Every few months we get new perspectives and solidifications of understanding. I’ve been aware of your writings now for approximately 2 years. Every single thing has turned out to be worse than imagined. The mainstream structure of thinking and analysis heavily relies upon using arbitrary, psychologically safe things like 1.5C or 2050/2100/etc. Arbitrary places that generate continued hope and attachment to a system that’s already effectively driven us extinct. We’re the latent ghost phase. The current configuration of the biosphere will end. We will end. Most life will end.
Stuff will come after. Millions of years into the future the oceans may level out and allow for coral and more again.
Until then, this is our hospice. A handful of decades left at best. A handful of years left for the current golden age of the privileged. Everyone else has basically already collapsed.
The fever dream phase is still here. The party is still rocking. But you can hear the monsters starting to gather outside.
132x of the rate that causes one of the largest extinction events ever. And we think we are gonna survive this. lol. 🫠
Richard, You are right. AND it is even worse. If we tally up the other global warming gases we are now over 550 ppm CO2(e). Then add in albedo reduction and decreasing aerosols and today we are at about 750 ppm CO2(e). And next year we will reach about 820 ppm CO2(e) (mostly due to declining aerosols and reduced albedo).
Then in in the next decade we go over 1,800 ppm CO2(e). To say that is unprecedented is grossly insufficient. And - mother nature hasn't yet had her say. Sigh.
Wow. First time reader this site, daily reader of C&E and Peak Oil Barrel. One of the biggest intellectual challenges I face with having this understanding is how to BE with myself and others… what is there to do? what to say? what to think? I keep watering the plants, feeding the dog and birds and say ‘how ya doing and have a nice day’ and wondering more and more if others know how truly horrifying the world is now, let alone five years on. I have asked myself and friends, what tipping point do we imagine will be the straw that breaks the cohesion currently holding the world of man together? Everyone shakes their head… I don’t think we allow ourselves that kind of picture.
This world of +8 billion humans does not have what is required to live in harmony with the planet. And so, mother earth has begun to change the landscape in order to evolve to a different harmony. Not the first nor the last time, continuous. Kinda sucks knowing the peak of humanity is over and the ongoing shit show towards extinction is all happening now.
How to deal with the knowledge that Collapse has started is an ongoing theme among climate writers recently. There are those like Wallace-Wells who embrace hopium and talk constantly about how renewables are "this close" to getting us to "net zero". There are those who embrace "tech bro-ism" and focus on "tech solutions" like fusion power, space mining, geoengineering, gene engineered crops, etc.
And then there are the "Descent Realists" aka "Doomers" like myself.
Once you really SEE the reality of our predicament and understand it, most doomers seem to go through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Many here on Substack have been writing, or are currently writing, about dealing with the emotional burden of being "Collapse Aware".
Having been down this rabbithole since 2014, I've got through to the acceptance stage.
There are a few things readers ought to note.
1) the journey is worth it. The amount of calm and serenity I feel now is something I could never have imagined. And the unfettered joy of witnessing nature go about its business is, well, to die for.
2) It is not a one-way journey. You'll find you slip back and forth between anger-bargaining-depression-acceptance and back again for a while.
3) I firmly believe you cannot get to acceptance without first accepting your own mortality. Once you get there, you can accept the mortality of your species.
4) If one just follows climate science data, then acceptance will not be achieved. Because, climate change is merely a symptom of ecological overshoot. Please be aware, the current mass extinction and collapse of global industrial civilisation would be happening anyway even if the climate had remained stable. (wish I could bold that, or put it in italics). This is a critical factor, oft overlooked.
As well as climate science, it bodes well to look at anthropology, ecology, psychology, true economics, even history. The multiple bread-basket failures of 1876-77 and 1947 are useful pointers to future outcomes.
And so on.
For those willing to delve further, William Catton's 1981 book Overshoot, the Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, is your starting point.
