Are we in the opening scenes of a post-apocalyptic movie?

[Sheilbh]

It's less than half China's and has been consistently falling for twenty years. It's two thirds of its peak which was about 2005. The signs are that is accelerating and a significant part of that is because of Chinese tech and manufacturing increasing the roll-out of solar. China's making energy transition possible at scale and cheap.

Also to be kind of blunt the laggard in the G7 is Canada The UK, France and Germany all peaked in the 70s. Italy peaked around 2005 (like the US and Japan) and all of those countries have been on strong downward trajectories since then (some from a higher starting point than others). For example just to look at the last twenty years as I say the US has cut emissions to about two thirds of 2005, so has Germany and France, Japan's at about three quarters of where it was and Italy and the UK are at or below 60% of 2005 levels. Canada is still at between 90-95% of 2005 emissions.

But the bigger point is in that period China's emissions more than doubled - it is currently emitting more than the entire OECD. So, yeah, I think focusing there is important - and there are big positive signs.

Edit: Again I think this is the de-centring to an extent. On climate - which I think is a canary in the coal mine to an extent - the most important decisions for the planet will be from Beijing and Delhi, not Brussels and DC. It's the first issue where that's really clear but it won't be the last.

[The Minsky Moment]

Temporary is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It's been 5 centuries.

Global manufacturing was concentrated in China and India until the late 18th century.  So the ascendancy of the world between California and the Elbe runs from about 1750-2010.  Not an insignificant period, but in the context of millennia, a couple hundred years or so can still fairly be called temporary and anomalous.

[Josquius]

Sure - that concerns you.

My point was that it's a question of perspective. I ultimately think the perspective that we're in the intro of a post-apocalyptic movie is one that's basically quite limited. I suspect from Africa it looks very much like BAU, from India and China and Asia more generally I think there are reasons for optimism for many.

A lot of Indians too it's worth noting.
And Chinese though not many of them in China for some mysterious reason.

I do get your point that when having food on the table was a concern in the recent past a lot of people will be focussed on the here and now and what's best for them.
The whole Putin deal of selling rights for prosperity and security.

But I don't think it's good to lean too far in this  "anti imperialist" direction.
Looking at the big picture global trends are not great this past decade.
And not at all thinking about what is best for me /Britain  here but humanity overall (in which I do think there's a huge overlap in a lot of things except the very particular stuff about me becoming a little bit rich)

[Jacob]

Too bad we can't ignore the US impact on climate change.

I saw an article the that claimed that more than 90% of the US' new energy capacity in 2025 was renewable, in spite of Trump's efforts.

[Sheilbh]

But I don't think it's good to lean too far in this  "anti imperialist" direction.
Looking at the big picture global trends are not great this past decade.
And not at all thinking about what is best for me /Britain  here but humanity overall (in which I do think there's a huge overlap in a lot of things except the very particular stuff about me becoming a little bit rich)

I've said before but on a lot of stuff I am basically an old school Third Worldist (Edit: I went on holiday to Indonesia and literally visited Bandung to see the museum of the Bandung Conference and was, weirdly, interviewed by Japanese journalists who were there because it was the 70th anniversary ) But I take your point and I'm not necessarily celebrating this or saying that what's coming is better. I'm saying that the perspective from Europe is of an ending (which I think is happening) and of threat - but I don't think that's the sense everywhere.

But in terms of apocalypse I think do fundamentally fall on the line that it's not apocalypse it's regime change, it's a period of transition which is inevitably destabilising. Part of mourning the loss should also be that we're clear eyed about the iniquities it was built on as that allows us to have a way of approaching the new. I think the big failure of our system was that it was a closed shop - with the unique exception of post-Communist Europe - we never had a development model that could help the poor or the rest of the world and we never democratised power in the institutions we built to manage the world order. It was always 1990 (at best) which in turn reflected the flaws of the previous order (such as Europe's privileged position).

Although FWIW if I was to go full Copernicus (please don't quote this at me in the future ) I actually think the era we're heading into will be one of a fusion of state and corporate power. In some areas, I think that will proceed through the dismantling of state power and subjugation of political power to the economy and corporate interests (who are delivering the objectives of the "state" in its place). In other areas I think it'll take the form of a minimal state delivering needs to a level necessary to maintain some popular consent, accompanied with looting by political-corporate elites. I think in others, primarily the Communist party states like China, there will still be a mid-20th century vision of the state and political power which will subjugate corporate power to political ends but that the top ends of all three will be exceptionally blurred.

