>>9949505Extremely unlikely for scenario 1b. The past 50 years have proven that despite the information so readily available the general population remains relatively uneducated and unwilling to make life style changes necessary to prevent further environmental degradation. Such efforts that have been made are trivial and fleeting, the gains always under revision and susceptible to further attack, and furthermore being mostly restricted to western countries. The reflection of how the environment is still not being taken seriously enough is demonstrated in the politics and the intransigence of the overwhelming majority of countries.
We have reached the stage where even if the general population was aware we are nearing the tipping point the necessary political and economic changes needed, which would have to be enforced globally, would take too long to be effective.
TLDR. We are fucked.
Some groups recognize this and have either given up in attempts to reverse from the tipping point, or have always acted selfishly, and are already making preparations for scenario 2
It now requires a complete societal and economic collapse to permit the social/political/economic conditions where this situation does not arise again in the far future. This may take varied forms and is difficult to predict. Some future societies may develop an ingrained resistance to change, be it technological or otherwise, and survive on subsistence levels with a low impact level of technology. Such societies will in effect become technologically stagnant. Other societies may recognize the need for a benevolent technocracy which oversees the environment and places controls on most aspects of daily life pertaining to resource allocation, consumption and population growth. A Green dictatorship, so to speak, one which is willing to enforce its ideals and standards globally, by wars of conquest if necessary.
In any case, it will be a very different way of life and form of society.