I began my journey in 2019 when I read Bill McKibben's book Falter...I literally felt nauseous as I read and had to put the book down frequently...What still is so agonizing to me is that not just humans, but perhaps all of the natural world will be gone one day in the not so distant future...I feel such shame...My mantra of late when I see another beloved tree downed by a storm or cut down by a ruthless and paranoid neighbor is simply, "We are all going to die. Everything is going to die"...I try to appreciate every minute with that knowledge humming in the background...Your work has helped me to get to this place, so I thank you through my tears...
It might even be worse than that. Complex intelligent life like us takes a lot of time to develop. A lot of people take it as granted that we killed ourselves but some other intelligent species will evolve and hopefully be better than us. Earth does not have much more time before it becomes inhospitable to such life. The Sun is enlarging and within (from what I remember reading, please don't quote me on this I am no expert) 500m-1billion years. Mammals have existed for 225 million years. If mammals were to survive our current extinction event, it would probably take somewhere in the neighborhood of that time for them to evolve into an intelligent species. However, I don't know if we can just extrapolate like that. Who says intelligent life has to develop at all? What if it was much more rare than we think? What if the conditions were just right for us? What if they aren't like that in the future?
In a nutshell, I think we may have just killed Earth's only chance at intelligent life evolving and expanding out of our solar system. This may have been the only chance we had for intelligent life to evolve and colonize expand out into the galaxy. Our environment will be polluted by an unbelievable amount of plastic that stays around for a really long time and the toxic byproducts from that plastic breaking down. We don't know how that will affect life in the future but we know it won't be good.
Here's a breakdown from Gemini 2.5 pro of how the plastic might break down into biodegradable compounds.
It's estimated to take 500 to over 1,000 years for a piece of conventional plastic made today to chemically degrade into compounds simple enough to be considered biodegradable. However, for many plastics, this complete breakdown may never fully occur in a natural environment.
The process is incredibly slow and releases harmful substances along the way.
Stage 1: Physical Breakdown and Initial Chemical Changes (Decades to Centuries)
This first stage is less about changing the fundamental chemistry and more about physical and initial chemical weakening.
Fragmentation: Sunlight (UV radiation) and heat make the plastic brittle. Physical stress from wind, waves, or soil movement then causes it to crack and break apart into smaller and smaller pieces, creating microplastics and eventually nanoplastics.
At the end of this stage, you don't have a new compound, but rather a "damaged" and fragmented version of the original plastic, now studded with reactive oxygen groups.
Stage 2: Chemical Fragmentation into Oligomers and Monomers (Centuries to Millennia)
This is where the plastic's core structure truly begins to break down into different, smaller chemical compounds.
At this point, the original plastic is gone, replaced by a mixture of various smaller, often hazardous, chemical compounds.
This final stage is where the compounds from Stage 2 become simple enough for microorganisms to consume.
Microbial Consumption: Some of the very simple carboxylic acids and other small organic molecules can, in theory, be used as food by bacteria and fungi.
Mineralization: If this biodegradation process is completed, the final end products would be carbon dioxide (CO₂), water (H₂O), and biomass (the cell mass of the microbes).
This final step is the most uncertain. The process is extremely slow, and many of the intermediate compounds are themselves resistant to microbial action or toxic to the microbes that would otherwise break them down.
Leached Additives: Plastics are not pure polymers. They contain a cocktail of chemical additives to give them desired properties (flexibility, color, fire resistance). These additives are not chemically bound to the plastic and leach out easily during degradation. Key examples include:
Phthalates and BPA (Bisphenol A): These are notorious endocrine disruptors, meaning they can interfere with hormones in the body. They are linked to reproductive problems, developmental issues in children, and an increased risk of certain cancers.
Flame Retardants (e.g., PBDEs): These can also disrupt hormone systems and are associated with neurological and developmental problems.
Heavy Metals: Pigments and stabilizers can contain lead, cadmium, and mercury, which are potent neurotoxins and carcinogens.
Intermediate Chemical Compounds: The aldehydes, ketones, and organic acids formed during Stage 2 are often toxic. They can harm soil health, kill aquatic organisms, and contaminate water sources.
