like everything else in politics, they manage the public's perception through an endless series of lies, distortions, and distractions. They have to appear to care and appear to be working towards viable solutions.
And if any of us lose patience and try to act on our own, the government will label us as “eco-terrorists” and lock us up in the nearest dungeon for five hundred years. The government will create more excuses to expand surveillance and the police state. The government will do whatever it must to maintain its power and the power of the elite, even if that means imprisoning and killing its own citizens, and starting wars – even nuclear war – to distract everyone.
So it doesn't matter who you vote for. They create the illusion of choice and of difference, based on what this or that politician says, but it's all just gassy jibber-jabber. You'd think that by now we'd have learned that politicians are always full of shit. And the proof is that during the last fifty years of climate change warnings, conferences, and endless promises, fossil fuel use has only increased.
The reason that governments will never do anything meaningful regarding climate change is that this truth is based on another truth which we're afraid to admit:
Governments do not exist for the benefit of the people. They exist for the sole benefit of the elite.
This has been demonstrated over and over again, in every single civilization that ever existed, in every single city-state and nation-state, and by the endless wars, slavery, destruction, starvation, disease, and misery created by each civilization, over the six-thousand-year history of civilizations. The fact is, the majority of people living in every civilization that ever existed have been slaves of various kinds, living lives of endless drudgery and toil, living in miserable conditions, always on the edge of starvation, always under-nourished, forced to be vegetarians because they rarely were able to afford meat, often sick and suffering from endless diseases, and often either being sent to war, or suffering at the hands of an invading army. Of course, your history teachers in school never taught you this, because they're well-meaning-but-ignorant, overworked and underpaid, highly-stressed, tools of the elite. They're generally good-hearted people, but they're just doing their job to pay the bills, so don't believe a word they say.
Once we see that governments have never and will never make the world a better place, we can move to the third truth:
All of the proposed solutions to climate change are lies. (They're scams, bro!)
All proposed solutions are meant to continue making money for the elite, for corporations, and for government. They are designed to perpetuate and continue the existing arrangement of corruption, inequality, poverty, and destruction, so that the rich can get richer and more powerful. All of the false solutions – solar, wind, electric cars, nuclear, recycling, biomass, carbon credits, etc. - they all mean continued expansion of the economy, expansion of the population, and continued and increased fossil fuel use. They won't change a damn thing. You need fossil fuels to mine the materials for “renewable” energy systems, you need fossil fuels to run the factories, to transport the materials and products, to repair them, and to replace them as they break down and new models are made (because nothing lasts more than one year). None of this can be done with anything but fossil fuels. Come on, people, think about what it takes to make all of these things!
We've all been duped into thinking that solar, wind, biomass, nuclear, and other “green” energies can exist without fossil fuels. This is one of the biggest magic tricks of all. But there is simply no other energy source which matches the cheapness and power of fossil fuels. Yet here we all are, believing the magic show. It's part wishful thinking, part ignorance, part gullibility, and part being brain-dead.
We can sum up this truth as:
There is NO other energy source (or combination of energy sources) which can replace fossil fuels.
The fact is, fossil fuels are the cheapest, most energy dense, form of energy humans have ever known, and will ever know. No other energy source comes remotely close. Don't believe the hype. Germany's recent failed experiment with solar power is one example. (And don't just shrug this off saying, “Oh, well, Germany has a ridiculous-sounding language and they invented the bratwurst.” Those things may be true, but irrelevant.)
But there are some other, more important truths, that have even greater implications.
[WARNING: Before reading further, I suggest you hold onto a guardrail, or a large pumpkin, for support. By reading further, you waive certain legal rights, and assume all risks involved, including the risk of your head exploding, your bowels exploding, and your girlfriend spontaneously dumping you.]
Okay, welcome back.
For those of you still reading, I have one thing to say: you idiot! WHY would you keep reading? You could have been happy buying solar panels and picking up chicks in your sporty electric car. You fool! But okay, you're here, wanting to read more, so now I have to keep writing.
So the next truth is:
Even if by some miracle there was a total stoppage of ALL fossil fuel use, it would still NOT stop climate change and would NOT stop the ongoing mass extinction and destruction of life on Earth.
