Interview, Podcast
Why global catastrophes probably won't kill us all | Luisa Rodriguez (2021)
- Luisa Rodriguez plans to collaborate with Ben Todd to revamp the 80,000 Hours key ideas homepage to increase adjustability and reader appeal, expecting the update to broaden engagement with the organization's core concepts and anticipate the resulting interview becoming a lasting fan favorite.
- She intends to continue working on Will McCaskill's forthcoming book regarding long-termism, predicting it will be a significant hit that persuades audiences, while noting the current year-long project has provided deep exposure to the field's diverse content.
- Regarding future career paths, Rodriguez expects to pursue therapy in retirement if she stops long-termism work, citing the role as emotionally satisfying and intellectually puzzling, though she anticipates difficulty engaging with unmotivated clients.
- Rodriguez projects humanity would likely recover civilization after a 99% population loss, arguing that current theories on permanent collapse lack robustness, with recovery to current population levels estimated at 100 years at 1960s growth rates, 240 years with agricultural rates, 1,200 years with 99.99% loss and agricultural rates, or 7,000 years with 99.9% loss and hunter-gatherer rates.
- Genetic survival is considered highly probable in scenarios with 800,000 survivors or even 300 global ancestors, and Rodriguez asserts that 800,000 scattered individuals would likely avoid simultaneous extinction from singular events due to their geographic distribution and the fact that 95% of the global population resides on 10% of the land.
- Post-catastrophe resource availability is expected to be favorable initially, with food stocks lasting years rather than days due to prioritized consumption of perishables, diesel fuel remaining usable for roughly 10 years, non-diesel gas for 5 years, and solar panels degrading at 1% efficiency annually over a potential 30-year lifespan.
- Agricultural recovery is expected to face challenges with modern commercial seeds which rarely produce viable offspring, though heirloom seeds are accessible, and radiation from nuclear war is projected to decline quickly leaving only localized uninhabitable zones.
- Industrial and technological restart capabilities are viewed as viable through existing stockpiles and knowledge of basic processes, such as making charcoal, glass via lightning strikes, steel, concrete, and paper, though rebuilding complex electronics and computers is deemed extremely difficult due to lost industrial bases.
- Climate risk outlooks identify two primary plausible scenarios: a "rise and fall" involving 17 degrees of warming and technological stagnation which would confine humanity to habitable zones like Antarctica, and a "double catastrophe" involving great power conflict, halted climate agreements, and subsequent collapse, though the latter is considered less probable due to a lack of fundamental ideological conflict between the US and China similar to the Cold War.
- Historical precedents are used to argue that civilizations can reorganize after collapse without extinction, citing the Roman Empire's decline and the Black Death's social benefits, while noting knowledge degradation risks in small populations like those of the Tasmanians and Polynesians.
- Risks to recovery include the potential for "indirect extinction" through cycles of collapse and natural disasters over thousands of years, technological stagnation due to diminishing education returns or bureaucratized science funding, and the high cost of shifting economic priorities from areas like US healthcare (17% of GDP) to massive military spending.
- Infrastructure resilience is considered currently insufficient, with GPS accuracy degrading within weeks and tires eventually becoming irreparable without rubber, yet the "grace period" following a catastrophe is expected to allow significant survival time for accessing food, water, and existing infrastructure.
- Long-term civilization recovery to industrial levels is projected to take tens of thousands of years, with the "indirect extinction" path viewed as more plausible than immediate "direct extinction," and the overall confidence in avoiding total extinction from collapse is estimated at 99% rather than absolute certainty.