Speaking of acceptance, the ultimate measure of that is accepting one’s personal death which is going to happen regardless of civilizational collapse. Which itself is right around the corner as you cogently point out. There is no way our species can avoid mass die off as the consequence of overshoot. Bottom line: there are worse things than death. We are about to find that out.
Human populations have overshot by a factor of 10...But fossil fuels apart, there's nothing that another nice 100,000 year glacial period won't fix....and there's no reason to believe that the current 3 million year old Ice Age (that created humanity) is coming to a halt...
If it makes people feel better to believe in this delusional 'power down' theory ... then awesome.
It's not ignoring reality that results in consequences that cannot be ignored... it's when the financial system snaps... and the shelves go empty ... and the gates of hell open ... and the hordes are bashing down your door and ripping off your face because you have a can of beans... that's what cannot be ignored... there is no pretending that away
"Problem was that the technology of the age all depended on bronze, an alloy of tin and copper".
The technology of our age is the microchip. A knowledgeable bronze age person could make bronze by himself from tin and copper, but it takes the almost the entirety of modernity to make a microchip. We can lose very little of modern technology before modernity cannot sustain itself and enters an acute stage of collapse. When that happens, modern people begin to starve in a few days.
"its very hard to figure out the best adaption method ahead of time"
Yes, but it's easy to figure out that the worst method is doing nothing.
"Should I build a bunker? Stockpile on food? Start a farm? Or shall I move into a small mutually supportive community, perhaps migrate abroad?"
All good ideas, some more short term than others. Do any of them! Do something!
Just kick back and relax. Most, if not all, people are going to die, no matter how well prepared. Given the massive ecocide, severe pollution, and thousands of radioactive spent-fuel ponds that are ready to ignite once their cooling system are off-line, there's little we could do to survive.
"Most, if not all, people are going to die, no matter how well prepared"
There's a big difference between "most" and "all" and I think the difference is worth the effort.
The worst risk is not the spent-fuel in cooling pools but the aftermath of a nuclear war. A nuclear winter will be hard on everyone and fatal for most (there's that word again).
Thanks B. First time reader, new follower. I’m beginning to understand that developing collapse awareness without panic, fear-mongering, ridiculous survivalist fantasies, or childish denial is truly an art. Thanks for your contributions. I look forward to more.
As I’ve been ‘preaching’: try to get your community to relocalise as much as possible but especially food production, potable water procurement, and regional shelter needs…then cross your fingers.
As usual you have more variables correctly defined and connected together and then people you are criticizing.
This allows you to correctly poke holes in their propose behaviors to addresss existing problems and establishing how blind they are to the unfolding problems in the future.
You're mostly robust analysis leaves you without a behavior that creates a viable path forward for humankind.
Is it possible that you are also leaving out some variable, connections, and behavior?
May I be so bold as to suggest this video which I think creates a behavior that accomplishes something that thus
far has appeared to be impossible.
Civilization's predicament and it's unwinding behavior
A human behaviour can't be created. What you see is what you get with humans. If you're holding out hope that 8 billion people can be made to act in what you might think of as rational, then you may still be in the bargaining stage.
“However, keeping an eye out for more than one possible event, building up mental fortitude, setting realistic goals, picking up useful skills and habits (including remaining as healthy and physically fit as possible) are all good places to start.”
B, thinking along the lines of the above quote from your essay today, I revised my bicycle website (typically only viewed by a few local cyclists) in an attempt to influence my 17-year-old great-granddaughter to think critically about her college/career/work options, by asking the question: What do you think life will be like in 2050?
I tried to avoid a “hard sell” and focused on getting her to think seriously about the future and how best to prepare - not an easy task for most teenagers! I used graphics (in the desktop version) that might appeal to a young person (maybe!).
You're a good man, David, but bicycles are part of the industrial juggernaut that has been grinding this planet oblivion. And when that elaborate, relentless system comes to a final stop, so do bicycles.
How will weld frames, forge gear systems, and mold tires without cheap energy, ample metals and imported rubber? What about grease and machine oils? Those are byproducts of petroleum, which is about to get depleted.
The bicycle precedes the widespread use of fossil sunlight, going back to the 1807 or so. I could make one out of wood, cut from a tree using stone-aged tools.
