Yep. And your generation will do the same, and it will go on like this until it can’t be ignored anymore, because that’s what humans do, whatever the age.
“You don’t miss the water until the well runs dry” has never been a more true expression. People expect that if something is going wrong here’d be immediate and apparent consequence. It seems like a vast majority of people completely lack the skill of extended foresight, where one can look at a current situation and see how it can accumulate into a worse situation later.
A great example of this was my mom during COVID-19:
“All this pandemic talk is just nonsense. I’m not seeing people dying on the streets, now, am I?”
If the effects of climate change aren’t immediately apparent with some big global disaster happening overnight, then it’s not a big issue or simply not real.
If eating something that causes long term health risks doesn’t immediately make you sick overnight then it’s not a big issue or simply not real.
That’s what I’m saying, people don’t deal with problems until they’re forced to.
And climate change, while having effects all over the world, doesn’t affect everyone with the same intensity, so the luckiest among us can afford to ignore the problem longer than the rest. Of course the luckiest usually are also the ones with the most power to deal with these issues.
And unfortunately as a life-long resident of white suburban america, I know how comfortable life still is for so many people, and how the culture of “ignore that problem and we’ll be fine” continues to pay off for people with a little privilege in their life.
Check out Ethiopia and Egypt, Pakistan and India, China and Vietnam/Laos.
Some are more hot than others but these are all conflicts over lowering water levels and increasing demand. Even within the USA, there are conflicts between states in the southwest and with Mexico over the Colorado river kind of… Just not existing anymore.
At which point the fascist governments people have voted into power will keep on going as they were while murdering some convenient scapegoats, until mass scale industrialised human society collapses, never to recover because we used up all our resources.
Edit: I honestly think people don’t quite understand that once all this bullshit collapses, there will probably never be another high tech civilisation on Earth again: all the easily extractable resources will have been used up, and the amount of energy required to extract more would be higher than what will be available once oil-based hydrocarbons have been more or less used up. Magic batteries that require a ton of resources won’t fix the situation, and we have no large scale replacement for oil.
The large scale replacement for oil is the original source of that energy, the sun. Sure it will take a while, but high technology (read small computers) doesn’t actually require hydrocarbons, it just requires knowledge of physics. Modern society is based on hydrocarbon fuels because they’re so convenient, but that doesn’t mean it’s required for any of our technology to function. We will likely be combusting hydrocarbons for the rest of our existence, they’re just too convenient for energy storage, but the source of those hydrocarbons could easily be specialized cyanobacteria farms or direct chemical synthesis. Both of those technologies already exist, but we have never done any significant investment in them because they would have to compete with basically picking up what’s already lying around. In the absence of significant oil deposits we will be forced to make those technologies work.
Yep. And your generation will do the same, and it will go on like this until it can’t be ignored anymore, because that’s what humans do, whatever the age.
It literally cannot be ignored anymore.
“You don’t miss the water until the well runs dry” has never been a more true expression. People expect that if something is going wrong here’d be immediate and apparent consequence. It seems like a vast majority of people completely lack the skill of extended foresight, where one can look at a current situation and see how it can accumulate into a worse situation later.
A great example of this was my mom during COVID-19:
“All this pandemic talk is just nonsense. I’m not seeing people dying on the streets, now, am I?”
If the effects of climate change aren’t immediately apparent with some big global disaster happening overnight, then it’s not a big issue or simply not real.
If eating something that causes long term health risks doesn’t immediately make you sick overnight then it’s not a big issue or simply not real.
That’s what I’m saying, people don’t deal with problems until they’re forced to.
And climate change, while having effects all over the world, doesn’t affect everyone with the same intensity, so the luckiest among us can afford to ignore the problem longer than the rest. Of course the luckiest usually are also the ones with the most power to deal with these issues.
I agree with everything you’re saying.
And unfortunately as a life-long resident of white suburban america, I know how comfortable life still is for so many people, and how the culture of “ignore that problem and we’ll be fine” continues to pay off for people with a little privilege in their life.
As for your last point, that is literally how I feel because I know for a fact that I will die from water wars before it matters
If water wars start in my lifetime, it’s game over for me. I will not let myself live through that shit.
Check out Ethiopia and Egypt, Pakistan and India, China and Vietnam/Laos.
Some are more hot than others but these are all conflicts over lowering water levels and increasing demand. Even within the USA, there are conflicts between states in the southwest and with Mexico over the Colorado river kind of… Just not existing anymore.
At which point the fascist governments people have voted into power will keep on going as they were while murdering some convenient scapegoats, until mass scale industrialised human society collapses, never to recover because we used up all our resources.
Edit: I honestly think people don’t quite understand that once all this bullshit collapses, there will probably never be another high tech civilisation on Earth again: all the easily extractable resources will have been used up, and the amount of energy required to extract more would be higher than what will be available once oil-based hydrocarbons have been more or less used up. Magic batteries that require a ton of resources won’t fix the situation, and we have no large scale replacement for oil.
The large scale replacement for oil is the original source of that energy, the sun. Sure it will take a while, but high technology (read small computers) doesn’t actually require hydrocarbons, it just requires knowledge of physics. Modern society is based on hydrocarbon fuels because they’re so convenient, but that doesn’t mean it’s required for any of our technology to function. We will likely be combusting hydrocarbons for the rest of our existence, they’re just too convenient for energy storage, but the source of those hydrocarbons could easily be specialized cyanobacteria farms or direct chemical synthesis. Both of those technologies already exist, but we have never done any significant investment in them because they would have to compete with basically picking up what’s already lying around. In the absence of significant oil deposits we will be forced to make those technologies work.
Hence my hate for them. Fucking dicks the lot of them.
Keep kicking it down the street.