The reason that it would not make a difference if we stopped all fossil fuel use immediately is:
Civilizations are always destructive. Every civilization is a climate-changer and a desert-maker, no matter what their source of energy.
Again, this goes back to knowing history. Every single civilization acted in the same ways. Each and every one of them deforested all the land around them. That's what they do.
Civilizations are always based on endless growth - it's not just capitalism. Civilizations need to acquire new lands, new slaves, new forests to chop down, new people to tax. And the people are the same – they reproduce and reproduce, without any care for the limits of the land. In civilizations, women are generally seen as nothing more than baby-making machines. (Yeah, if you really care about women's rights, then civilizations are your enemy.) Civilizations cut down trees for houses, for wagons, for firewood. They cut down forests to make more and more agricultural land, to feed the growing number of new mouths, and to make up for the loss of topsoil that agriculture is so good at destroying.
Civilizations have always been this way – going back six thousand years, to the first little civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamians cut down all the trees, the Easter Islanders cut down all the trees, the Greeks and Romans cut down all the trees, the ancient Chinese cut down all the trees, the ancient Mayans cut down the trees, and so on. Every single civilization. Most of Western Europe's forests have been cleared, most of North America's forests have been cleared, and most of the rain forests have been cleared – and it's still increasing. (And don't confuse tree plantations for forests.) Wherever you look, it's always been the same. Expansion, deforestation, destruction.
The results of deforestation are soil erosion, loss of wildlife, decline in water quality, less rain, droughts, wildfires, crop failures, famine, the spread of diseases, and desertification. Forests make the air cooler, hold moisture in the soil, and transpire water from their leaves into the air, which returns as rain. Without trees, the land gets hotter and you get less and less rain. Civilizations are desert-makers.
The result of this behavior is that all civilizations undermine themselves. They expand and destroy until the deforestation and destruction of the environment leaves them vulnerable to inevitable climate variations. In other words, every civilization destroys itself.
So even if we stopped all use of fossil fuels and returned to a pre-industrial way of living, we'd still carry on destroying life on Earth and turning all the forests into deserts. That's what civilizations DO.
So let's return to the question of our energy source. Would solar or wind power change anything? Well consider the “dream” scenario of a miraculous “free” energy device:
“Free Energy” would not solve anything. It would not stop our destruction of life and most people being miserable.
Even if we could power our wonderful modern civilization with some mythical 100% “free energy” devices, that caused no pollution and required no effort, it would still mean that we'd destroy life on the planet. The fact is, it doesn't matter where the energy comes from – civilizations will use that energy to destroy, to enslave, and to make war. That's what all civilizations do, and that's what we're doing with fossil fuels now. Before fossil fuels, civilizations did it with human slaves and animal slaves. So what if we have free energy? It's what we DO with that energy that is the problem, and it will never change while living in the social arrangement known as civilization. (Besides, most of us are stressed-out all the time. Why would we want to continue powering this way of life anyway?!)
So it doesn't matter if tomorrow we end all fossil fuel use. Civilizations destroy. All civilizations are climate changers, and they always have been. Get that into your head.
Heck, the discovery of a free energy device would have absolutely horrific results for life on the planet. Efficiency always increases use. It's called the Jevons paradox, or the rebound effect. The more energy we have, the faster we would destroy all of life. Such a discovery would be the worst thing possible. It would be like giving an endless supply of cocaine to an addict. It would only speed up their death.
To make things worse, there are now 8 billion people on the planet, which leads to the next truth:
No matter how 8 billion humans are living, even if barely surviving, or even if everyone's vegan, we will continue to deforest and destroy.
The fact is, 8 billion people is unsustainable no matter how they're living. Even 2 billion is unsustainable. The only way to even get that many people is to live in civilization, based on cities and agriculture. And as we've seen, civilizations are always destructive. At the very least, these eight billion people will need to burn wood for fires, and they need wood for shelter, and they need to clear forests for more agricultural land. The elite running every civilization will cut down more forests because wood is required to build all the ridiculous monuments, palaces, and statues that the elite are obsessed with. And even if everyone is a vegetarian or vegan, forests would still be cleared to make room for more and more agricultural land. Finally, those 8 billion people are going to continue to reproduce and multiply, and that 8 billion will soon be 9 billion, and then 10 billion, and so on, until a total societal breakdown and collapse – like what happened on Easter Island. Because civilizations have no limits, cannot set limits, and the people cannot set limits, either. They will multiply until they eat the Earth to death.
