cooperation and resilience vital to survive climate collapse conditions

October 22, 2023 9:01 PM

The new research, published in a peer-reviewed biological sciences journal from The Royal Society last month, suggests that resilience is an ability that societies can gain and lose over time. Researchers found that a stable society can withstand even a dramatic climate shock, whereas a small shock can lead to chaos in a vulnerable one.
posted by aniola (31 comments total)

its a new game now making it difficult if not impossible to predict survival or demise
posted by robbyrobs at 10:06 PM on October 22, 2023

That’s what I was afraid of.
posted by non canadian guy at 10:57 PM on October 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

Perhaps the scariest thing about climate change - and there is lots of competition - comes down to this question:

Both at the level of countries being governed and at the level of countries negotiating multilaterally: as the level of global disruption from climate change rises, do their responses become more adaptive to solving the problem or more maladaptive?

The evidence so far is terrifying.
posted by sindark at 11:15 PM on October 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

I liked how they touched on the question of what societal collapse really means. That’s what I found myself wondering in the beginning of the article, and by the end they were here:

The Complexity Science Hub’s study suggests that collapse itself could be considered an adaptation in particularly dire situations. “There is this general idea that collapse is scary, and it’s bad, and that’s what we need to avoid,” Hoyer said. “There’s a lot of truth in that, especially because collapse involves violence and destruction and unrest.” But if the way your society is set up is making everyone’s lives miserable, they might be better off with a new system. For example, archaeological evidence shows that after the Roman Empire lost control of the British Isles, people became larger and healthier, according to Degroot. “In no way would collapse automatically be something that would be devastating for those who survived — in fact, often, probably the opposite,” he said.

posted by eirias at 2:11 AM on October 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

archaeological evidence shows that after the Roman Empire lost control of the British Isles, people became larger and healthier

When I see statements like that, I wonder about...survivor bias? Many people who survived the Black Death did pretty well, too.
posted by gimonca at 2:59 AM on October 23, 2023 [12 favorites]

I live on an island continent in the underpants region of the world with a low lying archipelago with 10x the population living just to the north. This article provides an unrealistic perspective because it makes no mention of coping communities dealing with an influx of people from communities that are not coping. Do the authors think that sustainable communities will be left alone? Naive.
posted by Thella at 3:17 AM on October 23, 2023 [10 favorites]

When I see statements like that, I wonder about...survivor bias? Many people who survived the Black Death did pretty well, too.

Good point. I assume they are not talking about individuals who survived an acute event but changes in the population over longer periods, since this is archaeological evidence. It would be nice to have more details about that evidence.
posted by eirias at 3:25 AM on October 23, 2023

Ya "for those who survived" doing a lot of heavy lifting in the statement.
posted by Mitheral at 5:33 AM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I read The Next Apocalypse by Chris Begley over the summer and it had a lot to say about how community is how people get through crises.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:22 AM on October 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

> Ya "for those who survived" doing a lot of heavy lifting in the statement.

Regular wildfires are good for the forest, but not for the individual trees that get cleared to allow for new growth.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 7:45 AM on October 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here's the thing: the skeptics and deniers of climate change are right in scoffing that the predicted climate changes and harms will not end humanity or civilization. Yes there will be calamaties, many people will be displaced and some vulnerable nations will go Haiti or worse.... but if your country is wealthy and/or in a resource-rich temperate zone... you and yours will probably be fine, relatively speaking. (Too bad about the extinctions, but there will be a few zoos, right?)

We could do so much better overall with some measure of responsible collective behaviour... but the same irrational capitalist belief that selfish action is more beneficial than collective action (eg "I've got mine, Jack; some might be harmed but I'll be OK") also keeps most from agreeing to the small sacrifices today to try to reduce harm later. A belief in personal resilience as opposed to society-wide resilience.

Anyway, with WW III entering full dress rehearsal, climate stuff will probably slide off the front page. Yes, I'm kinda low on hope these days.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:17 AM on October 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Warning: doomy.

In order for humanity to be able to survive on Earth, we need to be able to gestate and raise healthy infants. That seems pretty obvious, but it's the weak point of our species; every single one of us has to spend nine months in utero in an incredibly complex process of development whose success is heavily dependent on the environment that the mother inhabits. Then we go through years of infancy in which we're particularly vulnerable to environmental stressors.