I agree industrial methods will decline, but individual craftsmanship will be around a lot longer.
Industrial bicycle production will wither-on-the-vine as industrialization declines. And, as Jan suggests, craftsmanship with scrap material could go on for a long time. No industrial technology will “solve” our predicament, but the spirit of my advice is to find simple ways to adapt to the “great unraveling”.
I suspect that slightly used modern bikes will be available for quite some time. The US is littered with millions of adult bikes hanging in garages. A few years ago, a bike CEO spoke at our local bike club and said the average US adult bike only sees a total of 50 miles of riding. Our club members, who routinely log several thousand miles per year, represent around 1% of adult bike purchases. Annual US bike sales are about 20 million for all types of bikes.
Adults are usually motivated to buy bikes for a variety of exercise and utility purposes. This motivation evaporates with the first near-death encounter with motor vehicles - which usually doesn’t take long. As one lady said to me, “I’m not going to risk my life to get a loaf of bread”.
As much as I advocate cycling, I never suggest risking life and limb where cycling infrastructure is poor. It takes many years and a lot of dedication to acquire the skill to cycle safely on most public roadways. My advice is for citizens to demand some version of “Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A)” as the folly of our car culture becomes obvious.
As for the utility of low-tech bikes, the Viet Cong’s use of bikes on the Ho Chi Minh Trail is interesting. As for low-tech bike making, bamboo is a good candidate for frames, laminated wood for wheels, belts instead of chains, etc. This is a fun discussion topic. Maybe a college engineering contest to build one. Similar to the ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships for building a concrete canoe.
Unlike automobiles — ICE, or electric — bicycles have the considerable advantage that essentially all their cost of operations is the sunken cost of manufacture.
At some point in our energy decent, that could well be a huge advantage over mechanisms that require exosomatic energy every time it is used.
I oiled my chain last week. I seem to get about 1,000 miles to the gallon of chain oil. :-)
Fossil sunlight has made the world smaller. People don't blink at a half-hour commute that spans 30 miles.
A half-hour bike commute will be more like six miles. So the world will get five times larger! Before descending again to two miles at walking speed.
Doesn't matter how you eke it out, a bike tyre isn't going to last long enough to be a long term solution and tyres are just one of many parts, all produced in factories. Good luck getting local bike production going, not a challenge I'd waste any time on. Pack animals, on the other hand, have worked effectively for literally millennia. As have legs. 😉
I have no illusion that bicycles and their parts will be around forever.
But they could serve as a bridge to pack animals.
Let's face it: how many people do you know who could deal with pack animals? Now, how many people do you know who can ride a bike?
(And don't under-estimate the challenges of raising and using pack animals. Most people don't even know what side the rumen is on — very important for proper harnessing! Most people don't even know what a rumen is, but they can tell a tyre from a chain.)
Now image that you are stripped naked and plopped into the middle of a wilderness area?
That last scenario may result in human extinction! Even if one were to survive, could that person find a mate and successfully procreate and raise children to breeding age?
Each step in the decline will require a period of adaptation. So it would be good to be planning for an appropriate technology for each phase of decline.
I think bicycles will give us more breathing room than electric cars will.
There is no thing as a "long-term solution"; only adaptations to continually-changing challenges.
Surely, you wouldn't expect governments and gangs of the world to come up with, and execute, a power down plan, which slowly returns the world to hunter-gatherer groups, with a fraction of the current human population (but, hopefully, larger populations of prey species)? There is nothing to be done and, even if there was, it would not be done. A century for collapse still seems way too long, though that would be nice as I'd be long gone.
Hunter-gatherer was a dead-end option. Think: there was a pressing reason why our ancestors moved to agriculture--and it wasn't the promise of a better life, which the ancient bible was well aware of: "through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life."
There was no pressing reason why our ancestors moved to agriculture, hence why it took so long for it to occur. The main reason for most hunter-gatherer societies "converting" to agriculture was because their land was appropriated for agriculture. As far as I can see, the only reason for agriculture was to control the food supply - in other words: power. An interpretation of that part of the bible would be that God was warning of the folly of agriculture - which was ignored.