Basically, this doesn't bode well for life on Earth after we're gone....
Doomer here! I think the other camps are indulging in wishful thinking and "keep a stiff upper lip stoicism'. I politely disagree. The evidence is all around us that the earth is rapidly becoming uninhabitable in various regions around the globe. The great flight to the circumpolar regions is already underway. "Doomer" is a pejorative used to belittle those of us whose only sin is that we look at the data and make the appropriate conclusions.
Carbon bomb in the northern permafrost. Thanks so much for this detailed explanation. We forest lovers are effed! Even the current impacts are mind blowing:
As someone who is a frequent reader of https://climateandeconomy.com (C&E) I'd like to second this! "Panopticon" - the moniker that the owner of C&E goes by - collects mountains of daily supporting evidence about just how fucked we are. It really complements your fantastic analysis, Richard.
Thanks for taking us through the paleoclimate evidence so well, and providing the links I hope skeptics will also read.
You are correct that we are not applying the brakes to the present economic model, the only means we had to mediate the extent of the climate catastrophe.
I also credit the “moderates” assumptions and timelines, that you describe so well here, to masking from the general public the extent of our predicament; hiding the harm we do from themselves and others. It created a belief that this climate thing was in the future and we could get around to doing something about it eventually.
The Doomer epithet was the political stratagem slowing the realization that the “moderates “ numbers were cooked. Now the world is cooked, and we humans haven’t the means to survive alone as nature dies away.
Hi Richard, I am a long time reader, and this is my first time posting. First, thank you so very much for all the time and effort you put into alerting and educating the public on this ongoing crisis. I was wondering if I might add to your already immense load of researched climate topics, and ask if higher global temperatures increase volcanic activity and earthquakes? If you have already covered this topic, could you please steer me in the right direction? Thank you so much for your time. Best regards, Nicole.
Regarding your question, this is a developing area of study. A major paper analyzing the activity of six volcanoes in southern Chile during the last ice age just got released on the 8th of this month.
Scientists first theorized that melting ice could impact volcanoes in the 1970s. The underlying process is a simple one — the weight of glaciers exerts a downward force on Earth's crust and mantle, so when the ice retreats, subterranean gases and magma expand, leading to pressure buildups that fuel explosive eruptions.
In the paper:
They found that between 26,000 to 18,000 years ago, during the peak of the last ice age, ice cover tamped down the volume of eruptions, causing a giant reservoir of magma to accumulate beneath the region's surface. When the ice sheet melted, pressure grew inside this reservoir and was eventually released to form the Mocho-Choshuenco volcano.
This threat is planetary in scope: 245 of the world's potentially active volcanoes lie underneath or within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of ice, according to a 2020 study.
"The key requirement for increased explosivity is initially having a very thick glacial coverage over a magma chamber, and the trigger point is when these glaciers start to retreat, releasing pressure — which is currently happening in places like Antarctica," Moreno Yaeger said.
Over short time periods, eruptions typically release sulfate aerosols that reflect sunlight back into space. This has led to cooling events following past eruptions, some of which have triggered major famines. Yet over the long term, the greenhouse gases from these volcanoes will likely cause climate change to accelerate, the researchers said.
"Over time the cumulative effect of multiple eruptions can contribute to long-term global warming because of a buildup of greenhouse gases," Moreno Yaeger said. "This creates a positive feedback loop, where melting glaciers trigger eruptions, and the eruptions in turn could contribute to further warming and melting."
Every few months we get new perspectives and solidifications of understanding. I’ve been aware of your writings now for approximately 2 years. Every single thing has turned out to be worse than imagined. The mainstream structure of thinking and analysis heavily relies upon using arbitrary, psychologically safe things like 1.5C or 2050/2100/etc. Arbitrary places that generate continued hope and attachment to a system that’s already effectively driven us extinct. We’re the latent ghost phase. The current configuration of the biosphere will end. We will end. Most life will end.
