As grim as the world is, it’s oddly comforting to read someone like yourself who’s not living in the “everything is fine” pretend land our collective society has become.
In some ways the not talking about what we need to be talking about is the most painful part.
I agree. Someone just shared a tweet saying exactly that--their depression and anxiety stem from the feeling that so few people are taking it seriously.
...and i just created this account to subscribe to you, Jessica, and say exactly that again--lifelong depression and anxiety stemming significantly from the obviousness that so few ever took it seriously. 51 now, grew up a huge nerd and Carl Sagan fan, and paying attention every time he talked about Venus' runaway greenhouse atmo. he took it seriously. glad you and Adam do too. Don't Look Up (and Big Short) prove it. tyvm Jessica. <3
Thanks! I think that's the appropriate description. A realist these days is gonna sound like a doomer. The optimists have done incalculable damage over the last three years.
Yeah, I was shocked. I gathered all the facts. Spouse did most of the talking. It worked. Offering to donate a bunch of masks so parents didn't have to bother finding them helped a lot, I think. Worth the cost.
They could eat outside, or they could make sure there's enough ventilation and filtration to make it safe(r). Staggered lunches, etc. Schools are supposed to be figuring this out and funding renovations.
There are no schools in my board as far as I know, that permit eating lunch outside. It’s mind-boggling. Students get reprimanded if they’re caught eating their snack(s) outside.
Therein lies the value of combining realism with hope. Realism helps you to see things as they truly are. And hope helps you to believe in and try to find solutions. That’s why I enjoy this newsletter. She keeps it real while encouraging us to NOT accept the BS and keep fighting!
I feel like I have been preparing for these last few years my entire life. The despair and the anguish I went through enabled me to devise healthy coping mechanisms and to see clearly. I still feel those things at times, but now those feelings don't engulf me. I want to thank you for giving me a phrase to describe what I have experienced for over 3 decades: sentinel intelligence. I can see. My eyes have never lied to me. I can see.
Thanks! Yes, same here. Living with a mentally ill parent or dealing with other kinds of ongoing trauma train you to notice when things are a little off, because if you don't act early enough things get bad really, really fast.
There's a reason that veterans are the group of people most known for sentinel intelligence, particularly those who've served in active combat, and especially SOF-types - the most common kind of ongoing trauma in human history is war.
You've lived, and served in active duty, through a kind of war yourself, Jessica, and it shows in everything you write & do.
You know things are falling apart when I got a brand new credit card over a month ago. It never arrived. I called to have them cancel the card because it was obviously intercepted in the mail, right? Nope. They don’t have enough plastic to make the card...
I don't think most humans are physiologically capable of understanding what's coming. Old Testament, Gilgamesh level disasters are now guaranteed.
James Hansen just published a paper synthesizing all available scientific knowledge regarding how climate change will really happen, using realistic physics and assumptions about feedbacks. The paltry 2 or 3°C of warming people are allowed to talk about--which would easily end civilization--is a hopeless underestimate. 10°C of warming is in the pipeline when ALL greenhouse gases are accounted for, and all feedbacks (warming creating more warming) are realistically considered. About 5°C of this warming will happen this century, with the remaining warming happening over the coming centuries. We will warm to where the planet was many tens of millions of years ago. Humans will not be able to survive such an environment: too hot, mostly too humid, and other places like continental interiors will be too dry.
California is "the southwest". Just because of our tremendous, and ultimately foolhardy, engineering to bring northern California's water to the south has let us build cities and have agriculture in otherwise uninhabitable deserts, doesn't mean it is viable long-term--over centuries. In relatively recent geologic history, 'the valley' was a giant inland sea. Now, as humans have set in motion warming we probably can't stop, much less reverse, all of the US southwest will dessicate and warm up.
Draw a line from roughly San Jose, up to Salt Lake City, and then down to the OK/AR border. Everything south of that line will be uninhabitable within the lifetime of most people reading this. I'd guess within 20 years. It will be too dry and too hot. Excursions there then would require equipment and preparations equivalent to the Apollo astronauts.
