It wont be a sudden change from one day to the next… And don’t worry- the rich can afford supplemental oxygen, so they will be just fine.

The bad news is as CO2 increases the more our effective IQs will drop, compromising our abilities to deal with the problem. Whats more, lower IQs will be great for the Republican party, so they can whip up larger crowds and get them to chant ‘DRILL BABY DRILL’ as we all slowly choke to death.

But sooner or later, the economy goes south, and civic and social services will become intermittent, and then fail. Still, the last people to be seriously inconvenienced are those with money. That’s why they never seem to keen to do anything about the problem.

Eventually though, money will become useless, and then even a gun will do you little good unless you have lots of friends with guns.

But even then, you can still drink rainwater and breath the air, if you don’t mind the smoke…

Most of my plans involve my community, and my neighbors. The rest involves learned skill.

The reason I ask is, I have no idea how bad the process would fuck up the air. If there’s a chance I’d wake up choking for breath one day, I’d rather move away from the source. But that could just be ignorance talking.

You know, like….right now!

And it will happen gradually, so society will (in some places) be able to adjust to it. But to people living through it, it will seem like things are slowly coming unraveled. Of course, if you’ve got money, or access to political power and economic clout, you’ll probably do all right, or at least, convince yourself you can.

It will be a lot like Europe in the Dark Ages. If you’ve got a farm and a couple of hundred people working for you, and a gang of tough guys with truncheons on your side, you’ll probably do just fine — as long as you can make the payroll.

This isn’t the first time in history this has happened, you know. Environmental degradation has always led to collapse of civilizations. Sometimes its drought, sometimes its climate change, sometimes its sea level rise (or fall), sometimes its a disease that kills the crops, or a bug that eats them. The difference with us is that it will happen all over at once, and it will happen in one lifetime.

But don’t fantasize you’ll be able to go out into the woods and ride it out. As soon as the word gets out you’ve got canned goods. a rifle and pretty daughters they’ll come and take them from you.