And I Feel Fine

 Roger Crisp asks the question, "Would extinction really be so bad?":

In recent decades it has often been said that we are living at the “hinge of history”, an unprecedented period during which a catastrophic event such as rapid climate change, nuclear war or the release of a synthesised pathogen may bring an end to human and perhaps all sentient life on the planet.

Most people think that such extinction would be bad, in fact one of the worst things that could happen. It’s plausible that the process leading to various forms of extinction, and extinction itself, would be bad for many of us, given that our lives are, overall, good for us and that, all else being equal, the longer they are the better. But it’s also plausible that extinction would be good for some individuals…

You can read the whole article at New Statesman, HERE.

I suppose an asteroid will get us in the end, but I think humans will survive climate change.  It's only the advanced civilizations that will collapse.

When the pandemic hit, the supply chains for toilet paper and furnace filters collapsed.  That was inconvenient.  But what happens when the supply line is cut for food, water, medicine?

That's when people die on a massive scale.

In that scenario, which I see as inevitable at this point, the civilizations that survive will be the Third World countries where people still know how to grow their own food and bind their own wounds.  A civilization of specialists isn't going to make it.  There will be no post-apocalyptic demand for hedge-fund managers and lawyers.

Years ago, then president (and still idiot) George W. Bush said that he wasn't concerned about climate change, because he believed that someone in the future would invent something that would save us all.  And he was sort of right, because the technology exists to eliminate fossil fuels and replace them with green alternatives.

It's not going to happen, though.  Then president (and still idiot) Donald Trump gave huge subsidies to the coal and oil industries in a desperate attempt to keep them profitable.  Current president and idiot Joe Biden recently gave a huge subsidy to the coal industry and has called on OPEC to increase oil production.

So we're doomed.  I think the current generation will be mildly inconvenienced, the next generation will be majorly inconvenienced, and then it all goes to hell.

So it goes.