this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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To be fair, every damn headline is framed as civilisation-ending for clicks. Nuclear war is the only one I can think of that's both fairly plausible and could actually end it. Others are at various significant but lower levels of suck, or are just geologically rare.
In particular, climate change is going to suck hard, and I'll miss coral reefs, but some form of civilisation will endure. I know, someone's going to argue with me, and I look forward to making you move around the goalposts on what "end of civilisation" means.
Otherwise, yeah, you're just right. Humanity runs on apathy.
Yeah, the increasing likelihood of Russia or China using nukes to get their way was what I was thinking, especially with talk that the Western nations might be giving Ukraine the go-ahead to use those weapons to strike within Russia itself.
The plastic sperm issue actually doesn't sound so bad in comparison, bc fertilization treatments might work even if needing to extract outside of the body first. Overall, it still sounds less dangerous to me than e.g. a young woman living in Florida these days without access to money to leave the state for medical care.
I frankly have no idea what to expect about climate change at this point - we've blown far past all the targets and seem now to be in uncharted territory, according to what little I understand. I do notice far fewer birds, bees and other insect life, and I recall hearing how in the Antarctic a few months back there was a single day where the temperature spiked by +70 degrees F (~40°C). I can only imagine what that would do to e.g. Texas if it went from already 100 to then 170 degrees, even if only for a few hours. "Coral" is the least of the issue iirc, they were (by virtue of being sensitive) mainly indicators of the actual events, which we won't know until we see it, but scientists are saying that it's no bueno. Anyway, it seems like the changes could wipe out all mammalian life on the planet, but then again maybe not!?:-P i.e. it could be really bad, but it could be less so, we just don't know, and as you said, we mostly barely care ("we" meaning voters, so chiefly Boomers & evangelical Christians, as Trump and the Republican party's biggest bases).
And yet we seem to care a great deal about tHe EcOnOmY tHo - so it's a choice of prioritization to pick what "matters" to us.
Yeah, I've noticed the lack of insects, and also different plants growing than I remember from when I was a kid, not all too long ago. Every once in a while someone will be talking to me about the weather and how freakish it is, and they'll suddenly get quiet if I use the word "climate" instead of just weather, because they were (and maybe still are?) denialists.
The thing about mammals is that at least some - ourselves included - can migrate. If we have to, we'll set up banana plantations on Antarctica, and there's no known scenario where it gets that bad. Others are not so lucky, though.
Right, civilization might survive... maybe, possibly, hopefully, just like if we all were to play Russian Roulette. Still doesn't sound like a smart idea to me to mess with something known to be so dangerous.
At the absolute minimum the changes will be cruel, and hundreds of thousands of people are already dying from each of many individual events like hurricanes outside of their normal seasons, at intensities never before seen in a particular area.
So my thought: at the very least we could care? Except I was wrong - we can go lower, so much lower. We do have the satisfaction though that whatever comes, we brought it upon ourselves.