Most people will think such a statement is ridiculous, but this betrays why most humans will die over the coming century. The changes coming are *non-linear*. Just like Sars-CoV-2's spread, they are exponential functions. One today, ten tomorrow, 100 the next day, then too many to count. The shattering heat experienced around the world over the last few years will keep increasing, along with storms and other things humans have no experience in, such as massive H2S (hydrogen sulfide) plumes from stagnant, anoxic bodies of water. I can imagine that Californian inland sea again reappearing, and it becoming hot and stagnant enough that it offgasses huge and deadly volumes of H2S from anaerobic organisms. It would become a Canfield ocean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canfield_ocean). Sure, maybe it would only exist a year or two, but everything that breathes oxygen dies in minutes at concentrations you can smell. This is why we evolved such a sensitivity to that rotten-egg smell and get away as fast as we can.
Normalcy bias, denial, everything Jessica wrote about in that psychology piece--these will keep us standing around uselessly while we drop dead. I know someone living in Albequerque who has already lost their well and now must truck in water. Their house will soon be worthless. This person is a climate scientist. They aren't leaving. I have already accepted their death.
Our civilization cannot continue. It's possible we could do things with biochar to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and put the planet back in the Holocene, where we could survive. But that *must also* be coupled with a reduction in consumption and frivolous toys so extreme the rich countries would never accept it. No flying, at all. Very limited if any driving. The end of disposable anything, planned obsolescence. Probably no meat, or very little. And even doing all these things would still require a much reduced human population. It is impossible to feed 8 billion people without massive use of diesel and natural-gas derived fertilizer, and a lot of irrigation. This must end. Thus, so will those people.
I seriously doubt the rich West has any moral fiber that would accept these sorts of changes. So, they won't happen. So, civilization is already doomed. In a sense, it always was, because it was unsustainable. We were just 'lucky' in that we were able to avoid a pandemic like SARS2 (now probably SARS3, since the virus now circulating has changed so much) and had access to resources that let us build what we've built, and grow our numbers so ridiculously high. Our precipitous rise will have an equivalent fall.
You put to words what is in my head - especially since I lost a patient to rhinovirus last week - 1 month after he had COVID. You are worth every penny of my subscription. Thank you.
I'm sorry to hear about your patient, but I'm glad you find meaning here. I know I find meaning in the articles/books I've been reading that don't sugarcoat things. Even if we wind up in the worst case scenario, I'd rather face it straight on.
some of us are, some of us always have been. all indigenous ppl have been for about five hindred years. its not the kind of slam bam griefy heros journey thing. its an interdependent collective karma die with grace thing. its a loss of loss thing. its a ritual sacrifice thing.
There are in fact 5 events happening concurrently that together have great potential to result in societal collapse: SARS2, climate change, demographic collapse, deglobalization and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Around the world birth rates have been in serious decline for decades; today in many countries there aren’t enough 25 y/o’s and too many >50 y/o’s to keep economies functioning. In China the current lack of young females means their population will shrink by close to 50% by 2050.
Deglobalization refers to the loss of secure shipping across the world’s oceans. The US is no longer interested in providing that security. With that security gone countries & corporations will be forced to abandon a decades old economic system that allowed the unfettered movement of goods across the planet. Our economy is based on that system; what replaces it is unknown.
The Russian war against Ukraine has potential to develop in a wider conflict, possibly a nuclear conflict and will cause deep disruption across Europe as energy supplies are witheld.
Any one of these is of critical concern. That all are happening simultaneously is truly unprecedented. I don’t see civil society as we think of it continuing beyond five years.
All true, the next five years are going to look a lot like the preface or prequel to a dystopian novel, and of course the rich almost relish the idea. They're the ones causing it all. Elon Musk loves the idea of riding around in the desert in a cyber truck, but he's going to be awfully disappointed when his wish comes true.
Once again, you take so much of the jumbled mish-mash of doom from up in my head and you present it in an intelligent, knowledgable, comprehensible manner. I share the links to your articles and I hope others are reading and listening.
When I see anyone posting pics of themselves in public wearing a mask, I think maybe we are actually reaching some people. Maybe some people are listening.
Meanwhile, above all this human farce, the ecological crisis and climate crisis will worsen. Very quickly. Because nothing is being done. We don’t even understand the problem. The Bright Greens are singing the same songs from the same hymn sheet of the Fossil Fuel and large Industrial Corporations. ‘Clean Green Energy’ will save us, more turbines, solar panels, this new technology, that new way of growing food, food from vats run by huge Corporations, the same ones who got us here. It’s all bullshit. None of this energy is Green and not only that, even if it was, we already know how our capitalist system will use it. To dig for more stuff, mining more land, cutting down more forests. Energy usage will accelerate, it always does. The Jevons Paradox is very real. Our use of the oceans as refuse dumps and the plunder of every resource within the deep will continue. Do you know that two of every three breaths you take comes from the oxygen created by Phytoplankton in the oceans? What are we going to replace that with? Will Coca Cola start to supply it in plastic bottles? Nestlé? The once in a lifetime storms will become once every couple of years. The Boy will soon be back. La Nina will fade. The Sixth Extinction is about to accelerate.
