this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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I'm almost the same as OP, but I wouldn't call it "head in the sand". For the past few years, the media has been exaggerating everything and creating mass hysteria. If you follow the news closely, you'll think the world is about to end: Wars, economical depressions, climate changes, new pandemics, etc..
Stop following the news, and you won't notice a thing. Probably the price increases, but other than that, your life is the same.
Well I understand the impetus, but that's literally the definition of the head-in-the-sand idiom according to Merriam-Webster:
I'm not saying that we are unwilling to recognize a problem, the problem itself is greatly exaggerated, or even non-existent.
Alright, so you don't acknowledge the problem, still fits the definition.
Fair enough on most of those areas you mentioned by the way, wars, economical depression, and the pandemic have been exaggerated, with the serious caveat on the latter that that was unclear at the time so you had to err on the side of caution. But it's kind of the opposite with climate change IMHO. Scientists have kept to rather conservative projections so as to not cause panic and apathy in the general public, but over the last years new measurements have outpaced those predictions at practically every step of the way.
Climate change is probably the most clearly a “big fucking issue” for mankind. I’m fully aware it’s going to kill a huge portion of the population before the end of this century and that I’m probably going to be one of them. I don’t expect to retire or have any kind of life beyond MAYBE 60 because we’ll be locked in famine wars and constant civil unrest.
The rise of global fascism and it’s persecution of “the other” or “enemies of the state” as seen in the USA, Israel, China, Russia, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, The Philippines, and many South American and African nations is another major issue that’s being largely ignored and/or actively progressed by an alarming number of people today. Is another thing that is being underplayed in the media and it going to ADD TO the major global instability that climate change is going to cause.
OP is in their mid-40s. They’re probably going to be one of the last generations to live in the golden age of humanity’s leisure. Everyone else is going to live their life starving and fighting for a seat at the table or dying in wars.
My point is- people 45 and up can afford to bury their heads about all of those things because they’ll never have to worry about it getting cut off before they’re ready to pull it out.
Can't say I haven't wandered those paths of thought, but what keeps nagging at the back of my mind is the possibility of a positive feedback loop of ecosystem collapse, cascading through all of it. From my limited understanding it's somewhat likely to happen but nobody can tell the exact likelihood or outcome. Best guess likelihood of it happening climbs exponentially between 1.5°C and 5°C of warming, which is why limiting warming to 1°C was determined as a threshold initially and subsequently raised to 1.5°C because 1°C became a pipe dream. Depending on how pessimistically you want to do your measurements we have now already reached those 1.5°C of warming.
For reference: Wikipedia:Tipping_points_in_the_climate_system#Cascading_tipping_points
Yeah tell me about it, the far right party in Germany keeps getting new poll records, now breaking 20%. In fucking Germany! Thought I'd never see the day. And therein lies the crux. I think the move towards the right on a global scale is in large part reactionary towards the largest problem on a global scale happening right now, which is climate change. Of which we keep seeing incrementally bigger symptoms, chiefly among them in this context migration as well as economic problems related and unrelated to that. The sensory information of our society already indicates how vast this problem will be. And unless the underlying cause is fixed, this trend won't reverse itself; On the contrary, we will see democracies collapse left, right, and centre, pun intended.
Ok, this is too ad hominem for me, so I'm going to disregard that part of the argument.
Re: Tipping points
The Clathrate gun hypothesis scares me big time. Probably because in this older science fiction novel the aliens were going to blow up part of the ocean floor to create the hot atmosphere they needed.
You get what you pay for with free news. I've been subscribed to The Economist for a few years and all my news is delivered calmly and emotionlessly and backed up by data and research.
I feel much better and I'm still up to date on real news, not political theatre and recreational rage.
Yeah I agree. I'm mostly talking about what you'll find on Twitter and big subreddits.