Last Updated 8.17.23

Prologue

Even if we fail to come close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, there are dark benefits that can also be the necessary processes and framework for a Great Global Rebirth. A near-complete global collapse caused by the many runaway global heating consequences may turn out to be the second-best solution to the runaway global heating emergency.

By the time you finish reading this article, we hope you, too, will be able to see the value of global heating's worse-case dark benefits. (Of course, the best solution by far is to fix runaway global heating before it is too late.)

Introduction

Suppose we do not manage the runaway global heating emergency correctly. In that case, there is little doubt that the unstoppable forces of Mother Nature (the immutable laws of math and physics behind accelerating global heating) will fix the climate and global heating problem for us and save as much as 50% of the human population. 

Unfortunately, Mother Nature's solution will be very painful and destructive to humanity and current human systems. Below are the dark benefits Mother Nature will exact from us if we do not come close to achieving the survival-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reductions and we fail to control the runaway global heating extinction emergency. (When you finish this article, please click here to see precisely how mother nature will most probably save us from ourselves even if we miss the 2025 targets big time.)

Here is what the forces of Mother Nature will do for us to help the remaining best prepared, wise, and most adaptable of us survive:

Benefit 1 - The benefits of evolutionary "creative destruction" may become the most powerful force behind The Great Global Rebirth. Creative destruction is the evolutionary recycling of parts or wholes of a system or subsystem unable to adapt. This core meta-pattern of evolution for breaking down and recycling non-adaptive parts and wholes allows the resources of these parts and wholes to be reused to support future experiments in the evolutionary process. 

The tremendous "creative destruction" of the global heating extinction emergency (its resultant catastrophes, chaos, and consequences,) further disrupting and multiplying our 11 other critical global challenges, will eventually also cause the eventual structural collapse or destruction of most or all remaining resistant and non-adaptive economic, social, religious and political structures. These would be the very structures that were either causing, maintaining, or benefiting from the runaway global heating emergency and would not likely be removed by any other social or political means other than the uncontrolled, sudden and near-total collapse of much of the global society. 

Once these change-resistant economic, social, and political structures have fallen, it will be far easier to envision and create something more sustainable and equitable for ALL survivors, the Great Global Rebirth. Survivors will not likely repeat the past painful mistakes or keep using the same economic, social, and political systems that have so horribly failed them in creating the runaway global heating emergency, mass extinction, and widespread global collapse. 

By allowing the natural evolutionary processes of "creative destruction" to clear out harmful or non-adaptive social, economic, religious, and political structures, the most significant extinction event and global collapse in human history can be fully transformed by the survivors into humanity's greatest opportunity for a better and new future --- a true global rebirth. Survivors can utilize this unconscionable tragedy as the perfect opportunity and leverage to make the massive and needed changes for our intentional new collective evolution.

For whoever survives, here are just a few of the potential evolutionary changes in values and processes that will be far easier to make once the highly-resistant existing social, economic, religious, and political structures have failed or collapsed.

Here are the benefits of destructive creation by removing non-adaptive and change-resistant structures:

1. the reduction of our destructive consume/pollute/waste consumerism, 

2. the ending of critical resource depletion to create resource rebalancing, 

3. we will be able to make any additionally needed reductions in global fossil fuels use and its massive carbon pollution of our air and water,

4. the ending of racial and educational justice, 

5. we can create universal healthcare, 

6. we can end wealth and income inequity, 

7. we can build housing and employment equity, 

8. we will allow for the return and strengthening of biodiversity because of reduced pollution and our encroachment into natural habitats, 

9. we can create effective global governance based on all planetary citizens' collective well-being vs. our current corporatocracy, which operates for the benefit of the wealthy few that we have now. (To begin to repair corporatocracy, we would need to remove all personhood rights from corporations, hold them strictly responsible to the triple bottom line principles and make them pay for all pollution and harm they cause to the public commons and wellbeing.) And finally, 

10. we can create the next evolutionary economic fair exchange system beyond our current corporate greed-based capitalism. This new economic system will not rely upon the false fundamental principle of unlimited growth within the closed and limited Earth system.