So what do we do about all this?
Well, unfortunately the other fact is that most people will NOT allow fossil fuel use to stop.
People claim to want to stop the use of fossil fuels. But the only reason they say that is because they believe that we can continue living the same way, just with “green” energy sources. People still want their computers, they want cars, want airplanes, want ice cream, want TV, want cell phones, want tablets, want movies, want TV, want A/C, want hair straighteners, want refrigerators, want washing machines, and they want lots and lots of plastic. When they realize that to stop fossil fuels completely they'd have to give up all of that, they'll shut up real fast. In fact, that's probably why most of us don't really do anything. If you put out a vote whether to continue fossil fuel use or to stop it immediately, hardly anyone in the wealthy nations would vote for it. We're entitled, we're addicted to the products of civilization like a cocaine addict, and above all, we're scared shitless about what a non-fossil fuel life would be like.
So, to sum up:
Where does that leave us in terms of what to do?
You might think we should just throw up our hands and give up. No, stop saying that! If we're thinking rationally, then we come to this conclusion:
The only way to stop climate change from getting worse is to end civilization.
That doesn't mean wiping all humans off the Earth. It just means reducing the population (through family planning) so that there are much fewer humans living on Earth, and living in any social arrangement that is not civilization, using primarily stone age technologies. It means de-civilizing our way of life and transitioning to a healthier way. Our remaining choices are: semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, nomadic herding, marine collectors, and horticultural. By far the most sustainable, most peaceful, and most egalitarian way of living is hunter-gatherer. If we cared about living as sustainably, peacefully, and meaningfully as possible, this would be our choice. The others are always more hierarchical and violent- but still immensely better than civilizations.
Remember, any solutions that leave civilization intact in any form will always lead to the same end: destruction, deforestation, and suffering.
I know, you think I'm bonkers. First, I'm just being logical, and using historical and evolutionary facts. Second, I said transition. It won't happen over night. (By my calculations, it will take two to three weeks.) Besides, don't be so scared. Whenever there's a natural disaster people quickly transition to a simpler, more cooperative way of life. We have the capability.
But just stop for a second and think about what will happen if we don't make this transition: we will wipe ALL of humans off the Earth, as well as most other forms of life, and it will be painful, miserable, and full of unimaginable suffering, for your children and grandchildren – and probably for you, too.
Which means we have two choices:
1. Dismantle civilization, de-civilize our way of life, and start the transition to hunter-gatherer and horticultural stone age ways of living, which are much more sustainable, healthy, and meaningful than civilizations ever were and ever could be.
OR
2. Carry on as we're now doing, leading to worse and worse social and environmental conditions, a painful, chaotic societal collapse, leading to horrific suffering and the end of most life on Earth, including nuclear war, widespread famine, more diseases, more and more violence, and extreme weather.
Either way, the Earth will end up with much fewer humans. Either way, modern civilization is coming to an end. But one way gives our children and grandchildren a chance. The other way is just idiotic, cruel, and selfish.
The choice is ours: ice cream and movies, or life on Earth.
Governments always look to “manage” the public. They want to keep us obeying and behaving, never getting too worked-up about anything. Just like if you manage livestock, you want the animals to remain calm, or else they're liable to break a fence. And who wants to fix a broken fence? No one!
That's why they will never tell the truth about climate change.
But here, in the interest of igniting widespread hooting, hollering, and yodeling, I will state these truths.
The first truth is:
The government will NEVER, EVER, EVER do anything beneficial regarding climate change.
Sorry, that's just the way it is. Governments are owned and controlled by fossil fuel companies and all the other corporations which are dependent on fossil fuels – which is ALL OF THEM. Corporations, some of which are the most powerful organizations on the planet, much more powerful than many governments, will never allow a reduction in fossil fuel use. Their wealth depends on it. In fact, many of the wealthiest corporations in the world are oil companies.