Right? Hey, we’ve got amazing new AI tools! Instead of putting them to work teasing out how we can meet our needs in harmony with the world, let’s . . . use them to tease out how we can extract every last drop of fuel, regardless of the damage such extraction will do.
There are those of who do wear masks. I have a KN95 mask. (in addition to cloth masks) I flush the toilet less. I have Lysol to disinfect and wipe down surfaces. Eggs are $6 for an 18-pack. For those who buy in bulk, it's over $100. People I know are driving instead of flying. Being disabled, I have to fly, but I might start taking the Greyhound. I doubt I'll ever go overseas again.
Yes, some of us are definitely going in the right direction. If more of us did these simple things, we'd buy ourselves some time. We looked at our water bill last month and were shocked to see that all three of us together use slightly less water than 1 average American, without even really trying. Now we're making an effort, and it's going down further.
Brilliant summary of where we are. When I read The Water Knife, Ship Breaker and The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, The Peripheral by William Gibson, I didn't quite realise how near we were to the transit point into those worlds. I think people can conceive the end of a civilization, at a push, but it's so much harder to think about living through those times. Enough civilizations have collapsed in the past, you'd think it wouldn't be such a hard ask. Mind you, we're practised, conditioned to ignoring mass death and disability happening in plain sight...
Ok is there any way you could share the presentation to your school? I'd love to try with ours. I've offered extra air filters (quiet ones) but they aren't even interested.
So please forgive me for not knowing, but have you had COVID? I ended up infecting my 4yo twins and husband this past Thanksgiving and after scrolling through and looking at some of articles in your presentation here, I’m having a pretty difficult time right now. Thankfully, we’d had all the vaccines and boosters (my boys were part of a second phase Pfizer trial and were fully boosted).
I mean, I had a hard time then, too…it’s just all coming up again for me.
If you have had it, what did you do to manage your emotions? I’m genuinely asking. I feel as though I don’t have enough hours in the day to meditate and regulate the responses I experience from consuming information.
The "End of Civilization" is extreme. Inflammatory. But I get it.
Let's say the 2020's get lucky, and the crazy environmental swings come and go. It rains in Utah eventually. California dries out. Covid turns out to be bad but not nearly as devastating as small pox for the American Indians (up to 85% killed).
Even if these changes are only 30% as impactful as a doomer might forecast on a bad day, they are big deals that our civilization must adjust to... especially if the Earth can't support 8 billion humans with their associated animals, pets, plastic, and habit of exhausting every environment they encounter.
At the very least, humans have to change our insistence on bigger and bigger economies consuming more and more stuff. We have to move past obsessing over the metric of GDP. We have to figure out how to minimize the urge to empower the all-powerful strong men gods like Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un, and even the demigods at Alphabet, Apple, and Meta.
Our civilization must change--evolve, if you prefer. Without big changes to the way we interact with the world, more and more people will be certain that we are doomed. And our civilization as we know it will end.
Actually, 'at the very least' humans have to simply recognize and admit we are collapsing ('gradually, then suddenly,' as Hemingway wrote). The next-best is to consider how to exist within the reality of that collapse. Perhaps eventually we will be able to make sense of it, and create new societal stories that lead to new actions. Only at much higher levels of human response are we really able to say 'our civilization must change—evolve.' We may not change; indeed, I believe it is unlikely.
Exactly. I mean, isn't 75 percent of a lake enough? Isn't a 10-15 percent jump in mortality enough? Isn't it bad enough what's already literally happening? The thing that bugs me the most is that you can literally point to a verified, documented fact and a good number of people will still deny/spin it.
I'm calling it emotional incompetence. We are conditioned not to feel or display our fear and sadness, especially males--it gets sublimated into anger and hatred. If you face what's really going on, you MUST feel fear and sadness and because it's not allowed, the denial kicks in, and blaming others.