There was a pressing reason—Man had become such a proficient killer that very little of his natural pray had survived to support his sustenance. We witness that with the Clovis man, who invaded America 18,000 years ago and subsequently managed to butcher all the large animals within mere 300 years. Dexterous arms + spears and arrows are a deadly scourge on our brethren animals. Your other points are too muddled and lightweight to grant a response.
It doesn't really matter why humans adopted agriculture (for the most part), as it isn't sustainable. Hunting/gathering has limits and would not have supported a techno-industrial society but so what? A techno-industrial society is bound to hit limits on a finite planet (this one) and will have to end. Of course, humans will try to cling on to some kind of modernity but modernity itself is unsustainable so the attempt will ultimately fail. As humans have done so much damage to our support mechanisms (the environment and resources) that it's hard to think of anything other than a return to hunting and gathering although scavenging will be a temporary phase that we'll probably go through. If there is an alternative sustainable way for people to live, I'd love to know about it.
I won't be hunting anything (at least I doubt it). My point is that a hunter-gatherer way of life is probably the only sustainable one for humans. Any other way eventually leads to collapse of that way of life. I'm open as to other sustainable ways of living, if anyone would care to chip in.
8.2 billion humans couldn't adopt that way of life, unless the prey were other humans, because of the destruction we've wrought on the rest of nature. I'm pretty certain that human population will be whittled down to a tiny fraction of its current size and restricted to a few locales.
Nah, that's nonsense. In parts of the world, man had become such a proficient killer, but for the most part, man had lived sustainably throughout his evolution. There is zero evidence to support a lack of natural prey in the parts of the world where agriculture arose. Hence why hunter gathering continued for a long time in those areas.
I gave you the Clovis man example (AZ USA, 18,000 BC). But please, don't waste your time looking it up. After all, you obviously know everything already. As for other examples, I'm not going to spend my time on it, but there are copious books that present a variety of case studies--from the Aborigines to the Polynesians. Again, don't bother expanding your knowledge. You already know everything there is to know.
Living with one foot in BAU and one in impending collapse can indeed be challenging. I find I have to compartmentalise and engage in a certain amount of intentional denial to remain functional as a parent and worker.
Being collapse-aware is still preferable, though, for the reasons you state. Can you imagine the hideousness of being totally blindsided by everything you know falling apart?! No - even if the diagnosis is dire, it's better to have that information than just staggering around feeling worse and worse, and not understanding why.
Re your point 4, the WSJ is reporting:
"U.S. Drillers Say Peak Shale Has Arrived. Lower oil prices are expected to precipitate a decrease in crude output that won’t easily be reversed... there is only so much firms can do to wring more crude from the aging shale fields, analysts say..."
Aye, compartmentalisation is key, that's for sure! Especially as a parent. In my case, one whose wife and family don't believe his ramblings about civilisational collapse. It does feel a little like being gaslit when I talk about such things, only to be presented with a choice of sofa or car to buy! It's almost as ridiculous as asking which party I want to vote for.
Ironic. An essay about accepting collapse that includes a quote from one of the worst human supremacists and naturephobes of the last century. Like expecting a kiss and getting a punch in the face instead.
"Collapse is not evenly distributed: it can be almost complete for one people, e.g. for those being trapped in the Gaza strip (or in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan etc. for that matter). Their lives were deliberately and methodically ruined just because more powerful nations wanted their permanent demise or treated them as pawns on a chessboard."
But what's happening in those countries and regions is not collapse. You said yourself that these are proxy wars or genocides perpetrated by powerful nations. This could be interpreted as a symptom of worsening conditions but it isn't collapse. The fact is that food aid is being actively stopped from being sent to Gaza, while food aid is being sent into Syria. Collapse would be when there is no food aid to give, because there is hardly enough food to go around at home.
Collapse will not be the same or occur at the same rate everywhere but there will be a global dimension to it which will affect every country in cumulatively worse ways.
Re the idea that collapse will feature "reprieves": well, how do you define that? If you are only talking about the possibility of changing the pattern of consumption and redistribution, then sure. People consume less of something because less is available and/or supply is redirected from places where it's determined to be excessive to places that need it more.