A reduction in fossil fuel use means a contraction of the economy. Corporations, the elite, and governments will never allow that. They freak out over recessions and depressions, which are relatively minor contractions. Thus, government leaders know that they can never legitimately do anything about climate change (or risk being assassinated), but like everything else in politics, they manage the public's perception through an endless series of lies, distortions, and distractions. They have to appear to care and appear to be working towards viable solutions.
And if any of us lose patience and try to act on our own, the government will label us as “eco-terrorists” and lock us up in the nearest dungeon for five hundred years. The government will create more excuses to expand surveillance and the police state. The government will do whatever it must to maintain its power and the power of the elite, even if that means imprisoning and killing its own citizens, and starting wars – even nuclear war – to distract everyone.
So it doesn't matter who you vote for. They create the illusion of choice and of difference, based on what this or that politician says, but it's all just gassy jibber-jabber. You'd think that by now we'd have learned that politicians are always full of shit. And the proof is that during the last fifty years of climate change warnings, conferences, and endless promises, fossil fuel use has only increased.
The reason that governments will never do anything meaningful regarding climate change is that this truth is based on another truth which we're afraid to admit:
Governments do not exist for the benefit of the people. They exist for the sole benefit of the elite.
This has been demonstrated over and over again, in every single civilization that ever existed, in every single city-state and nation-state, and by the endless wars, slavery, destruction, starvation, disease, and misery created by each civilization, over the six-thousand-year history of civilizations. The fact is, the majority of people living in every civilization that ever existed have been slaves of various kinds, living lives of endless drudgery and toil, living in miserable conditions, always on the edge of starvation, always under-nourished, forced to be vegetarians because they rarely were able to afford meat, often sick and suffering from endless diseases, and often either being sent to war, or suffering at the hands of an invading army. Of course, your history teachers in school never taught you this, because they're well-meaning-but-ignorant, overworked and underpaid, highly-stressed, tools of the elite. They're generally good-hearted people, but they're just doing their job to pay the bills, so don't believe a word they say.
Once we see that governments have never and will never make the world a better place, we can move to the third truth:
All of the proposed solutions to climate change are lies. (They're scams, bro!)
All proposed solutions are meant to continue making money for the elite, for corporations, and for government. They are designed to perpetuate and continue the existing arrangement of corruption, inequality, poverty, and destruction, so that the rich can get richer and more powerful. All of the false solutions – solar, wind, electric cars, nuclear, recycling, biomass, carbon credits, etc. - they all mean continued expansion of the economy, expansion of the population, and continued and increased fossil fuel use. They won't change a damn thing. You need fossil fuels to mine the materials for “renewable” energy systems, you need fossil fuels to run the factories, to transport the materials and products, to repair them, and to replace them as they break down and new models are made (because nothing lasts more than one year). None of this can be done with anything but fossil fuels. Come on, people, think about what it takes to make all of these things!
We've all been duped into thinking that solar, wind, biomass, nuclear, and other “green” energies can exist without fossil fuels. This is one of the biggest magic tricks of all. But there is simply no other energy source which matches the cheapness and power of fossil fuels. Yet here we all are, believing the magic show. It's part wishful thinking, part ignorance, part gullibility, and part being brain-dead.
We can sum up this truth as:
There is NO other energy source (or combination of energy sources) which can replace fossil fuels.
The fact is, fossil fuels are the cheapest, most energy dense, form of energy humans have ever known, and will ever know. No other energy source comes remotely close. Don't believe the hype. Germany's recent failed experiment with solar power is one example. (And don't just shrug this off saying, “Oh, well, Germany has a ridiculous-sounding language and they invented the bratwurst.” Those things may be true, but irrelevant.)
But there are some other, more important truths, that have even greater implications.
[WARNING: Before reading further, I suggest you hold onto a guardrail, or a large pumpkin, for support. By reading further, you waive certain legal rights, and assume all risks involved, including the risk of your head exploding, your bowels exploding, and your girlfriend spontaneously dumping you.]