Stuff will come after. Millions of years into the future the oceans may level out and allow for coral and more again.
Until then, this is our hospice. A handful of decades left at best. A handful of years left for the current golden age of the privileged. Everyone else has basically already collapsed.
The fever dream phase is still here. The party is still rocking. But you can hear the monsters starting to gather outside.
132x of the rate that causes one of the largest extinction events ever. And we think we are gonna survive this. lol. 🫠
Richard, You are right. AND it is even worse. If we tally up the other global warming gases we are now over 550 ppm CO2(e). Then add in albedo reduction and decreasing aerosols and today we are at about 750 ppm CO2(e). And next year we will reach about 820 ppm CO2(e) (mostly due to declining aerosols and reduced albedo).
Then in in the next decade we go over 1,800 ppm CO2(e). To say that is unprecedented is grossly insufficient. And - mother nature hasn't yet had her say. Sigh.
Wow. First time reader this site, daily reader of C&E and Peak Oil Barrel. One of the biggest intellectual challenges I face with having this understanding is how to BE with myself and others… what is there to do? what to say? what to think? I keep watering the plants, feeding the dog and birds and say ‘how ya doing and have a nice day’ and wondering more and more if others know how truly horrifying the world is now, let alone five years on. I have asked myself and friends, what tipping point do we imagine will be the straw that breaks the cohesion currently holding the world of man together? Everyone shakes their head… I don’t think we allow ourselves that kind of picture.
This world of +8 billion humans does not have what is required to live in harmony with the planet. And so, mother earth has begun to change the landscape in order to evolve to a different harmony. Not the first nor the last time, continuous. Kinda sucks knowing the peak of humanity is over and the ongoing shit show towards extinction is all happening now.
How to deal with the knowledge that Collapse has started is an ongoing theme among climate writers recently. There are those like Wallace-Wells who embrace hopium and talk constantly about how renewables are "this close" to getting us to "net zero". There are those who embrace "tech bro-ism" and focus on "tech solutions" like fusion power, space mining, geoengineering, gene engineered crops, etc.
And then there are the "Descent Realists" aka "Doomers" like myself.
Once you really SEE the reality of our predicament and understand it, most doomers seem to go through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Many here on Substack have been writing, or are currently writing, about dealing with the emotional burden of being "Collapse Aware".
It's a JOURNEY to acceptance.
Having been down this rabbithole since 2014, I've got through to the acceptance stage.
There are a few things readers ought to note.
1) the journey is worth it. The amount of calm and serenity I feel now is something I could never have imagined. And the unfettered joy of witnessing nature go about its business is, well, to die for.
2) It is not a one-way journey. You'll find you slip back and forth between anger-bargaining-depression-acceptance and back again for a while.
3) I firmly believe you cannot get to acceptance without first accepting your own mortality. Once you get there, you can accept the mortality of your species.
4) If one just follows climate science data, then acceptance will not be achieved. Because, climate change is merely a symptom of ecological overshoot. Please be aware, the current mass extinction and collapse of global industrial civilisation would be happening anyway even if the climate had remained stable. (wish I could bold that, or put it in italics). This is a critical factor, oft overlooked.
As well as climate science, it bodes well to look at anthropology, ecology, psychology, true economics, even history. The multiple bread-basket failures of 1876-77 and 1947 are useful pointers to future outcomes.
And so on.
For those willing to delve further, William Catton's 1981 book Overshoot, the Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, is your starting point.
Thanks, Catton's book now ordered.
I began my journey in 2019 when I read Bill McKibben's book Falter...I literally felt nauseous as I read and had to put the book down frequently...What still is so agonizing to me is that not just humans, but perhaps all of the natural world will be gone one day in the not so distant future...I feel such shame...My mantra of late when I see another beloved tree downed by a storm or cut down by a ruthless and paranoid neighbor is simply, "We are all going to die. Everything is going to die"...I try to appreciate every minute with that knowledge humming in the background...Your work has helped me to get to this place, so I thank you through my tears...