The problem is that consumption is not only inseparable from the overall system of production but also the social order underpinning that system. De-growth blindly assumes a demarcation between consumption, production and social stability remaining constant despite changes occurring in each of these domains.
I have a question-and I know it will sound very stupid to some- but earnestly- if humans are a biological species of the Earth how is it possible to overshoot? Is it as simple as our actions are not strictly biological? (I also know this isn’t the main point of the text- but it’s a personal sticking point in my understanding). Even if human activities extend outside of the biological wouldn’t they still have to be classed as “natural” because they were conceived of by a biological creature? Or am I caught up in the baseline faith that just sort of exists in even the least faithful of Americans- am I basing this on a misguided assumption that in nature all species are generally successful?
"All prior “solutions” from the advent of agriculture to colonization and eventually to the complete drawdown of a one-time natural inheritance (including fossil fuels) were just means to export and hide ecological overshoot."
Well, I knew I couldn't have been the only one thinking this way. Sweet. Do check my out book. Or get in touch and I'll just send it to you.
Speaking of acceptance, the ultimate measure of that is accepting one’s personal death which is going to happen regardless of civilizational collapse. Which itself is right around the corner as you cogently point out. There is no way our species can avoid mass die off as the consequence of overshoot. Bottom line: there are worse things than death. We are about to find that out.
Human populations have overshot by a factor of 10...But fossil fuels apart, there's nothing that another nice 100,000 year glacial period won't fix....and there's no reason to believe that the current 3 million year old Ice Age (that created humanity) is coming to a halt...
Here are some reasons:
https://climateandeconomy.com/2025/05/20/20th-may-2025-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/
Can someone please explain how we 'power down the economy peacefully'... I am very interested
Ain’t likely to happen. As had been said, “Theory is great, in theory.”
If it makes people feel better to believe in this delusional 'power down' theory ... then awesome.
It's not ignoring reality that results in consequences that cannot be ignored... it's when the financial system snaps... and the shelves go empty ... and the gates of hell open ... and the hordes are bashing down your door and ripping off your face because you have a can of beans... that's what cannot be ignored... there is no pretending that away
This is the reality that awaits https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/collapse-and-cannibalism
As Mike Tyson once said: "Everyone's got a plan until they're punched in the face."
Collapse and Cannibalism
8+ billion vicious starving humans and the orgy of violence that will ensue
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/collapse-and-cannibalism
"Problem was that the technology of the age all depended on bronze, an alloy of tin and copper".
The technology of our age is the microchip. A knowledgeable bronze age person could make bronze by himself from tin and copper, but it takes the almost the entirety of modernity to make a microchip. We can lose very little of modern technology before modernity cannot sustain itself and enters an acute stage of collapse. When that happens, modern people begin to starve in a few days.
"its very hard to figure out the best adaption method ahead of time"
Yes, but it's easy to figure out that the worst method is doing nothing.
"Should I build a bunker? Stockpile on food? Start a farm? Or shall I move into a small mutually supportive community, perhaps migrate abroad?"
All good ideas, some more short term than others. Do any of them! Do something!
Just kick back and relax. Most, if not all, people are going to die, no matter how well prepared. Given the massive ecocide, severe pollution, and thousands of radioactive spent-fuel ponds that are ready to ignite once their cooling system are off-line, there's little we could do to survive.
"Most, if not all, people are going to die, no matter how well prepared"
There's a big difference between "most" and "all" and I think the difference is worth the effort.
The worst risk is not the spent-fuel in cooling pools but the aftermath of a nuclear war. A nuclear winter will be hard on everyone and fatal for most (there's that word again).
Thanks B. First time reader, new follower. I’m beginning to understand that developing collapse awareness without panic, fear-mongering, ridiculous survivalist fantasies, or childish denial is truly an art. Thanks for your contributions. I look forward to more.
Great commentary, as usual!!
As I’ve been ‘preaching’: try to get your community to relocalise as much as possible but especially food production, potable water procurement, and regional shelter needs…then cross your fingers.
Dear B,
As usual you have more variables correctly defined and connected together and then people you are criticizing.
This allows you to correctly poke holes in their propose behaviors to addresss existing problems and establishing how blind they are to the unfolding problems in the future.
