How do you think about the relevance of evidence from pre-1800/pre-industrialized societies to questions of whether climate change will induce civilizational collapse going forward?
To me, I am always confused why people do these studies because society has clearly changed so dramatically that there seems to be very little to learn from how these societies responded to climate anomalies.
But in general I think that while our societies have changed a lot, many things have stayed the same. Especially, the food system and its importance for societies is still very similar. Also, if you read a lot of history, you come to realize that humans often tend to follow the same trajectories, in the sense of “history does not repeat, but it rhymes”.
Views like the one from Lenton that I discussed in the post are also independent of the industrial revolution shift and if we could validate them, I think this would make a stronger case for the validity of historical comparisons.
How do you think about the relevance of evidence from pre-1800/pre-industrialized societies to questions of whether climate change will induce civilizational collapse going forward?
To me, I am always confused why people do these studies because society has clearly changed so dramatically that there seems to be very little to learn from how these societies responded to climate anomalies.
That’s the big question of contemporary history. I discussed this a bit more here: https://existentialcrunch.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-past-for-our-global
But in general I think that while our societies have changed a lot, many things have stayed the same. Especially, the food system and its importance for societies is still very similar. Also, if you read a lot of history, you come to realize that humans often tend to follow the same trajectories, in the sense of “history does not repeat, but it rhymes”.
Views like the one from Lenton that I discussed in the post are also independent of the industrial revolution shift and if we could validate them, I think this would make a stronger case for the validity of historical comparisons.