Well, it's definitely not due to human nature. Human nature is to follow. Our leaders, the seen (politicians) and unseen (corporations, wealthy elite, etc) are ready to run civilization into the ground so they can lord over what remains. So that's the message put out there and the one people pick up and regurgitate.
Billionaires have been on a bunker-building binge to be ready for the more climactic scenarios (power grid going out, etc).
War profiteers are chomping at the bit because you know, as we all do deep down, that once the momentum shifts like this the odds of wars breaking out go way up. Especially in the face of opportunistic and desperate men. Putin for one. China's leaders for another (not just Jinping). China is inching ever closer to the perfect timing to grab Taiwan. And that's just for starters.
World War 3 may be a world AT war, where there aren't clear sides or political lines, just a global mess of interconnected conflicts simultaneously ongoing and unending. That accelerates the destabilization of civilization in terms of our modern geopolitical order. That will create power vacuums and new (likely worse) people, groups and institutions will rise to fill them.
The United States, the modern country we are today, is actually made for this. This is the kind of world the military/government have always imagined is out there. The US will carve out a sphere of influence for itself. Depending on your wealth or job opportunities, our "way of life" will continue in at least one place for a privileged few.
It's not lost on me that this is probably the most common scenario predicted by science fiction writers. So I think most people won't be surprised by it either since sci-fi is now pop culture and TV shows/movies are literally made on this premise. Yet we still do nothing.
As grim as the world is, it’s oddly comforting to read someone like yourself who’s not living in the “everything is fine” pretend land our collective society has become.
In some ways the not talking about what we need to be talking about is the most painful part.
I agree. Someone just shared a tweet saying exactly that--their depression and anxiety stem from the feeling that so few people are taking it seriously.
...and i just created this account to subscribe to you, Jessica, and say exactly that again--lifelong depression and anxiety stemming significantly from the obviousness that so few ever took it seriously. 51 now, grew up a huge nerd and Carl Sagan fan, and paying attention every time he talked about Venus' runaway greenhouse atmo. he took it seriously. glad you and Adam do too. Don't Look Up (and Big Short) prove it. tyvm Jessica. <3
“You can deal with reality or it will deal with you.”
Unfortunately delusion rules. Every chance we get to change our minds is met with more doubling down.
The date is late. The forgetting is swift. Official calls for moderation, deafening.
Maybe the most radical act is to be kind. Grief abounds, especially for the those who can’t acknowledge the pain.
This decade will likely decide all for humans...and many other life forms.
Cheers, fellow Cassandras.
Yes, kindness is radical--and so is responsibility these days. So I guess that makes us rebels.
Oh I love that you read Jessica, love your work too Adam!
I was thinking, "This couldn't possibly be the actual Adam Mckay," but could it be the actual Adam Mckay?
Yes!!!!!!
You have arrived! 🙌🤩🙌
You’re a realist. That why I subscribe.
Thanks! I think that's the appropriate description. A realist these days is gonna sound like a doomer. The optimists have done incalculable damage over the last three years.
I chose "realism" as my religion when I joined Facebook.
❤🌏👊💙
Realism is the new pessimism. Optimism is just denial wrapped in a warm blanket.
Go sub to me too then fellow realist
https://youtube.com/@ReganParentonyt
Very impressed you got the school to change policy. I wouldn't have even tried out of hopelessness. Shows the value of not throwing in the towel.
Yeah, I was shocked. I gathered all the facts. Spouse did most of the talking. It worked. Offering to donate a bunch of masks so parents didn't have to bother finding them helped a lot, I think. Worth the cost.
How will lunch time work?
They could eat outside, or they could make sure there's enough ventilation and filtration to make it safe(r). Staggered lunches, etc. Schools are supposed to be figuring this out and funding renovations.
There are no schools in my board as far as I know, that permit eating lunch outside. It’s mind-boggling. Students get reprimanded if they’re caught eating their snack(s) outside.
You guys don’t happen to have a script for this? Would love to do some good in the institutions around where I live.
Therein lies the value of combining realism with hope. Realism helps you to see things as they truly are. And hope helps you to believe in and try to find solutions. That’s why I enjoy this newsletter. She keeps it real while encouraging us to NOT accept the BS and keep fighting!
I feel like I have been preparing for these last few years my entire life. The despair and the anguish I went through enabled me to devise healthy coping mechanisms and to see clearly. I still feel those things at times, but now those feelings don't engulf me. I want to thank you for giving me a phrase to describe what I have experienced for over 3 decades: sentinel intelligence. I can see. My eyes have never lied to me. I can see.