So the question isn't whether you can see yourself, healthy and adult, armed with air conditioners and swamp coolers and hepa filters, surviving in the post-apocalyptic hellscape. The question is whether a mother could expect to successfully gestate and raise an infant in the post-apocalyptic hellscape without those things.

Because if we need AC and air purification to reproduce successfully, our planet is no longer inhabitable for our species. The only habitable places in the universe will be the ones we build.

Mouse Lung Structure and Function after Long-Term Exposure to an Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Level Predicted by Climate Change Modeling

Results:
Carbon dioxide exposure resulted in a range of respiratory impairments, particularly in female mice, including higher tissue elastance, longer chord length, and lower lung compliance. Importantly, we also assessed the lung function of the dams that gave birth to our experimental subjects. Even though these mice had been exposed to the same level of increased carbon dioxideCO2 for a similar amount of time (approximately 8 weeks∼8wk), we measured no impairments in lung function. This suggests that the early life period, when lungs are undergoing rapid growth and development, is particularly sensitive to carbon dioxide.

Maternal Exposure to Air Pollution Linked to Low Birth Weights Worldwide

Multiple Threats to Child Health from Fossil Fuel Combustion: Impacts of Air Pollution and Climate Change

Climate Change and Global Child Health

Humans can't endure temperatures and humidities as high as previously thought

Climate change is making it harder for couples to conceive:
UCLA research finds warming temperatures have a negative effect on fertility, birth rates

Scientists Warn of Fertility Loss in Many Species Due to Climate Change
posted by MrVisible at 8:37 AM on October 23, 2023 [11 favorites]

> the skeptics and deniers of climate change are right in scoffing that the predicted climate changes and harms will not end humanity or civilization

I'm not worried about Climate Change ending humanity. I'm worried about global warfare caused by increasing resource scarcity ending humanity. We all still have enough nuclear weapons to blow everyone up when the groundwater dries up or when fertile food-producing regions become droughtlands.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:43 AM on October 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

I read that as "Moose Lung Structure" and was kinda perplexed...

but yeah, this is all pretty doomy :(
posted by supermedusa at 8:45 AM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm not worried about Climate Change ending humanity. I'm worried about global warfare caused by increasing resource scarcity ending humanity.

when I think about this scenario I don't worry about nuclear war, I think about an ugly attritional slide into some Mad Maxian horror world. it never seems as sexy to be an old person in such a situation and I am not getting any younger...
posted by supermedusa at 8:48 AM on October 23, 2023

I'm not worried about Climate Change ending humanity. I'm worried about global warfare caused by increasing resource scarcity ending humanity.

I suspect that most nuclear-armed nations know that their utility is as a threat, and that actually deploying the big ones is never going to be a winnable situation. Smaller tactical nuclear weapons might see use. So future wars will most likely be grinding conflicts of attrition to wear the opponent down.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:58 AM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

> So future wars will most likely be grinding conflicts of attrition to wear the opponent down.

Just like Ukraine. But what would happen if it rose to the scale of a hot war between the US and Russia?
posted by I-Write-Essays at 9:26 AM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I read that as "Moose Lung Structure" and was kinda perplexed...

Moose have lungs too!
posted by eviemath at 9:34 AM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Moose Lung Structure is my new Captain Beefheart tribute band
posted by echo target at 10:02 AM on October 23, 2023 [7 favorites]

it's the envisioning of Moose as a lab animal that got me. that's a big lab animal!
posted by supermedusa at 10:31 AM on October 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Really feeling MrVisible's comment having given birth last year. This summer, with the Canadian wildfire spoke blanketing the northeast, we had to check the air pollution levels every day to see when it was safe to take the baby outside. But babies need to be outside! It's so good for their development! You can't keep them inside, in the house, every day (air purification and AC or no) and expect them to develope the same as they would if they were spending the time outside feeling the texture of the bark on the trees and watching the wind move the grass.

But, take them out when the fine particulate matter is in the air, you may be doing irrevocable damage to their lung capacity long term.

I mean. Reduced lung capacity may become the new normal. Certainly there are places in the world where the MAJORITY of children have respiratory problems.