You're mostly robust analysis leaves you without a behavior that creates a viable path forward for humankind.
Is it possible that you are also leaving out some variable, connections, and behavior?
May I be so bold as to suggest this video which I think creates a behavior that accomplishes something that thus
far has appeared to be impossible.
Civilization's predicament and it's unwinding behavior
https://youtu.be/Uzg_Ed1nLaA
This video is still under construction. A final version will include your suggestions.
If you like this video I have a few more things that may help on your journey.
600 word summary of Jack's work
https://www.evernote.com/l/AAmZY0Hicy9KbLmuRpZRVAjtdR3UQC_bhEE
Best
Jack
Glad to open a zoom channel for conversation.
Jack Alpert PhD Director:
Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory http://www.skil.org
(C) 913 708 2554
jackalpert@me.com
A human behaviour can't be created. What you see is what you get with humans. If you're holding out hope that 8 billion people can be made to act in what you might think of as rational, then you may still be in the bargaining stage.
“However, keeping an eye out for more than one possible event, building up mental fortitude, setting realistic goals, picking up useful skills and habits (including remaining as healthy and physically fit as possible) are all good places to start.”
B, thinking along the lines of the above quote from your essay today, I revised my bicycle website (typically only viewed by a few local cyclists) in an attempt to influence my 17-year-old great-granddaughter to think critically about her college/career/work options, by asking the question: What do you think life will be like in 2050?
I tried to avoid a “hard sell” and focused on getting her to think seriously about the future and how best to prepare - not an easy task for most teenagers! I used graphics (in the desktop version) that might appeal to a young person (maybe!).
https://www.bikex.net/
You're a good man, David, but bicycles are part of the industrial juggernaut that has been grinding this planet oblivion. And when that elaborate, relentless system comes to a final stop, so do bicycles.
I think bicycles could be around for some time.
As energy regresses, so will technology, in lock-step, all the way back to the ox-cart.
Somewhere along that line, bicycles may see their day again.
How will weld frames, forge gear systems, and mold tires without cheap energy, ample metals and imported rubber? What about grease and machine oils? Those are byproducts of petroleum, which is about to get depleted.
I don’t know. Ask Wilbur and Orville.
The bicycle precedes the widespread use of fossil sunlight, going back to the 1807 or so. I could make one out of wood, cut from a tree using stone-aged tools.
I agree industrial methods will decline, but individual craftsmanship will be around a lot longer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_bicycle
"I agree industrial methods will decline, but individual craftsmanship will be around a lot longer."
Sure, and for a long while, there'll be a lot of scrap to work with (i.e., the industrial inheritance we are going to leave behind).
That’s what I currently make most stuff out of now!
Crash now! Avoid the rush!
Industrial bicycle production will wither-on-the-vine as industrialization declines. And, as Jan suggests, craftsmanship with scrap material could go on for a long time. No industrial technology will “solve” our predicament, but the spirit of my advice is to find simple ways to adapt to the “great unraveling”.
I suspect that slightly used modern bikes will be available for quite some time. The US is littered with millions of adult bikes hanging in garages. A few years ago, a bike CEO spoke at our local bike club and said the average US adult bike only sees a total of 50 miles of riding. Our club members, who routinely log several thousand miles per year, represent around 1% of adult bike purchases. Annual US bike sales are about 20 million for all types of bikes.
Adults are usually motivated to buy bikes for a variety of exercise and utility purposes. This motivation evaporates with the first near-death encounter with motor vehicles - which usually doesn’t take long. As one lady said to me, “I’m not going to risk my life to get a loaf of bread”.
As much as I advocate cycling, I never suggest risking life and limb where cycling infrastructure is poor. It takes many years and a lot of dedication to acquire the skill to cycle safely on most public roadways. My advice is for citizens to demand some version of “Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A)” as the folly of our car culture becomes obvious.
As for the utility of low-tech bikes, the Viet Cong’s use of bikes on the Ho Chi Minh Trail is interesting. As for low-tech bike making, bamboo is a good candidate for frames, laminated wood for wheels, belts instead of chains, etc. This is a fun discussion topic. Maybe a college engineering contest to build one. Similar to the ASCE Civil Engineering Student Championships for building a concrete canoe.
