Long-time readers already know that my working hypothesis about humanity is that we are headed for an evolutionary bottleneck event. In my opinion, this is inevitable. By definition, a bottleneck is when only a very small number of survivors succeed in making it through environmental selection conditions that wipe out the majority of a species' populations. Only a small reproducing population is left.

The two primary interrelated factors that will contribute to this event are the depletion of fossil fuels and the subsequent increases in CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans that will cause dramatic climate changes. The former factor will lead to massive starvation as the capacity for civilizations to feed themselves is largely, today, based on fossil energy. As the net energy flow diminishes we will be less and less able to support our complex modern cultures. They will collapse. The predicament will be compounded by the changing climate that will further disrupt both our agricultural capabilities and the natural biosphere's ability to adjust. This is because the rate of change in the climate patterns will exceed the ability for many of our food species to adapt. These predictions are not mere conjecture because we already have gathered considerable evidence that this double-whammy process is well underway.

The believers among us can pray for a miracle. The rest can cling to hope that there is some secret key to new energy sources just waiting to be discovered. A few of us are thinking it is time to prepare for the worst case scenario. We seek to plan an escape of sorts.

In the posts linked above I have been trying to consider if and how humans might survive a bottleneck event, providing a seed population for some distant future evolution. A bottleneck is, by definition, more rapid than any species can adapt to evolutionarily. The species of humans that survive, coming out of the bottleneck, will be the same one going in. After the environment settles into some kinds of long-term patterns, presumably, those future humans will continue to evolve in directions dictated by the conditions they will live under. What this means for the near term is that we might consider what kind of seed stock we would prefer to see get a crack at future evolution. What attributes of present day humans would we consider as worthy of survival. And what attributes might we think would best position those survivors to continue surviving in that future world?