a scarier scenario than an explicit crash.

So much for your "moderate" views, "China life" is worse than billions of deaths!

Poor dear!
Have solace, there may be room for you in "China everywhere".
You obviously missed the link from step back two days ago.

Greer's Catabolic Collapse is essentially "China everywhere", with gradually worsening prospects. And that's where I think we are headed. It's either that or a fast and thorough crash, which would offer a ray of hope that some bits of the biosphere could survive somewhere.

My guess is that we are going to muddle along from one crisis to another ... wars, famines, floods, storms, droughts ... the human population only declining slowly over a century or two and taking most everything else with it. By the time the decline is over the earth will no longer have the topsoil to support much land based life at all. It'll be like Easter Island.

I just think people are a little too clever to participate in the fast crash. They'll be looking for ways to hang on, to burn that last tree, eat their dogs and cats, cook bush meat over a camp fire...