How to Enjoy the End of the World
How to Enjoy the End of the World on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2019–2026.
A Virginia Tech presentation by Sid Smith about collapse, fossil fuels and overshoot, arguing that industrial civilization faces a decline and how one might live with that. It was later expanded into a video series.
What HN commenters said
10 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
myshpaJul 2023Strongly recommends
> Burn it all down and start over We won't be the ones doing that. > We're going to have to figure this sustainability thing out though It may be already late. I wish it wasn't so. I think we could have chance at repairing it ... if only we would do what's necessary. But we're not doing what's necessary, we never started even discussing it, and I'm starting to doubt that we'll ever do. We're talking only about climate change, but that's only one of the symptoms of the overshoot. Even people @ hacker news mostly don't have a clue. > we can't just ignore the problems We've been ignoring them for 50-70 years. The limits to growth / club of Rome was in 1972? So far ... we did nothing but ignored the problems. We may cross the 1.5C threshold in 5 years. Not in 2050 as previously expected, but in 5 years. And we're still pursuing economic growth. Have you noticed any evidence to the contrary lately? > it's going to be a big challenge, and things may get ugly I recommend few videos for you. I must warn you ... it may hamper your ability to enjoy parties. Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario - Arthur Keller [link] How to Enjoy the End of the World - Dr. B. Sidney Smith ▶ this video Arithmetic, Population and Energy - Dr. Albert A. Bartlett [link] Why Societies Collapse And What it Means for Us - Joseph A. Tainter [link] Revealing the Naked Emperor – Paris, 2° & Carbon Budgets - Kevin Anderson [link]
in “How, Mathematically, We’re Fucked: Exponential growth on a finite planet” · View on HN
M95DJan 2026Recommends
> Civilizational doom isn't a foregone conclusion See lecture by B. Sidney Smith: ▶ this video . It explains the inevitablility of collapse.
in “Why Some People See Collapse Earlier” · View on HN
chacha2Jun 2020Recommends
> Computing saves millions of lives on a regular basis. Can't run modern agriculture or medicine or government without it. No, we couldn't have. Computing has killed us all. Good talk I watched the other day ▶ this video
in “Does computing make the world better?” · View on HN
datashamanMay 2019Recommends
Check out this sobering talk by Dr Sid Smith where he says the same thing wrt oils and fossil fuels. ▶ this video
in “Complex life may only exist because of millions of years of groundwork by fungi” · View on HN
bobson381Jun 2026Cites it
it is the first time we have harnessed all of the energy on the planet at once to power a single interconnected advanced system across continents. Mostly I'm drawing from a thermodynamics outlook[0]. previous collapses had unused high quality energy in other areas to fall back on. I'd love to read more about the growth towards China being sustainable in that sense. [0] ▶ this video
in “Reid Hoffman says SpaceX 'not an AI company', xAI 'complete train wreck'” · View on HN
myshpaAug 2023Cites it
> Abolishing agriculture subsidies won't cause a reduction in meat consumption ... can continue to grow the subsidies Without subsidies animal ag is deeply unprofitable. Removing them and taxing the negative externalities "properly" would mean the price of such products would be a multiple of what it's now, so it would be out of reach for most of the population. > that be will be vastly easier if abundant energy Yes, it would. But we don't have it at the moment, and it will require a lot of fossil fuels and time to get there. At the same time EROI of fossil fuels is falling down. It's at 1.5 IIRC, down from more that 100+ at the start of the previous century - meaning that previously for every 1 barrel of oil you'd get 100-150 barrels out, now it's 1.5-2? barrels. In a while it could become unprofitable to extract more oil, as it would cost more energy to get it out of the ground that what would be gained, no matter how much remains in the ground. [link] ▶ this video
in “Banished to a Remote Idaho Valley, Beavers Created a Lush Wetland” · View on HN
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myshpaJul 2023Cites it
> And of course, if you know that this scenario is possible, then you probably also start to understand why governments aren't as panicky about the whole situation as you seem to be. So not ecosystems restoration (habitats restoration, reforestation and afforestation, wetlands restoration, streams and rivers restoration, sustainable land management, conservation and protected areas, plant-based diets, ...), but attempts at geoengineering with aerosols like sulfur dioxide, or mirrors in space, or whitening the clouds. The potential problems are enormous. Solar radiation management is also an ungovernable technology. Even if we knew how to reflect the sun's rays, that means deciding on what is an international "best temperature". So what if cooling down the US means massive drought in China? What if China deploying this causes rainfall in India to drop? The Earth's climate is interconnected and block the sun's rays in one area affects another. It seems obvious to me that this technology could cause massive conflict (violent maybe) over what is the best way to use it. Anything to avoid doing the right thing. > We had the club of Rome with the same message in the 70s, and they were comically wrong There you're wrong again. [link] "We unravel the arguments that have raged for forty years in its aftermath and explore more recent findings which relate to the original hypothesis. There is unsettling evidence that society is still following the ‘standard run’ of the original study – i
in “Deadly global heatwaves undeniably result of climate crisis, scientists show” · View on HN
familNov 2021Cites it
William Catton is another visonary. I consider his book, Overshoot to be better than limits to growth. This lecture sums up his work well: ▶ this video
in “A Biography of E.O. Wilson, the Scientist Who Foresaw Our Troubles” · View on HN
cableshaftSep 2021Cites it
I check and comment on the subreddit on an almost daily basis, and have for about a year now. It takes a while to believe that it can happen, for sure. I didn't start seriously believing it for at least six months of checking the subreddit periodically. But when you see how much damage we're doing to our oceans (National Geographic warns there might be no (human) seafood at all by 2048[1], ocean acidification, coral bleaching, etc), how more and more regions are getting into emergency situations with water (which will lead to people getting more and more desperate to get that water, and possibly wars being waged over it), positive feedback loops from global warming that can shoot us way past 1.5c if we get that far (I've seen speculation that it could get up to 12c, which would likely wipe out humanity), and know how terrible humans are at dealing with exponential and compounding escalating situations (as proven by our current pandemic), and yeah, I'm pretty sure it will happen. The only question is how soon. It's also looking like even if we could do enough about it, we'd have to dedicate almost 100% of our efforts towards it, and basically everyone on the planet are being distracted by petty shit, or even other very important issues, just not as threatening to our existence and society like climate change is (including myself, it's hard to avoid the distractions with our monkey brains). So instead we're doing basically nothing but lip service towards these issues, still, af
in “Ask HN: What are your thoughts on the r/collapse community” · View on HN
jacobwilliamroyFeb 2020Cites it
I remember Sid Smith saying that we have enough lithium in known reserves to replace every car on earth one time. ▶ this video
in “Battery supply problems faced by electric air taxis” · View on HN