Thanks! Yes, same here. Living with a mentally ill parent or dealing with other kinds of ongoing trauma train you to notice when things are a little off, because if you don't act early enough things get bad really, really fast.
There's a reason that veterans are the group of people most known for sentinel intelligence, particularly those who've served in active combat, and especially SOF-types - the most common kind of ongoing trauma in human history is war.
You've lived, and served in active duty, through a kind of war yourself, Jessica, and it shows in everything you write & do.
You know things are falling apart when I got a brand new credit card over a month ago. It never arrived. I called to have them cancel the card because it was obviously intercepted in the mail, right? Nope. They don’t have enough plastic to make the card...
Holy cow, another red flag everyone seems to be ignoring...
The first bank cards were on card. But our machine needs plastic unless we retool
I don't think most humans are physiologically capable of understanding what's coming. Old Testament, Gilgamesh level disasters are now guaranteed.
James Hansen just published a paper synthesizing all available scientific knowledge regarding how climate change will really happen, using realistic physics and assumptions about feedbacks. The paltry 2 or 3°C of warming people are allowed to talk about--which would easily end civilization--is a hopeless underestimate. 10°C of warming is in the pipeline when ALL greenhouse gases are accounted for, and all feedbacks (warming creating more warming) are realistically considered. About 5°C of this warming will happen this century, with the remaining warming happening over the coming centuries. We will warm to where the planet was many tens of millions of years ago. Humans will not be able to survive such an environment: too hot, mostly too humid, and other places like continental interiors will be too dry.
California is "the southwest". Just because of our tremendous, and ultimately foolhardy, engineering to bring northern California's water to the south has let us build cities and have agriculture in otherwise uninhabitable deserts, doesn't mean it is viable long-term--over centuries. In relatively recent geologic history, 'the valley' was a giant inland sea. Now, as humans have set in motion warming we probably can't stop, much less reverse, all of the US southwest will dessicate and warm up.
Draw a line from roughly San Jose, up to Salt Lake City, and then down to the OK/AR border. Everything south of that line will be uninhabitable within the lifetime of most people reading this. I'd guess within 20 years. It will be too dry and too hot. Excursions there then would require equipment and preparations equivalent to the Apollo astronauts.
Most people will think such a statement is ridiculous, but this betrays why most humans will die over the coming century. The changes coming are *non-linear*. Just like Sars-CoV-2's spread, they are exponential functions. One today, ten tomorrow, 100 the next day, then too many to count. The shattering heat experienced around the world over the last few years will keep increasing, along with storms and other things humans have no experience in, such as massive H2S (hydrogen sulfide) plumes from stagnant, anoxic bodies of water. I can imagine that Californian inland sea again reappearing, and it becoming hot and stagnant enough that it offgasses huge and deadly volumes of H2S from anaerobic organisms. It would become a Canfield ocean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canfield_ocean). Sure, maybe it would only exist a year or two, but everything that breathes oxygen dies in minutes at concentrations you can smell. This is why we evolved such a sensitivity to that rotten-egg smell and get away as fast as we can.
Normalcy bias, denial, everything Jessica wrote about in that psychology piece--these will keep us standing around uselessly while we drop dead. I know someone living in Albequerque who has already lost their well and now must truck in water. Their house will soon be worthless. This person is a climate scientist. They aren't leaving. I have already accepted their death.
Our civilization cannot continue. It's possible we could do things with biochar to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and put the planet back in the Holocene, where we could survive. But that *must also* be coupled with a reduction in consumption and frivolous toys so extreme the rich countries would never accept it. No flying, at all. Very limited if any driving. The end of disposable anything, planned obsolescence. Probably no meat, or very little. And even doing all these things would still require a much reduced human population. It is impossible to feed 8 billion people without massive use of diesel and natural-gas derived fertilizer, and a lot of irrigation. This must end. Thus, so will those people.
I seriously doubt the rich West has any moral fiber that would accept these sorts of changes. So, they won't happen. So, civilization is already doomed. In a sense, it always was, because it was unsustainable. We were just 'lucky' in that we were able to avoid a pandemic like SARS2 (now probably SARS3, since the virus now circulating has changed so much) and had access to resources that let us build what we've built, and grow our numbers so ridiculously high. Our precipitous rise will have an equivalent fall.
Read that paper, mention it in my latest piece.