It might even be worse than that. Complex intelligent life like us takes a lot of time to develop. A lot of people take it as granted that we killed ourselves but some other intelligent species will evolve and hopefully be better than us. Earth does not have much more time before it becomes inhospitable to such life. The Sun is enlarging and within (from what I remember reading, please don't quote me on this I am no expert) 500m-1billion years. Mammals have existed for 225 million years. If mammals were to survive our current extinction event, it would probably take somewhere in the neighborhood of that time for them to evolve into an intelligent species. However, I don't know if we can just extrapolate like that. Who says intelligent life has to develop at all? What if it was much more rare than we think? What if the conditions were just right for us? What if they aren't like that in the future?
In a nutshell, I think we may have just killed Earth's only chance at intelligent life evolving and expanding out of our solar system. This may have been the only chance we had for intelligent life to evolve and colonize expand out into the galaxy. Our environment will be polluted by an unbelievable amount of plastic that stays around for a really long time and the toxic byproducts from that plastic breaking down. We don't know how that will affect life in the future but we know it won't be good.
Here's a breakdown from Gemini 2.5 pro of how the plastic might break down into biodegradable compounds.
It's estimated to take 500 to over 1,000 years for a piece of conventional plastic made today to chemically degrade into compounds simple enough to be considered biodegradable. However, for many plastics, this complete breakdown may never fully occur in a natural environment.
The process is incredibly slow and releases harmful substances along the way.
Stage 1: Physical Breakdown and Initial Chemical Changes (Decades to Centuries)
This first stage is less about changing the fundamental chemistry and more about physical and initial chemical weakening.
Fragmentation: Sunlight (UV radiation) and heat make the plastic brittle. Physical stress from wind, waves, or soil movement then causes it to crack and break apart into smaller and smaller pieces, creating microplastics and eventually nanoplastics.
At the end of this stage, you don't have a new compound, but rather a "damaged" and fragmented version of the original plastic, now studded with reactive oxygen groups.
Stage 2: Chemical Fragmentation into Oligomers and Monomers (Centuries to Millennia)
This is where the plastic's core structure truly begins to break down into different, smaller chemical compounds.
At this point, the original plastic is gone, replaced by a mixture of various smaller, often hazardous, chemical compounds.
Stage 3: Theoretical Biodegradation (Potentially Never)
This final stage is where the compounds from Stage 2 become simple enough for microorganisms to consume.
Microbial Consumption: Some of the very simple carboxylic acids and other small organic molecules can, in theory, be used as food by bacteria and fungi.
Mineralization: If this biodegradation process is completed, the final end products would be carbon dioxide (CO₂), water (H₂O), and biomass (the cell mass of the microbes).
This final step is the most uncertain. The process is extremely slow, and many of the intermediate compounds are themselves resistant to microbial action or toxic to the microbes that would otherwise break them down.
Leached Additives: Plastics are not pure polymers. They contain a cocktail of chemical additives to give them desired properties (flexibility, color, fire resistance). These additives are not chemically bound to the plastic and leach out easily during degradation. Key examples include:
Phthalates and BPA (Bisphenol A): These are notorious endocrine disruptors, meaning they can interfere with hormones in the body. They are linked to reproductive problems, developmental issues in children, and an increased risk of certain cancers.
Flame Retardants (e.g., PBDEs): These can also disrupt hormone systems and are associated with neurological and developmental problems.
Heavy Metals: Pigments and stabilizers can contain lead, cadmium, and mercury, which are potent neurotoxins and carcinogens.
Intermediate Chemical Compounds: The aldehydes, ketones, and organic acids formed during Stage 2 are often toxic. They can harm soil health, kill aquatic organisms, and contaminate water sources.
Basically, this doesn't bode well for life on Earth after we're gone....