My hope is, as ever, popular sovereignty and the assertion of the supremacy of politics (Edit: and building state capacity) - but I'm not sure I see much sign of it happening.

[Valmy]

I don't fear a nuclear armageddon from Trump/Putin...I think both are eager to avoid MAD.  Same from any of Trump's potential successors...all of them are likely to just bend over while stealing from the local monetary sources.  On the Russian side I am less sure...it feels like most of the public/media-facing Russian demagogues speak in apocalyptic tones worthy of the worst religious zealots (the line of "what good is the world if Russia is not in it" while talking casually of using nuclear weapons...).  It may be likely that whomever takes over after Putin will just be some similar grey figure with the necessary hold over the state security apparatus...but that is a big unknown as seen from here.

Meanwhile, China is not likely to just chill on Taiwan forever...but I suspect that if push came to shove, we'd just let them try and take it, and just muddle through any resulting consequences.

The danger doesn't come only from intentions, it also comes from dynamics that inherently can't be 100% predictable.  Sometimes events happen to play out even when everyone understands it's to everyone's collective detriment.  If a nuclear exchange does happen at some point, it would most likely be due to a brinkmanship gone wrong.

That said, we've been living with this fear for decades, so it's old hat at this point.  The new fear I have is that the world is locked on a course to become ever more centralized, and AI will unlock plenty of new ways of ensuring that any challenge to central authority gets identified and contained earlier than ever.  The entrenchment of central authority will lead a world that is very brittle, much like a forest that was never allowed to have brush fires.

Yeah I 100% agree with you on this. Just imagine the East German security state with modern tech. You wouldn't be able to piss without the government knowing when and where and how often.

[Valmy]

*except the mongols, I guess. But they're the exception to every rule

[Josquius]

I don't fear a nuclear armageddon from Trump/Putin...I think both are eager to avoid MAD.  Same from any of Trump's potential successors...all of them are likely to just bend over while stealing from the local monetary sources.  On the Russian side I am less sure...it feels like most of the public/media-facing Russian demagogues speak in apocalyptic tones worthy of the worst religious zealots (the line of "what good is the world if Russia is not in it" while talking casually of using nuclear weapons...).  It may be likely that whomever takes over after Putin will just be some similar grey figure with the necessary hold over the state security apparatus...but that is a big unknown as seen from here.

Meanwhile, China is not likely to just chill on Taiwan forever...but I suspect that if push came to shove, we'd just let them try and take it, and just muddle through any resulting consequences.

The danger doesn't come only from intentions, it also comes from dynamics that inherently can't be 100% predictable.  Sometimes events happen to play out even when everyone understands it's to everyone's collective detriment.  If a nuclear exchange does happen at some point, it would most likely be due to a brinkmanship gone wrong.

That said, we've been living with this fear for decades, so it's old hat at this point.  The new fear I have is that the world is locked on a course to become ever more centralized, and AI will unlock plenty of new ways of ensuring that any challenge to central authority gets identified and contained earlier than ever.  The entrenchment of central authority will lead a world that is very brittle, much like a forest that was never allowed to have brush fires.

Yeah I 100% agree with you on this. Just imagine the East German security state with modern tech. You wouldn't be able to piss without the government knowing when and where and how often.

This is concerning. Everyone going fascist at once with technology and trapping us in some horrid global 1984.
I also see concern in continued development of patterns we've had the past decade or two though.
Shit like brexit with priming ideas in people's minds over time then targeting them with ads based on things that will appeal to them. And in this way manipulate for outcomes that are against the best interest of these people.

It often gets over stated just how clever this was in 2016....but with AI and systems that know every single detail about you and actually can target just you?

There's plenty of more explainable surface reasons for trump winning again (depressing ones) but again a tinfoil hat theory could be around how this is all about making sure the worst people are in charge at a key moment in tech development.
I don't rationally believe in this "LLMs give us AGI in 2026!!" talk at all. But I cant dismiss it completely as there's so much I don't know of what is happening behind the scenes, stuff like deep seek shows surprises happen etc....
And if AGI were to come about we really don't want it at this moment. .