You put to words what is in my head - especially since I lost a patient to rhinovirus last week - 1 month after he had COVID. You are worth every penny of my subscription. Thank you.
I'm sorry to hear about your patient, but I'm glad you find meaning here. I know I find meaning in the articles/books I've been reading that don't sugarcoat things. Even if we wind up in the worst case scenario, I'd rather face it straight on.
some of us are, some of us always have been. all indigenous ppl have been for about five hindred years. its not the kind of slam bam griefy heros journey thing. its an interdependent collective karma die with grace thing. its a loss of loss thing. its a ritual sacrifice thing.
There are in fact 5 events happening concurrently that together have great potential to result in societal collapse: SARS2, climate change, demographic collapse, deglobalization and the Russia-Ukraine war.
Around the world birth rates have been in serious decline for decades; today in many countries there aren’t enough 25 y/o’s and too many >50 y/o’s to keep economies functioning. In China the current lack of young females means their population will shrink by close to 50% by 2050.
Deglobalization refers to the loss of secure shipping across the world’s oceans. The US is no longer interested in providing that security. With that security gone countries & corporations will be forced to abandon a decades old economic system that allowed the unfettered movement of goods across the planet. Our economy is based on that system; what replaces it is unknown.
The Russian war against Ukraine has potential to develop in a wider conflict, possibly a nuclear conflict and will cause deep disruption across Europe as energy supplies are witheld.
Any one of these is of critical concern. That all are happening simultaneously is truly unprecedented. I don’t see civil society as we think of it continuing beyond five years.
All true, the next five years are going to look a lot like the preface or prequel to a dystopian novel, and of course the rich almost relish the idea. They're the ones causing it all. Elon Musk loves the idea of riding around in the desert in a cyber truck, but he's going to be awfully disappointed when his wish comes true.
And biodiversity collapse.
Utterly depressing but it's somehow comforting to know that someone other than me recognizes all this.
Once again, you take so much of the jumbled mish-mash of doom from up in my head and you present it in an intelligent, knowledgable, comprehensible manner. I share the links to your articles and I hope others are reading and listening.
When I see anyone posting pics of themselves in public wearing a mask, I think maybe we are actually reaching some people. Maybe some people are listening.
Meanwhile, above all this human farce, the ecological crisis and climate crisis will worsen. Very quickly. Because nothing is being done. We don’t even understand the problem. The Bright Greens are singing the same songs from the same hymn sheet of the Fossil Fuel and large Industrial Corporations. ‘Clean Green Energy’ will save us, more turbines, solar panels, this new technology, that new way of growing food, food from vats run by huge Corporations, the same ones who got us here. It’s all bullshit. None of this energy is Green and not only that, even if it was, we already know how our capitalist system will use it. To dig for more stuff, mining more land, cutting down more forests. Energy usage will accelerate, it always does. The Jevons Paradox is very real. Our use of the oceans as refuse dumps and the plunder of every resource within the deep will continue. Do you know that two of every three breaths you take comes from the oxygen created by Phytoplankton in the oceans? What are we going to replace that with? Will Coca Cola start to supply it in plastic bottles? Nestlé? The once in a lifetime storms will become once every couple of years. The Boy will soon be back. La Nina will fade. The Sixth Extinction is about to accelerate.
Right? Hey, we’ve got amazing new AI tools! Instead of putting them to work teasing out how we can meet our needs in harmony with the world, let’s . . . use them to tease out how we can extract every last drop of fuel, regardless of the damage such extraction will do.
There are those of who do wear masks. I have a KN95 mask. (in addition to cloth masks) I flush the toilet less. I have Lysol to disinfect and wipe down surfaces. Eggs are $6 for an 18-pack. For those who buy in bulk, it's over $100. People I know are driving instead of flying. Being disabled, I have to fly, but I might start taking the Greyhound. I doubt I'll ever go overseas again.
Yes, some of us are definitely going in the right direction. If more of us did these simple things, we'd buy ourselves some time. We looked at our water bill last month and were shocked to see that all three of us together use slightly less water than 1 average American, without even really trying. Now we're making an effort, and it's going down further.
Brilliant summary of where we are. When I read The Water Knife, Ship Breaker and The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, The Peripheral by William Gibson, I didn't quite realise how near we were to the transit point into those worlds. I think people can conceive the end of a civilization, at a push, but it's so much harder to think about living through those times. Enough civilizations have collapsed in the past, you'd think it wouldn't be such a hard ask. Mind you, we're practised, conditioned to ignoring mass death and disability happening in plain sight...