All of the previous items will help build a balanced and sustainable prosperity and a just and equitable future for ALL of humanity, including all biological life. All of the above things can help create a global civil society with individual human rights and responsibilities held in appropriate balance with community and government rights and responsibilities. (To learn more about the principles of the sustainable prosperity of the future, click here.)

If we have a future at all, in some form, it will likely be a "post-unlimited-growth, post-greed capitalist, and post-fossil fuel society world. If we are lucky, this future will arrive in part by:

a. a bit of proper management by ourselves,

b. by intentional design, and

c. in part by the pain and trauma of the horrendous mass extinction disasters and the great collapse. 

If you notice, these post-collapse aspiring values and processes are many of the same ones that we will need to work on to prevent global collapse and address the other 11 critical global challenges we now face. (To see what this means, look again at the Sustainable Development Goals illustration above.)

"The climate and global heating-driven extinction collapse may be the greatest opportunity in human history (and the greatest opportunity in your life) to re-build and rebirth a better world because most of the most powerful change-resisting societal structures and systems will finally be cleared away." Lawrence Wollersheim

Benefit 2  - Our failure to fix the global heating emergency will also help resolve all of these many of the following issues and obstacles within our other 11 critical global challenges. 

This benefit is crucial because an unavoidable future global warming extinction event will reduce the human population by half or more by mid-century. This massive global die-off, once completed, will also dramatically reduce or improve issues of global starvation, income inequality, wealth disparity, housing shortages, healthcare shortages, racial inequality, educational inequality, employment opportunities, inequality, and most of our other current pollution, religious intolerance, and environmental issues. 

This significant improvement is because the infrastructure for 8 billion people will remain for the 2 -4 billion survivors (or less,) and there will be far less demand for natural and human-made resources (like fossil fuels). Additionally, because of the severe and unprecedented trauma of this Great Collapse process, survivors will be less likely to allow or tolerate the previous income, wealth, housing, healthcare, racial, educational, and employment inequalities and disparities to continue any longer. (Click here for more about how Mother Nature will eventually fix the runaway global heating extinction emergency even if we do not.)

Benefits 3  - We will resolve the global overpopulation problem, the global resource depletion, and the resource overshoot problem. Much of the world's population will begin to perish if we miss the 2025 targets by mid-century. One way or the other, Mother Nature will do what we were unable or unwilling to do. Mother Nature, by way of accelerating global warming, will initiate The Great Global Collapse and Die-off and force us back to a planetary population level that the Earth's carrying capacity can sustainably support (about 1 and 1/2 to 2 billion). (Some researchers say that the true root physical cause of the global warming emergency is overpopulation and the resource overshoot caused by overpopulation.)

Benefit 4: - At this time, we can still hope that we will slow and lessen what is coming just enough so that some of humanity and civilization will survive in the future global warming safer zones. If we finally work together with Mother Nature, we will only experience an unavoidable mass extinction instead of near-total or total extinction.

Benefit 5 - Even if we do not stop escalating global warming in time for most of humanity to survive, from a "Big Picture" evolutionary perspective, there are still many benefits for our remaining biological planetary life and the evolution of any surviving humanity and our universe. Other species will not have their habitat destroyed as it is happening now, and fewer species will go extinct because we are currently being such poor stewards of the earth. 

If we fail totally and allow runaway global heating to reach its final extinction phases the benefits are:

It may take thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, but nature will always somehow recover if we work together to prevent the final and worst of the Climageddon Scenario, which is our atmosphere being ripped off into outer space because of the last stages of runaway global warming. Even if humanity goes completely extinct and we somehow prevent global warming's sixth and last Climageddon phase of total extinction from occurring, nature and the unstoppable forces of evolution will eventually recover from the damage we are doing, and some new apex species will evolve to take our place. Who knows, it may even be our prodigy in the form of robotic artificial intelligence (AI) life forms.

Key additional reading

Piease click here to see precisely how Mother Nature will eventually save us from ourselves if we miss the 2025 targets big time.

Please click here to read about the encouraging history of how as few as 200 mating pairs saved humanity from extinction in the past.