Over the years my themes have been pretty consistent. I'm collecting bits of stuff I wrote in old blogs and HN comments and it's all pretty much "on message". To wit:
We're probably doomed, but there are lots of great technologies and tools that might could save us, if we just get our act together.
Now admittedly it's a little rich coming from me, who has achieved by several reasonable standards approximately nothing, to talk of the rest of humanity getting it's act together. Especially since, if you look closely, a strong arguent *could* be made that we're doing it already. (Things like population leveling off, and polluting energy sources getting phased out in favor of clean and renewable sources, etc.)
We're still clearcutting forests and preparing to mine the seafloor and things like that, so it's obvious that, as a species, we are not yet ready to fully take responsibility for the consequences of our actions.
We have converted about half of the biomass on Earth to human ends. (TODO look up the report, or link to that XKCD comic, or both.) So like it or not it's our job now to keep the thing on the rails. This is the only living planet in the known Universe after all.
Start a member-owned "General Automation Corp" to just go ahead and UBI ourselves without waiting for politics? Bootstrap off some desert land, convert it into e.g. Village Homes[0] (but up to date) using Permaculture, et. al. including local carbon-neutral fuel production integrated into the ecosystem[1], lease/sell units, rinse and repeat. Alongside that, develop a kind of super-RepRap[2] to manufacture e.g. the contents of a Daiso store[3]. (BTW, no cult shit, no radical new lifestyles, just a small town built as if the last few centuries of progress actually happened: food production, power capture & storage, automation, etc... You know: Star Trek TNG sans fictional technology.)
[0]
→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Homes[1]
→ http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/[2]
→ https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap[3] Not all human problems can be solved by a few ounces of plastic or metal, but those that can, can be solved at Daiso for $1.50.
It would be a kind of vertically-integrated real estate development company, along with some manufacturing and tech/software company-ish. Essentially, it's a terraforming company and the eco-cities it makes are the product. We have the technology: Christopher Alexander's "Pattern Language" et. al.; Permaculture (applied ecology if you prefer), including carbon-neutral integrated alcohol fuel production (also, tug on this thread: "New Alchemy Institute" "living machines" [1] );
The idea is both 1) sell/lease cheaply ("affordable housing") to alleviate economic pressure, and 2) provide a steady income to members to offset economic obsolescence.
I maintain that UBI makes sense only in the context of wide-spread inability for the "average person" to compete in the job market. And I think that's already happening. I mean, if I wasn't good at computers I don't know wtf I could do to make a living. I'd probably be homeless!
I don't want this hypothetical company to be political or ideological just economic (to the extent that that's realistic, eh?) We can work out the politics of everything once people have a place to live and a steady "three square meals a day", and it's ecologically harmonious, which is another way to say cheap and bountiful.
Frankly, I'm not qualified to run this sort of thing. I'm a recluse, with ways different than your own. But it seems to me that it would be sooooo easy, and that there are enough people and enough "free-floating" capital to make it happen.
[1]
→ New Alchemy Institute (DDG search)Bucky Fuller's "Design Science Revolution" for inspiration and large-scale efficiency, e.g. the proposal to put a dome over a kind of arcology (although not ecological specifically, it was a single-building city.):
It is moon-crater-shaped: the crater's truncated cone top opening is a half-mile in diameter, rim-to-rim, while the truncated mountain itself is a mile in diameter at its base ring. The city has a one-mile (1.6 km)-diameter geodesic, quarter-sphere transparent umbrella mounted high above it to permit full, all-around viewing below the umbrella's bottom perimeter. The top of the dome roof is 1,000 feet (300 m) high. The bottom rim of the umbrella dome is 500 feet (150 m) above the surrounding terrain→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project
Some more information and a couple of pictures of the model at:
→ https://solutions.synearth.net/a-community-dwelling-machine/Maybe the most important thing to know is that we can make carbon-neutral alcohol fuel, and, integrated into regenerative agriculture ("Permaculture" et. al.) the economics are totally different than large-scale industrial ethanol production.
Think Community-Supported-Agriculture that supplies your gas.
Dave "Farmer Dave" Bloom collected all the necessary info into a book (that was banned from public TV at the time!) Get the book, find or start your local fuel co-op!
→ http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/This is just one (great) example, there are other people out there talking about home-grown "farmer's fuel".
I've been an "apocalyptic" since I was about twelve years old: it seems to me that these are the end times and that our global civilization is about to experience some kind of drastic upheaval. That was about thirty years ago. Before the weather went strange. Things have only gotten worse since then.
These are the main scenarios to consider:
Personally, I hope for the Eco-utopian version of the Gaia transformation or the Spiritual transformation (we all go to space-heaven) or both.
If you're interested in bio-mimetic economics, go watch Toby Hemenway's (RIP) videos: esp. "How Permaculture Can Save Humanity and the Planet – But Not Civilization" and "Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture"
→ http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/If you're interested in the Spiritual transformation pick a religion and practice it. Or meditate. Or use the Core Transformation process:
→ https://www.coretransformation.org/If the crash scares you the best thing you can do is move to the remote mountains, "three days further out than a hungry person can walk." Move now while you still can...
Last but not least, if you place your faith in technology then you should... Hmm, i don't know what you do then. Get involved in politics? To make sure the tech is applied in human-values-enhancing ways?
Regardless of the external circumstances, the most efficient and effective thing to do is cultivate Self-awareness. It's the only true panacea and it helps both on the personal and societal levels.
And now they are building reefs?