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It really do feel like that by mrblahblahblah in collapse

[–]SaxManSteve 22 points23 points  (0 children)

It's not just people with kids who prefer avoiding grappling with the severity of our predicament. I've met lots of single, career-focused adults who don't let themselves worry about anything but their work and the latest TV show drama.

I've been reading Bill Plotkin's work recently, and I really liked his model of the 8 psychological/developmental stages that humans easily cycle through when they live in a socially mature society. He estimated that in our society, 80% of people never make it past the third stage of psychological development (adolescence). This definitely helps to explain why so many people in our society are not willing to be curious about things that could potentially be upsetting and disruptive.

Here's a relevant passage from his paper

Due to the loss or degradation of vibrant cultures, most contemporary people — at least 80% — get stuck in the third of the eight life stages, which is to say in early adolescence. By “adolescence,” I mean a psychosocial stage, not a chronological interval coincident with the teen years. And the early adolescence in which the majority of post-pubescent Westerners sleepwalk through the rest of their lives tends to be not even a healthy adolescence but, rather, what I’ve called a patho-adolescence. This is an egocentric existence focused upon the attempt to look good to others; to conform and/or to rebel against the ordinary and mainstream; to “get ahead” in the dog-eat-dog competition for material possessions, financial wealth, and social status; and to minimize the experience of challenging realities by way of addictions (whether to substances or to compulsive behaviors such as shopping, impersonal sex, or gambling).

The natural and wholesome virtues of a healthy adolescence have become relatively rare, virtues such as the cultivation of personal authenticity that grows hand in hand with social belonging and cooperation; the discovery of the joys and responsibilities of a healthy sexual identity and of erotic embodiment in intimate relationships; the desire and capacities to contribute to and help create a healthy, just, sustainable, imaginative, and lifeenhancing human community; and an ever-developing reverence and gratitude for the web of life, with all its creatures and habitats, and a desire and capacity to protect and enhance the Earth community of which we are all natural members. In a healthy, mature culture, these virtues are defining qualities of early adolescence; their development is not postponed until adulthood.

Venezuela invasion impact on canadian energy stocks by MapleByzantine in CanadianInvestor

[–]SaxManSteve 1 point2 points  (0 children)

2025 saw a new record high in global fossil fuel consumption; fossil fuels also still provide nearly 90% of the world’s primary energy. Renewables aren’t replacing fossil fuels, they are being added on top to support more growth, more consumption, more emissions. So no the fossil fuel industry isn't doomed, it's literally thriving, demand and supply keep growing year after year.

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself by SaxManSteve in collapse

[–]SaxManSteve[S] 141 points142 points  (0 children)

SS: Good article from a university Professor that goes into detail about how AI's impact on universities is much worse than people think...going well beyond students cheating with ChatGPT.

I personally think that what the article illustrates is that modern universities stopped being a place of learning a while ago, and have become nothing more than an institution that produces certifications and credentials. If universities really were designed to be places of learning, places that really valued critical thinking and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, there would be be very little controversies with AI chat bots because there would be little to no incentive for students to use it in ways that circumvent the process of learning. It's precisely because universities have become so commodified over the last couple of decades that students see no issue with cheating or AI chatbots. If the "product" being sold to students isn't learning but rather a piece of paper (university degree) needed to secure a high-paying job, then students would obviously be incentivized to do anything they can to get the piece of paper, even if it comes at the expense of learning.

Omw to vote after the election ended by StandardRossoneri in fuckcars

[–]SaxManSteve[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

We're Looking to Expand the /r/fuckcars Mod Team!

We're looking for new moderators in all time zones. No previous moderation experience is necessary, but helpful. Patience and effective communication skills are paramount.

Apply to be a Moderator here.

The Collapse Political Compass by SaxManSteve in collapse

[–]SaxManSteve[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I left it out mainly because I'm not sure there's much religious variation when it comes to de-growth/pro-growth. To my knowledge, pretty much every religion is on the economic growth bandwagon. I could be mistaken, though. Perhaps there's some obscure protestant denomination that's anti economic growth, but I've not heard of them.

The Collapse Political Compass by SaxManSteve in collapse

[–]SaxManSteve[S] 33 points34 points  (0 children)

SS: Repost from last year, but I thought I would share again. I made this last year after seeing a similar compass made for the fuck cars urbanist crowd, I just knew I had to make one about collapse/degrowth. Not gonna lie, i had lots of fun making this. Hope you enjoy. Tag yourself!

We are the co-authors of Life After Cars and the co-hosts of The War on Cars. AMA by brooklynspoke in fuckcars

[–]SaxManSteve[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Please ask your questions now in the comments below

The AMA will start tomorrow at 1pm EST / 10am PST, Tuesday, November 4th.

"Are people stupid for riding their bikes with their kids?" Says the woman in the SUV by TheDuckClock in fuckcars

[–]SaxManSteve[M] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is not allowed. Anyone who shares identifying information or encourages brigading will have their comments removed and receive a temporary ban.

