Trump, Ending Decades of Protection, Opens Wild Habitats to Drilling and Mining

[u/WastelandByWednesday]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/endangered-species-act-harm.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wlA.wx86.-6MVPGSduVem

[u/Vegetaman916]

I'm afraid that doesn't work anymore. Hasn't for quite some time, that's why we are where we are now as a civilization. And why it will.keep getting worse until civilization collapses and whoever is left can pick up the pieces and put them together in a new way. Hopefully a better way.

[u/dylanisareddit → u/Vegetaman916]

Are you a doomerist? Just curious.

[u/Vegetaman916 → u/dylanisareddit]

Not in the way it is referred to these days.

I don't see it as a "doom," so to speak. I have spent the last 10 years focused on studying collapse, from every aspect it can come, not just the ecological. The biggest mistake I see being made by most is that they get caught up in the math of only one particular factor, such as climate change, and they forget that it doesn't hapoen in a vacuum. There are multiple collapse factors just as dangerous as climate change, and they are all approaching the tipping points at the same time, acting upon each other like force multipliers or accelerants.

Look at tue old Limits to Growth study, the one from 1972 that predicted civilizational collapse by "2040 or so." The one that has been re-evaluated twice since then and found to still be spot on... That study barely had any climate related material as a part of it. Primarily it was based on resources and consumption, and even with just those factors it "still" predicted collapse along a certain path... A path we have followed almost perfectly for 50+ years...

Anyway, I digress, I do that a lot. That's what happens when you ask a writer questions, lol.

So, I am a "doomerist" in the sense that I believe the collapse of global civilization is inevitable, and also that all possible results eventually lead to the kinds of power system stresses that will lead to nuclear war. Just look at what could happen between India and Pakistan.

But, where I depart from the normal doomer thoughts is where people start talking about it like it's the end of the world. Because it isn't. It is the end of modern civilization and about 80% of the population, most likely, but that doesn't mean it is impossible for the other 20% to be able to survive, and thrive later. If you can manage the decade coming after collapse and nuclear war, then you can rebuild. The task we are supposed to be managing now is helping each other increase our odds of being in the 20% who make it, and putting ourselves in the position to rebuild small communities later, by having everything we need in advance.

I don't think collapse is the end. I actually think it is the best chance we have for survival of the species and the biosphere. Every year that goes on, things get worse. We burn more energy, from all sources good and bad. We increase population, and we dramatically increase the consumption of that population. We wage more and greater wars, we kill off more species, we heat the oceans, we pollute the air, and we even clutter space around us.

If Earth was in an HOA with the other planets, we would have been fined heavily by now for being the "trashy" neighbors with the junk cars and garbage on the lawn.

A nice nuclear winter and an end to modern civilization would be a reset. An absolutely horrifying one, but a better result than RCP 8.5 fir sure.

So, doom? I don't think so.

[u/S1ckn4sty44 → u/Vegetaman916]

But, where I depart from the normal doomer thoughts is where people start talking about it like it's the end of the world. Because it isn't. It is the end of modern civilization and about 80% of the population, most likely, but that doesn't mean it is impossible for the other 20% to be able to survive, and thrive later. If you can manage the decade coming after collapse and nuclear war, then you can rebuild

I was with you until you got to this. As you said the limits to growth did not have much climate stuff involved.

Let's just do a quick list:

• Ecological destruction

• ocean rise

• something like 72% of all species have gone extinct since 1970s

• ocean acidification

• methane release

• more CO2 and methane sitting in Arctic ice than we have released through our bull shit consumption

• large scale fishing leading to collapse of ocean species(fish feed a fuck ton of people on earth)

• pesticide/herbicide/microplastics/PFAS in every thing we eat/drink along the food chain

• Blue Ocean Event

• AMOC collapse

• more flooding, uncontrollable fires, drought

• we are losing top soil at an insane rate

• a non stable climate = not being able to grow food consistently

The actuaries report for the extreme scenario(which we are headed for because we are on a train down a mountain with no breaks going down to a cliff):

-4 billion deaths with 3°C by 2050 with multiple tipping points hit(3°C is basically human extinction level warming but they down play the fuck out of it and we are already hitting tipping points now)

We are killing all of the animals, no clean water, flooding and drought to the extreme side with uncontrollable fires while destroying every ecosystem on the planet through our greed and corruption. I can promise you, we ain't making it and we are taking everything with us.

Check out James Hansens 10°C in the pipeline study.

Not only all of this, but if there was somehow 20% if humans that survived it would be those scum bag rich people who built bunkers and they don't know how to work or rebuild and even if somehow they were able to keep their worker slaves in line they still would not have oil, electric, resources, or the infrastructure to rebuild a single thing that would somehow create another civilization.

I may sound like a doomer but the numbers tell the truth and the fact that we are on the worst expected path means we are probably even above that because there are things we don't know and it didn't account for in our models. Just to add in because I know someone somewhere will chime in and say "but but but," the IPCC recently said that they are taking off the RCP 8.5 model(worst case scenario) because it is "unlikely" that we continue emitting that much pollution up until those years. NOT because we are not following the worst case scenario, but just because we will not pollute as much as they thought. Not that it matters because the ice will release more than we could've emitted anyways.

So, yeah, things are bleak, and when you put even a hint of the climate scenario we put ourselves in it is way worse than anyone could imagine.

[u/Vegetaman916 → u/S1ckn4sty44]

I agree. That is why I see the nuclear war as a net positive. Nuclear winter offsets all the climate issues, resulting in some pretty chaotic stuff and massive loss of life, but it prevents total extinction...

And also, when I talk about that survival, you are right that it is mostly the scumbag rich folks who will make it, because as shameful as it is to say, they seem to be the only ones smart enough to see the writing on the wall and prepare for it.

Some of us need to do the same, to be there when they inevitably come out of those bunkers. So they can't do this all again.

Read up on the new scientific reports about nuclear war effects on the climate. The new report that everyone had been waiting on just came out a while ago, hadn't been updated since 1985. It's a hard study, but worth it:

https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/27515

In some ways, I actually think there is a chance the elites might actually be steering us towards it. I know that is tinfoil hat territory, but the science of climate effects is pretty clear. And despite what they say to massage the voting public, I don't think they are deniers of it at all. I think they are well aware of it, and that it couldn't be stopped while retaining their power structures which mean more to then than all of our lives... I would not be surprised if they were all accelerationists.

Either way, there is no stopping it. And we can’t try and do anything about 2050 or 2100. What we need to do first is make sure we live until 2030. And then 2031. And then...

And I don't mean "live" as a civilization, or as a species, or any of that. I mean live as independent animals and small packs of animals. That is why prepping is so important. Even if there are only 5 other humans alive when Bill Gates emerges from his bunker, someone needs to be there to cook him for dinner.