Okay, welcome back.
For those of you still reading, I have one thing to say: you idiot! WHY would you keep reading? You could have been happy buying solar panels and picking up chicks in your sporty electric car. You fool! But okay, you're here, wanting to read more, so now I have to keep writing.
So the next truth is:
Even if by some miracle there was a total stoppage of ALL fossil fuel use, it would still NOT stop climate change and would NOT stop the ongoing mass extinction and destruction of life on Earth.
The reason that it would not make a difference if we stopped all fossil fuel use immediately is:
Civilizations are always destructive. Every civilization is a climate-changer and a desert-maker, no matter what their source of energy.
Again, this goes back to knowing history. Every single civilization acted in the same ways. Each and every one of them deforested all the land around them. That's what they do.
Civilizations are always based on endless growth - it's not just capitalism. Civilizations need to acquire new lands, new slaves, new forests to chop down, new people to tax. And the people are the same – they reproduce and reproduce, without any care for the limits of the land. In civilizations, women are generally seen as nothing more than baby-making machines. (Yeah, if you really care about women's rights, then civilizations are your enemy.) Civilizations cut down trees for houses, for wagons, for firewood. They cut down forests to make more and more agricultural land, to feed the growing number of new mouths, and to make up for the loss of topsoil that agriculture is so good at destroying.
Civilizations have always been this way – going back six thousand years, to the first little civilizations in ancient Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamians cut down all the trees, the Easter Islanders cut down all the trees, the Greeks and Romans cut down all the trees, the ancient Chinese cut down all the trees, the ancient Mayans cut down the trees, and so on. Every single civilization. Most of Western Europe's forests have been cleared, most of North America's forests have been cleared, and most of the rain forests have been cleared – and it's still increasing. (And don't confuse tree plantations for forests.) Wherever you look, it's always been the same. Expansion, deforestation, destruction.
The results of deforestation are soil erosion, loss of wildlife, decline in water quality, less rain, droughts, wildfires, crop failures, famine, the spread of diseases, and desertification. Forests make the air cooler, hold moisture in the soil, and transpire water from their leaves into the air, which returns as rain. Without trees, the land gets hotter and you get less and less rain. Civilizations are desert-makers.
The result of this behavior is that all civilizations undermine themselves. They expand and destroy until the deforestation and destruction of the environment leaves them vulnerable to inevitable climate variations. In other words, every civilization destroys itself.
So even if we stopped all use of fossil fuels and returned to a pre-industrial way of living, we'd still carry on destroying life on Earth and turning all the forests into deserts. That's what civilizations DO.
So let's return to the question of our energy source. Would solar or wind power change anything? Well consider the “dream” scenario of a miraculous “free” energy device:
“Free Energy” would not solve anything. It would not stop our destruction of life and most people being miserable.
Even if we could power our wonderful modern civilization with some mythical 100% “free energy” devices, that caused no pollution and required no effort, it would still mean that we'd destroy life on the planet. The fact is, it doesn't matter where the energy comes from – civilizations will use that energy to destroy, to enslave, and to make war. That's what all civilizations do, and that's what we're doing with fossil fuels now. Before fossil fuels, civilizations did it with human slaves and animal slaves. So what if we have free energy? It's what we DO with that energy that is the problem, and it will never change while living in the social arrangement known as civilization. (Besides, most of us are stressed-out all the time. Why would we want to continue powering this way of life anyway?!)
So it doesn't matter if tomorrow we end all fossil fuel use. Civilizations destroy. All civilizations are climate changers, and they always have been. Get that into your head.
Heck, the discovery of a free energy device would have absolutely horrific results for life on the planet. Efficiency always increases use. It's called the Jevons paradox, or the rebound effect. The more energy we have, the faster we would destroy all of life. Such a discovery would be the worst thing possible. It would be like giving an endless supply of cocaine to an addict. It would only speed up their death.
To make things worse, there are now 8 billion people on the planet, which leads to the next truth:
No matter how 8 billion humans are living, even if barely surviving, or even if everyone's vegan, we will continue to deforest and destroy.