But that calculus, to stay in or go out. I hate it.
posted by subdee at 10:57 AM on October 23, 2023 [8 favorites]

I'm afraid the calculus is even worse than that, subdee. Being inside increases your exposure to carbon dioxide. It's probably between 400ppm and 500 outside, and inside it'll be between 400 and 700ppm more than that.

The mouse lung structure study was done at 890ppm.
posted by MrVisible at 12:12 PM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Canadian wildfire spoke

It’s the hot new trend in bicycle wheels - fat tires are so last year!
posted by eviemath at 1:32 PM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

(Sorry. It just had to be said.)
posted by eviemath at 1:32 PM on October 23, 2023

Thank you for this post, aniola.

I do wonder what role education plays in making a society more - or less - resilient in the face of climate shocks.
posted by doctornemo at 2:23 PM on October 23, 2023

I'm not worried about Climate Change ending humanity.

It may not be "the" end, such as an asteroid wasn't the entire picture of the end of the reign of the dinosaurs. But it will be one of the very major factors in the end of humanity. That's simply factual.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:54 PM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Really hoping the baby mice have more delicate lungs than the baby babies, then :(
posted by subdee at 6:10 PM on October 23, 2023

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid not.

From the paper:

We specifically chose to expose experimental animals to a level of carbon dioxideCO2 that is realistic and expected to occur within current human lifetimes based on climate change models (USGCRP 2017). We also chose mice for this study because, even though they are likely more tolerant of exposure to elevated carbon dioxideCO2 due to their burrowing lifestyle (Studier and Baca 1968; Williams and Rausch 1973), we wanted to investigate the effects of exposure from in utero all the way to adulthood. This is only logistically possible in a species with a relatively short life span. The fact that we were able to measure carbon dioxideCO2-induced functional and structural changes in a species that is likely better physiological equipped to deal with increased carbon dioxideCO2 levels, suggests that the potential impacts on humans may be even more overt.

...

Future research is needed to assess whether long-term exposure to moderately increased carbon dioxideCO2 also negatively impacts other organs that have previously been shown to be impacted by short-term, high-level carbon dioxideCO2 exposure (e.g., the brain, kidneys, and bones). It is our opinion that with atmospheric carbon dioxideCO2 increasing 2 to 3 parts per million per year2–3 ppm/y, it will not be long until a level is reached that is directly detrimental to human health. Thus, continued research in this area and increased effort in curbing carbon dioxideCO2 emissions are both urgently required.

posted by MrVisible at 6:35 PM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

I suppose our long supply chains means a profound loss of resilience, in terms of this article. At least we've chopped off Russia's supply chain some lately, so maybe they'll make more themselves, and maybe they can survive longer.

We need an idiocracy remake in which everyone becomes dumber from doing their education under higher indoor CO2 levels and other pollutants, ala "The fraction of carbon dioxide [we breathe] just crossed 400 parts per million, and high-end estimates extrapolating current trends suggest 1,000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration .. human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.”

At present the planetary boundaries project estimates 3 out of 9 boundaries as being worse than climate change, specifically novel entities (plastics, pesticides, etc), biosphere integrity, and biochemical flows, meaning each should deepen collapse more than climate change does.

Isn't the collapse of the Roman empire broadly considered adaptive? Joe Tainter & folks always mention how ending the empire's taxation helped people, likely including "people [becoming] larger and healthier" in the British isles.
posted by jeffburdges at 1:55 PM on October 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

At that concentration .. human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.

You know what bugs me most about this, now that I've been thinking about it for a few years?

As we lose cognitive abilities, we don't lose them all at once, we lose bits and pieces here and there depending on levels of exposure. Strategic thinking fares worse than task orientation, crisis response gets a little boost at 1000ppm and then goes down, that sort of thing.

What if empathy is a higher brain function that's directly affected by CO2 levels?
posted by MrVisible at 10:09 PM on October 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

ob1quixote: “I read The Next Apocalypse by Chris Begley over the summer and it had a lot to say about how community is how people get through crises.”

Cf. Practicing New Worlds Abolition and Emergent Strategies, Andrea J. Ritchie, AK Press, 2023.
posted by ob1quixote at 10:48 AM on October 26, 2023