Ok is there any way you could share the presentation to your school? I'd love to try with ours. I've offered extra air filters (quiet ones) but they aren't even interested.
Yeah, give me a few minutes to make a clean version.
https://raindrop.io/JW_Lists/covid-list-30427555
So please forgive me for not knowing, but have you had COVID? I ended up infecting my 4yo twins and husband this past Thanksgiving and after scrolling through and looking at some of articles in your presentation here, I’m having a pretty difficult time right now. Thankfully, we’d had all the vaccines and boosters (my boys were part of a second phase Pfizer trial and were fully boosted).
I mean, I had a hard time then, too…it’s just all coming up again for me.
If you have had it, what did you do to manage your emotions? I’m genuinely asking. I feel as though I don’t have enough hours in the day to meditate and regulate the responses I experience from consuming information.
Thanks for a great summary of the state of the world as well. Aptly put!
The "End of Civilization" is extreme. Inflammatory. But I get it.
Let's say the 2020's get lucky, and the crazy environmental swings come and go. It rains in Utah eventually. California dries out. Covid turns out to be bad but not nearly as devastating as small pox for the American Indians (up to 85% killed).
Even if these changes are only 30% as impactful as a doomer might forecast on a bad day, they are big deals that our civilization must adjust to... especially if the Earth can't support 8 billion humans with their associated animals, pets, plastic, and habit of exhausting every environment they encounter.
At the very least, humans have to change our insistence on bigger and bigger economies consuming more and more stuff. We have to move past obsessing over the metric of GDP. We have to figure out how to minimize the urge to empower the all-powerful strong men gods like Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-Un, and even the demigods at Alphabet, Apple, and Meta.
Our civilization must change--evolve, if you prefer. Without big changes to the way we interact with the world, more and more people will be certain that we are doomed. And our civilization as we know it will end.
Actually, 'at the very least' humans have to simply recognize and admit we are collapsing ('gradually, then suddenly,' as Hemingway wrote). The next-best is to consider how to exist within the reality of that collapse. Perhaps eventually we will be able to make sense of it, and create new societal stories that lead to new actions. Only at much higher levels of human response are we really able to say 'our civilization must change—evolve.' We may not change; indeed, I believe it is unlikely.
I've found the Dark Mountain Manifesto, and related writings, to be very useful in understanding all this. https://dark-mountain.net/about/manifesto/
Exactly. I mean, isn't 75 percent of a lake enough? Isn't a 10-15 percent jump in mortality enough? Isn't it bad enough what's already literally happening? The thing that bugs me the most is that you can literally point to a verified, documented fact and a good number of people will still deny/spin it.
I'm calling it emotional incompetence. We are conditioned not to feel or display our fear and sadness, especially males--it gets sublimated into anger and hatred. If you face what's really going on, you MUST feel fear and sadness and because it's not allowed, the denial kicks in, and blaming others.
Well, it's definitely not due to human nature. Human nature is to follow. Our leaders, the seen (politicians) and unseen (corporations, wealthy elite, etc) are ready to run civilization into the ground so they can lord over what remains. So that's the message put out there and the one people pick up and regurgitate.
Billionaires have been on a bunker-building binge to be ready for the more climactic scenarios (power grid going out, etc).
War profiteers are chomping at the bit because you know, as we all do deep down, that once the momentum shifts like this the odds of wars breaking out go way up. Especially in the face of opportunistic and desperate men. Putin for one. China's leaders for another (not just Jinping). China is inching ever closer to the perfect timing to grab Taiwan. And that's just for starters.
World War 3 may be a world AT war, where there aren't clear sides or political lines, just a global mess of interconnected conflicts simultaneously ongoing and unending. That accelerates the destabilization of civilization in terms of our modern geopolitical order. That will create power vacuums and new (likely worse) people, groups and institutions will rise to fill them.
The United States, the modern country we are today, is actually made for this. This is the kind of world the military/government have always imagined is out there. The US will carve out a sphere of influence for itself. Depending on your wealth or job opportunities, our "way of life" will continue in at least one place for a privileged few.
It's not lost on me that this is probably the most common scenario predicted by science fiction writers. So I think most people won't be surprised by it either since sci-fi is now pop culture and TV shows/movies are literally made on this premise. Yet we still do nothing.