The fact is, 8 billion people is unsustainable no matter how they're living. Even 2 billion is unsustainable. The only way to even get that many people is to live in civilization, based on cities and agriculture. And as we've seen, civilizations are always destructive. At the very least, these eight billion people will need to burn wood for fires, and they need wood for shelter, and they need to clear forests for more agricultural land. The elite running every civilization will cut down more forests because wood is required to build all the ridiculous monuments, palaces, and statues that the elite are obsessed with. And even if everyone is a vegetarian or vegan, forests would still be cleared to make room for more and more agricultural land. Finally, those 8 billion people are going to continue to reproduce and multiply, and that 8 billion will soon be 9 billion, and then 10 billion, and so on, until a total societal breakdown and collapse – like what happened on Easter Island. Because civilizations have no limits, cannot set limits, and the people cannot set limits, either. They will multiply until they eat the Earth to death.
So what do we do about all this?
Well, unfortunately the other fact is that most people will NOT allow fossil fuel use to stop.
People claim to want to stop the use of fossil fuels. But the only reason they say that is because they believe that we can continue living the same way, just with “green” energy sources. People still want their computers, they want cars, want airplanes, want ice cream, want TV, want cell phones, want tablets, want movies, want TV, want A/C, want hair straighteners, want refrigerators, want washing machines, and they want lots and lots of plastic. When they realize that to stop fossil fuels completely they'd have to give up all of that, they'll shut up real fast. In fact, that's probably why most of us don't really do anything. If you put out a vote whether to continue fossil fuel use or to stop it immediately, hardly anyone in the wealthy nations would vote for it. We're entitled, we're addicted to the products of civilization like a cocaine addict, and above all, we're scared shitless about what a non-fossil fuel life would be like.
So, to sum up:
- The truth is that governments will never stop fossil fuel use.
- The truth is that most people will NOT allow fossil fuel use to stop.
- The truth is that even if all fossil fuel use was miraculously stopped, it would not stop human destruction and desertification of the planet.
Where does that leave us in terms of what to do?
You might think we should just throw up our hands and give up. No, stop saying that! If we're thinking rationally, then we come to this conclusion:
The only way to stop climate change from getting worse is to end civilization.
That doesn't mean wiping all humans off the Earth. It just means reducing the population (through family planning) so that there are much fewer humans living on Earth, and living in any social arrangement that is not civilization, using primarily stone age technologies. It means de-civilizing our way of life and transitioning to a healthier way. Our remaining choices are: semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, nomadic herding, marine collectors, and horticultural. By far the most sustainable, most peaceful, and most egalitarian way of living is hunter-gatherer. If we cared about living as sustainably, peacefully, and meaningfully as possible, this would be our choice. The others are always more hierarchical and violent- but still immensely better than civilizations.
Remember, any solutions that leave civilization intact in any form will always lead to the same end: destruction, deforestation, and suffering.
I know, you think I'm bonkers. First, I'm just being logical, and using historical and evolutionary facts. Second, I said transition. It won't happen over night. (By my calculations, it will take two to three weeks.) Besides, don't be so scared. Whenever there's a natural disaster people quickly transition to a simpler, more cooperative way of life. We have the capability.
But just stop for a second and think about what will happen if we don't make this transition: we will wipe ALL of humans off the Earth, as well as most other forms of life, and it will be painful, miserable, and full of unimaginable suffering, for your children and grandchildren – and probably for you, too.
Which means we have two choices:
1. Dismantle civilization, de-civilize our way of life, and start the transition to hunter-gatherer and horticultural stone age ways of living, which are much more sustainable, healthy, and meaningful than civilizations ever were and ever could be.
OR
2. Carry on as we're now doing, leading to worse and worse social and environmental conditions, a painful, chaotic societal collapse, leading to horrific suffering and the end of most life on Earth, including nuclear war, widespread famine, more diseases, more and more violence, and extreme weather.
Either way, the Earth will end up with much fewer humans. Either way, modern civilization is coming to an end. But one way gives our children and grandchildren a chance. The other way is just idiotic, cruel, and selfish.
The choice is ours: ice cream and movies, or life on Earth.