Unlike automobiles — ICE, or electric — bicycles have the considerable advantage that essentially all their cost of operations is the sunken cost of manufacture.
At some point in our energy decent, that could well be a huge advantage over mechanisms that require exosomatic energy every time it is used.
I oiled my chain last week. I seem to get about 1,000 miles to the gallon of chain oil. :-)
Fossil sunlight has made the world smaller. People don't blink at a half-hour commute that spans 30 miles.
A half-hour bike commute will be more like six miles. So the world will get five times larger! Before descending again to two miles at walking speed.
Is there anyone able to make bicycle parts locally? Tyres, for example? And have you seen the state of the roads?
Tyres can last a long time. A simple patching kit can even stretch that out longer.
I recommend a mountain bike, with fatter, heavier tyres.
An optimized road bike is fantastically efficient — on a good road — but will be useless as roads deteriorate.
I often ride my mountain bike on heavy gravel and even hiking trails.
There's more to see on the back roads! I saw a cow elk last week, just 50 metres up a heavy gravel road!
Doesn't matter how you eke it out, a bike tyre isn't going to last long enough to be a long term solution and tyres are just one of many parts, all produced in factories. Good luck getting local bike production going, not a challenge I'd waste any time on. Pack animals, on the other hand, have worked effectively for literally millennia. As have legs. 😉
I have no illusion that bicycles and their parts will be around forever.
But they could serve as a bridge to pack animals.
Let's face it: how many people do you know who could deal with pack animals? Now, how many people do you know who can ride a bike?
(And don't under-estimate the challenges of raising and using pack animals. Most people don't even know what side the rumen is on — very important for proper harnessing! Most people don't even know what a rumen is, but they can tell a tyre from a chain.)
Now image that you are stripped naked and plopped into the middle of a wilderness area?
That last scenario may result in human extinction! Even if one were to survive, could that person find a mate and successfully procreate and raise children to breeding age?
Each step in the decline will require a period of adaptation. So it would be good to be planning for an appropriate technology for each phase of decline.
I think bicycles will give us more breathing room than electric cars will.
There is no thing as a "long-term solution"; only adaptations to continually-changing challenges.
Surely, you wouldn't expect governments and gangs of the world to come up with, and execute, a power down plan, which slowly returns the world to hunter-gatherer groups, with a fraction of the current human population (but, hopefully, larger populations of prey species)? There is nothing to be done and, even if there was, it would not be done. A century for collapse still seems way too long, though that would be nice as I'd be long gone.
Hunter-gatherer was a dead-end option. Think: there was a pressing reason why our ancestors moved to agriculture--and it wasn't the promise of a better life, which the ancient bible was well aware of: "through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life."
Describe another sustainable option.
There was no pressing reason why our ancestors moved to agriculture, hence why it took so long for it to occur. The main reason for most hunter-gatherer societies "converting" to agriculture was because their land was appropriated for agriculture. As far as I can see, the only reason for agriculture was to control the food supply - in other words: power. An interpretation of that part of the bible would be that God was warning of the folly of agriculture - which was ignored.
There was a pressing reason—Man had become such a proficient killer that very little of his natural pray had survived to support his sustenance. We witness that with the Clovis man, who invaded America 18,000 years ago and subsequently managed to butcher all the large animals within mere 300 years. Dexterous arms + spears and arrows are a deadly scourge on our brethren animals. Your other points are too muddled and lightweight to grant a response.
It doesn't really matter why humans adopted agriculture (for the most part), as it isn't sustainable. Hunting/gathering has limits and would not have supported a techno-industrial society but so what? A techno-industrial society is bound to hit limits on a finite planet (this one) and will have to end. Of course, humans will try to cling on to some kind of modernity but modernity itself is unsustainable so the attempt will ultimately fail. As humans have done so much damage to our support mechanisms (the environment and resources) that it's hard to think of anything other than a return to hunting and gathering although scavenging will be a temporary phase that we'll probably go through. If there is an alternative sustainable way for people to live, I'd love to know about it.
What exactly are you going to hunt? Have we left any animals in the wild that could support us?
