socialmedian: Future Scenarios: Lifeboats

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Future Scenarios: Lifeboats

Source: Laws of Necessity

Oct 08, 2009

Summary

Rapid energy-decline rates, severe climate change symptoms.

In this scenario, supplies of high-quality fossil fuels decline rapidly, the economy fails, and human contributions to global warming collapse, but lag effects and positive feedbacks in the climate system continue to drive an acceleration of global warming. As of 2007, an increasing number of scientists believe it may already be too late to avoid catastrophic climate change. In the lifeboat scenario the adverse symptoms of the brow-tech and earth-steward scenarios combine to force a progressive collapse in most forms of economic and social organization. Local wars, including use of nuclear weapons, accelerate collapse in some areas, but the failure of national systems of power prevents global warfare. Successive famine and disease break down social and economic capacity on a larger scale than the Black Death in medieval Europe, leading to a halving of global population in a few decades.

New forms of oasis agriculture that are low-input versions of the brow-tech intensive systems evolve that stabilize f ...Read the full article

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