What's your model of this? What data do you base this on? What the quantitative value of "most probably"? What's a collapse?
I mean, I'm not optimist, but I'm aware that my doom and gloom about how stupid and irrational we are is just a gut feeling.
Yes, we're squarely out of the easily comprehensible by naive human wetware regime. But then we should recognize that instead of doubling down and giving in to the fear coming of an even primal faculty.
The "this can't go on" chart has a very simple solution. This can go on because very easily, because we're still burning fossil fuels, and every time we switch to a healthier alternative that chart goes up. And we are furiously trying to switch, not necessarily everybody, but ask anyone who lives in cities who doesn't want less smog, who doesn't want less noise pollution, etc. And that graph is also going up because people are moving to cities en masse. (See the real estate prices all around the most desirable living places, but urbanization is happening everywhere else too.) People who live in cities simply by participating in a more productive economy make that chart go up again.
Sure going on like this forever is impossible. But a collapse is not the only alternative.
Did you check my links? "Collapse" may have several definitions; generally for a complex society or ecosystem it's a rapid simplification, reduction of exchanges and population.
Here is our situation: as you may have heard, every year around August we reach the "Overshoot day". That means that we use more resources (even renewable ones) than the Earth can produce (its carrying capacity), i.e. we're actually "mining" renewables resources such as oceans, soil, forests, etc. That means that the quantity of renewable resources globally available tends to go down while our resource usage still goes up.
At some point, our resource usage WILL fall down UNDER the line of globally available renewable resources. The longer we wait, the LOWER we will need to back down.
Also I don't really get where you're going with your fossil fuels example. We switched from renewables to fossil fuels back in the 18 and 19th centuries because they're so much denser, easier to use and powerful than renewables. They enabled the "great acceleration" by providing almost limitless energy, and doing without them is a tremendous, unprecedented effort.
Human history is about getting better energy sources: our ancestors got bigger brains by eating meat (more energy). Then they invented fire (more energy) to make their food more digestible (more energy). Later on they invented agriculture (more energy), then burned forests for more energy, and switched to peat and coal by lack of wood (more energy), then oil and gas and nuclear (still more energy). Notice that we never "switched" from an energy source to another: we piled them up. Coal usage nowadays is higher than it ever was during the 19th and 20th centuries. See
https://jancovici.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/energie_gra...
For the very first time in 300 000 years, we'll have to go from a dense, easy to transport and store energy sources to more diffuse, harder to transport and store ones. We'll have to go from an incredible abundance to relative (or maybe not so relative) scarcity. It's literally an unprecedented challenge, particularly at the global scale we're talking about.
I'm also aware of overshoot day. It's not completely terrible as a metric, but it's based on shoddy data, and in the end simply shows that we are not raw material efficient enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day#Criticism
Carrying capacity only makes sense for a given technology.
> At some point, our resource usage WILL fall down UNDER the line of globally available renewable resources. The longer we wait, the LOWER we will need to back down.
That will likely take thousands of years. Just solar and batteries can go a very very very long way. Especially if we consider that it seems the human population is going to peak after every region goes through the usual development phases (education, health, more choices for women, more economic freedom).
> They enabled the "great acceleration" by providing almost limitless energy, and doing without them is a tremendous, unprecedented effort.
Yep, and now we're likely switching back. It'll not be easy, but a collapse (big reduction in population) is very unlikely.
> Notice that we never "switched" from an energy source to another: we piled them up
Yes and no. For example we stopped burning wood for energy. We stopped burning wood for potash. Coal plants reached the point that it's uneconomical to run them in developed economies.
> It's literally an unprecedented challenge, particularly at the global scale we're talking about.
Yes, agreed. But there's nothing fundamentally preventing it. Humans are pretty much known for these sudden huge Earth-wide changes. Roads, cars, planes. Churning out war stuff.
Of course the possibility that we stubbornly refuse to allocate the required resources, dig in, and make the situation a lot worse is there. But since there's at least some minimal "rationality forcing" in climate change (meaning, that the stubborn denialist ones tend to face worse problems) it's likely that eventually people will be incentivized to allocate those resources.
I mean, I'm not optimist, but I'm aware that my doom and gloom about how stupid and irrational we are is just a gut feeling.
Yes, we're squarely out of the easily comprehensible by naive human wetware regime. But then we should recognize that instead of doubling down and giving in to the fear coming of an even primal faculty.
The "this can't go on" chart has a very simple solution. This can go on because very easily, because we're still burning fossil fuels, and every time we switch to a healthier alternative that chart goes up. And we are furiously trying to switch, not necessarily everybody, but ask anyone who lives in cities who doesn't want less smog, who doesn't want less noise pollution, etc. And that graph is also going up because people are moving to cities en masse. (See the real estate prices all around the most desirable living places, but urbanization is happening everywhere else too.) People who live in cities simply by participating in a more productive economy make that chart go up again.
Sure going on like this forever is impossible. But a collapse is not the only alternative.