I won't be hunting anything (at least I doubt it). My point is that a hunter-gatherer way of life is probably the only sustainable one for humans. Any other way eventually leads to collapse of that way of life. I'm open as to other sustainable ways of living, if anyone would care to chip in.
8.2 billion humans couldn't adopt that way of life, unless the prey were other humans, because of the destruction we've wrought on the rest of nature. I'm pretty certain that human population will be whittled down to a tiny fraction of its current size and restricted to a few locales.
Nah, that's nonsense. In parts of the world, man had become such a proficient killer, but for the most part, man had lived sustainably throughout his evolution. There is zero evidence to support a lack of natural prey in the parts of the world where agriculture arose. Hence why hunter gathering continued for a long time in those areas.
I gave you the Clovis man example (AZ USA, 18,000 BC). But please, don't waste your time looking it up. After all, you obviously know everything already. As for other examples, I'm not going to spend my time on it, but there are copious books that present a variety of case studies--from the Aborigines to the Polynesians. Again, don't bother expanding your knowledge. You already know everything there is to know.
Living with one foot in BAU and one in impending collapse can indeed be challenging. I find I have to compartmentalise and engage in a certain amount of intentional denial to remain functional as a parent and worker.
Being collapse-aware is still preferable, though, for the reasons you state. Can you imagine the hideousness of being totally blindsided by everything you know falling apart?! No - even if the diagnosis is dire, it's better to have that information than just staggering around feeling worse and worse, and not understanding why.
Re your point 4, the WSJ is reporting:
"U.S. Drillers Say Peak Shale Has Arrived. Lower oil prices are expected to precipitate a decrease in crude output that won’t easily be reversed... there is only so much firms can do to wring more crude from the aging shale fields, analysts say..."
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/trump-oil-gas-shale-production-decline-db5e0f7c
Aye, compartmentalisation is key, that's for sure! Especially as a parent. In my case, one whose wife and family don't believe his ramblings about civilisational collapse. It does feel a little like being gaslit when I talk about such things, only to be presented with a choice of sofa or car to buy! It's almost as ridiculous as asking which party I want to vote for.
Ironic. An essay about accepting collapse that includes a quote from one of the worst human supremacists and naturephobes of the last century. Like expecting a kiss and getting a punch in the face instead.
"Collapse is not evenly distributed: it can be almost complete for one people, e.g. for those being trapped in the Gaza strip (or in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan etc. for that matter). Their lives were deliberately and methodically ruined just because more powerful nations wanted their permanent demise or treated them as pawns on a chessboard."
But what's happening in those countries and regions is not collapse. You said yourself that these are proxy wars or genocides perpetrated by powerful nations. This could be interpreted as a symptom of worsening conditions but it isn't collapse. The fact is that food aid is being actively stopped from being sent to Gaza, while food aid is being sent into Syria. Collapse would be when there is no food aid to give, because there is hardly enough food to go around at home.
Collapse will not be the same or occur at the same rate everywhere but there will be a global dimension to it which will affect every country in cumulatively worse ways.
Re the idea that collapse will feature "reprieves": well, how do you define that? If you are only talking about the possibility of changing the pattern of consumption and redistribution, then sure. People consume less of something because less is available and/or supply is redirected from places where it's determined to be excessive to places that need it more.
The problem is that consumption is not only inseparable from the overall system of production but also the social order underpinning that system. De-growth blindly assumes a demarcation between consumption, production and social stability remaining constant despite changes occurring in each of these domains.
I have a question-and I know it will sound very stupid to some- but earnestly- if humans are a biological species of the Earth how is it possible to overshoot? Is it as simple as our actions are not strictly biological? (I also know this isn’t the main point of the text- but it’s a personal sticking point in my understanding). Even if human activities extend outside of the biological wouldn’t they still have to be classed as “natural” because they were conceived of by a biological creature? Or am I caught up in the baseline faith that just sort of exists in even the least faithful of Americans- am I basing this on a misguided assumption that in nature all species are generally successful?
"All prior “solutions” from the advent of agriculture to colonization and eventually to the complete drawdown of a one-time natural inheritance (including fossil fuels) were just means to export and hide ecological overshoot."
Well, I knew I couldn't have been the only one thinking this way. Sweet. Do check my out book. Or get in touch and I'll just send it to you.