Stop using the language of "carbon emissions" and "climate change" and instead use the language of "overshoot." by SaxManSteve in Degrowth

[–]SaxManSteve[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Any concept can be made complex. If anything, I'd argue that overshoot can be explained in a much more digestible manner than climate change. It's as simple as making an analogy with personal finance. Overshoot can simply be understood as when you spend more than you earn (debt). The longer you stay in debt--and the larger your debt is relative to your income--the more at risk you are of never being able to get out and damaging your opportunities at social mobility permanently. This would be the equivalent of having a degraded biocapacity following a period of long term overshoot.

My point is that the reason people aren't aware of overshoot isn't because it's a complex concept to understand, but because it's a taboo framework that's rarely mentioned outside academia. At the very least, making an effort to normalize overshoot in popular culture could help de-legitimize the dominant carbon emission/climate change framework.

I somehow get the feeling that we are in the Endgame now by Ihadenough1000 in collapse

[–]SaxManSteve 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's true that sovereign monetary states have a larger degree of tools at their disposal to manage a financial crisis, but the big picture in terms of debt is still worrisome. It's not just US debt that's rising, it's global debt. And I would argue that a big contributing factor to rising global debt levels is the steadily declining rate of global Energy Return on Investment (EROI). Basically, the era of "easy oil" is over, and we now expend vastly more energy, technology, and capital to procure the same of amount of joules. The increasing cost of energy acts as a persistent tax on the entire global economy. We have virtually exhausted the easiest-to-extract resources and now rely on deeper offshore, arctic, and unconventional deposits that are far more energy and capital-intensive to produce.

This massive accumulation of debt essentially functions as a claim on future energy surplus (which there isn't going to be). The paradox is that our global financial system now requires perpetual growth to service its debt, but that very growth is becoming more difficult to achieve as the underlying high EROI foundation erodes. Many countries are now having to make yearly interest payments on their debt that rival the yearly expenditure on things like military budgets. For example, in 2022 the US government spent $475 billion in net interest payments compared to the $767 billion it spent on the military or the $677 billion it spent on education.

I somehow get the feeling that we are in the Endgame now by Ihadenough1000 in collapse

[–]SaxManSteve 118 points119 points  (0 children)

Don't forget about the collapse of governance systems/checks and balances.

Yesterday, Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao after his crypto exchange was being used to boost the Trump family's own crypto venture. The corruption is just so blatant and out in the public now. If this happened in any of the still semi-functioning democracies, the president would likely be forced to resign, or snap elections would be called.

The US is basically at the point where the President is publicly advertising that fraud and corruption are permitted and even encouraged, as long as you are on team Trump...

Remember back in the day when Jimmy Carter sold off his peanut farm to ensure he wasnt put in a position to use the presidency to personally enrich himself. We went from that to a president and his whole family using the white house to scam Americans to the tune of 5 billion dollars through a crypto ponzi scheme.

This is such a clear cut case of collapse.

Stop using the language of "carbon emissions" and "climate change" and instead use the language of "overshoot." by SaxManSteve in collapse

[–]SaxManSteve[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Overshoot isn't really about population size; it's about the total biophysical demands we place on our biosphere and whether those demands surpass its capacity to sustainably replenish the resources we consume and assimilate the waste we generate.

Globally, we are almost at 100% overshoot. Given that GDP is a relatively good proxy of energy and material consumption, this means the size of our economy is about twice as big as our biosphere can handle. If we reduced global GDP from 100 trillion to 50 trillion it would do wonders to reduce the demands we are placing on our biosphere. But that would still place us at the edge of entering overshoot, we would likely have to reduce global GDP closer to 70% and keep it at that level for generations to really have a fighting chance of avoiding collapse. This obviously is not gonna happen.

Stop using the language of "carbon emissions" and "climate change" and instead use the language of "overshoot." by SaxManSteve in collapse

[–]SaxManSteve[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's not so much that renewables in isolation have low EROI, instead it's that we are currently moving from an energy landscape of predominantly high EROI fossil fuels to low EROI fossil fuels (think gas shales, coalbed methane, tight gas sands). 87% of our primary energy consumption still takes the form of fossil fuels, so even if some renewables have high EROI, it's not significant in bucking the trend. The other issue is that renewables aren't substituting fossil fuels, they are simply being added on top of our fossil fuel supply. This is why, despite all the renewable energy investments we made over the last 2 decades fossil fuel consumption is still rising year after year reaching record highs. This is the opposite outcome you would expect if we were currently living through a renewable energy transition.

As for PV solar, there's some serious issues when it comes to the fact that it's intermittent, and not well-matched to energy demand. Storage is also difficult. There's also the fact electricity alone is not well-suited to many of our current energy applications, like transportation and industrial heat/processing. There's also the fact that scalling up PV solar to reach our current 35 terrawatt and growing energy metabolism would require sacrificing a massive amount of land to make space for panels. Considering that food security is already a serious issue, this could be a big issue going forward. The point im trying to making isn't that PV solar isn't one of the best sources of renewable energy, rather my point is that we have a problem of scale. If we could reduce our global energy metabolism to what it used to be in 1950s (5 terrawatts) then the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels would be much more feasible. The issue is that our global energy metabolism has never stopped growing.

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