The End of Industrial Civilization

Here is a brief history of Homo Sapiens and human civilization summarized in a few paragraphs. From Douglas Dixon ’s book After Man: A Zoology of the Future “””The first men were plant gatherers and animal hunters and differed little in life style from other herbivorous and carnivorous animals around them. They had sufficient intellect to devise tools and weapons and a social organization that made hunting and food gathering more efficient. Neither of these things, however, made any serious impact on the environment.    The first great change in their life style came when, instead of hunting and gathering animals and plants they brought them together and looked after them in a single location. This eliminated the element of danger present in hunting and reduced the probability of starvation, as there was no longer the possibility of returning empty-handed from a foraging expedition. It was the beginning of agriculture. At first the areas under cultivati...

Most people think that industrial civilization is sustainable because, well, humans are apparently the most important and most special organism on this planet. We are apparently the pinnacle of God's creations or evolution (depending on your religious perspective). There is no way we can mess up the Earth's climatic systems . There is no way humans can irreversibly destroy the planet's biosphere. Most importantly, it is widely believed that human are infinitely clever and adaptable. No matter how much we destroy the planet's biosphere via industrial activities , no matter how much plastic pollu tion we dump into the world's oceans, no matter how many billions of tons of greenhouse gas pollution humans spew into the atmosphere each and every year , etc mankind will always come up with an ingenious technofix to industrial civilization's problems. Yes, most people believe that mankind will always invent new technologies to fix the problems ca...