Doomer here! I think the other camps are indulging in wishful thinking and "keep a stiff upper lip stoicism'. I politely disagree. The evidence is all around us that the earth is rapidly becoming uninhabitable in various regions around the globe. The great flight to the circumpolar regions is already underway. "Doomer" is a pejorative used to belittle those of us whose only sin is that we look at the data and make the appropriate conclusions.
Important points
Carbon bomb in the northern permafrost. Thanks so much for this detailed explanation. We forest lovers are effed! Even the current impacts are mind blowing:
https://climateandeconomy.com/2025/07/19/19th-july-2025-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/
(My other favorite climate site)
As someone who is a frequent reader of https://climateandeconomy.com (C&E) I'd like to second this! "Panopticon" - the moniker that the owner of C&E goes by - collects mountains of daily supporting evidence about just how fucked we are. It really complements your fantastic analysis, Richard.
Thanks for taking us through the paleoclimate evidence so well, and providing the links I hope skeptics will also read.
You are correct that we are not applying the brakes to the present economic model, the only means we had to mediate the extent of the climate catastrophe.
I also credit the “moderates” assumptions and timelines, that you describe so well here, to masking from the general public the extent of our predicament; hiding the harm we do from themselves and others. It created a belief that this climate thing was in the future and we could get around to doing something about it eventually.
The Doomer epithet was the political stratagem slowing the realization that the “moderates “ numbers were cooked. Now the world is cooked, and we humans haven’t the means to survive alone as nature dies away.
Hi Richard, I am a long time reader, and this is my first time posting. First, thank you so very much for all the time and effort you put into alerting and educating the public on this ongoing crisis. I was wondering if I might add to your already immense load of researched climate topics, and ask if higher global temperatures increase volcanic activity and earthquakes? If you have already covered this topic, could you please steer me in the right direction? Thank you so much for your time. Best regards, Nicole.
Always happy to hear from my readers.
Regarding your question, this is a developing area of study. A major paper analyzing the activity of six volcanoes in southern Chile during the last ice age just got released on the 8th of this month.
Pleistocene to recent evolution of Mocho-Choshuenco volcano during growth and retreat of the Patagonian Ice Sheet (https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article/136/11-12/5262/644763/Pleistocene-to-recent-evolution-of-Mocho).
Scientists first theorized that melting ice could impact volcanoes in the 1970s. The underlying process is a simple one — the weight of glaciers exerts a downward force on Earth's crust and mantle, so when the ice retreats, subterranean gases and magma expand, leading to pressure buildups that fuel explosive eruptions.
In the paper:
They found that between 26,000 to 18,000 years ago, during the peak of the last ice age, ice cover tamped down the volume of eruptions, causing a giant reservoir of magma to accumulate beneath the region's surface. When the ice sheet melted, pressure grew inside this reservoir and was eventually released to form the Mocho-Choshuenco volcano.
This threat is planetary in scope: 245 of the world's potentially active volcanoes lie underneath or within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of ice, according to a 2020 study.
"The key requirement for increased explosivity is initially having a very thick glacial coverage over a magma chamber, and the trigger point is when these glaciers start to retreat, releasing pressure — which is currently happening in places like Antarctica," Moreno Yaeger said.
Over short time periods, eruptions typically release sulfate aerosols that reflect sunlight back into space. This has led to cooling events following past eruptions, some of which have triggered major famines. Yet over the long term, the greenhouse gases from these volcanoes will likely cause climate change to accelerate, the researchers said.
"Over time the cumulative effect of multiple eruptions can contribute to long-term global warming because of a buildup of greenhouse gases," Moreno Yaeger said. "This creates a positive feedback loop, where melting glaciers trigger eruptions, and the eruptions in turn could contribute to further warming and melting."
If this actually happens it will be devastating.
I've read the same research
Uugghhh, why do I read things like this? My day is now ruined, blaghhh . . .
As always, thanks Richard for your continued writing on this matter.
Also, thanks to everyone for their input here in the comments.
At least for now it seems that the usual gaggle of deniers have left your recent posts untouched and perhaps moved on to other things.