[RGamma]

I'm actually "afraid" we could largely get away with tearing down the house. In the process of compensating catastrophic (regional) failure of basic life systems, we might double down on exploitation, e.g. falling back on fossils, expanding land use, ... Humans will take what they desire.

For instance lots of people in Germany started relying on (trash) wood for heating because of high gas prices (I smell it right now). It's a banality (many could have gotten by otherwise) and it didn't take much to cause it.

Surely we can't fuck up so bad, that artificially-clonable GMO crops won't grow anymore even without insects for instance. And water? Exploit rivers, build giant canals and water desalination, power it with fossils, if need be. Pathogens? Modern medicine saves the day.

Of course that might only delay the final crash because these technologies can die as well, but my guess is sufficient people may survive on a largely dead planet regardless, kept alive by hyperexploitation albeit at reduced population and living standards... We're tough bastards after all and can regress to unenlightenment if need be.

It's difficult to tell without knowing exactly what is crucially necessary for base necessities. Maybe we'll kill off something really, really important and a region dies, but that happening everywhere is difficult to imagine.

It's gonna be a mess...

[kaskakokos]

In this sense, I liked the book: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

Certainly, it explains that if we look at previous civilisations that have been annihilated, it seems that slow decay is a feasible path.

According to their argumentation, there is a balance of 4 common environmental problems in previous cases:

I. Destruction/loss of natural resources. II. Ceilings on natural resources. III. Harmful things. IV. Human population.

[RetroTechie]

> my guess is sufficient people may survive on a largely dead planet regardless, kept alive by hyperexploitation albeit at reduced population and living standards...

Yeah, a scenario of "humans surviving long-term, but in greatly reduced numbers" is entirely possible.

It's my fear that this may happen, but (as you point out) our planet's ecosystems are destroyed in the process. Not to mention human suffering.

We're rapidly running out of time to prevent such a scenario though.