We’re fucked, aren’t we. This is it. The great filter. We had a shot at progress and advancement, but it got squandered so a couple hundred people could see their imaginary numbers grow. And now it’s too late, the damage is just too great to be mitigated, much less reversed.
We really could be heading for a civilization collapse here. Global economy is highly interconnected at this point, and many countries are far from self sufficient in terms of necessities. At the climate becomes increasingly more unstable we’ll be seeing more and more climate disasters happening. These types of events will lead to a breakdown of global supply chains at which point countries will descend into civil unrest. The best thing countries could be doing right now would be to become as self sufficient as possible in terms of food and energy production.
It’s not even economies that get me. It’s outright catastrophes. In 2010, forest fires in Russia had gotten so bad, entire cities were covered in thick smoke. I still remember being able to look directly at the sun, just a shiny red disk. And most of the fires were hundreds of kilometres away!
Floods, hurricanes. How disaster-proof are our towns and cities? And solving all that would very likely require a conscious and concerted worldwide effort. Something that I doubt could be achieved without a worldwide socialist revolution - something that doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon. And by the time it happens - if it happens - it just might be too late.
Like I said, great filter.
Yeah, I agree with all that. We’re driving ourselves to extinction here.
That’s the thing - we aren’t doing anything. The ruling class does
the ruling class does because we’re not doing anything :)
I think up until last year, I knew global warming was coming and was going to be bad but I thought it wouldn’t start to hit until 2030, maybe 2050. But it’s here already and will gladly get worse year after year.
Last summer was ridiculous – the greenery disappeared, the leaves on trees were turning yellow and crispy brown, maybe a week or two away from combustion– yet this is just the start and I don’t live anywhere near the worst affected places.
Talking to your point in a comment below, my city is not infrastructurally resilient enough for even moderate climate changes. If summers get slightly hotter, I doubt the fire service has the capacity to stop the city going up in flames. Even if they had the resources, there’s not enough water because decades of neoliberalism have let the water companies take dividends without fixing leaky pipes.
One third of the water that leaves the reservoir leaks, meaning water reserves can get dangerously low in mid summer and no amount of ‘have a shorter shower’ will solve the problem. It’s usually only mildly inconvenient for people with lawns, when hosepipes are banned, but it could become a choice between providing drinking water and putting out fires.
Of course, there’s other sources of water for fire trucks, but that will only accelerate the destruction of habitats. So then it’s a choice of safe drinking water, putting out fires, and living in a barren wasteland.
I wonder how many other people are (i) in denial, (ii) accepting but think that we still have time, or (iii) accepting but refuse to see socialism as an answer. All three guarantee catastrophe.
I’m generally optimistic about geopolitics at the moment but if the climate now changes at a faster than expected rate… well, it’s just not worth thinking about, really.
Every year is a new record. Humanity is fucked.
