Disaster is nearing. Mass displacement. Mass starvation. Mass death. It is all imminent. Do you understand?

379 comments

I know. I'm in my early 40ies and have been trying all my life to convince people around me and do what I could. But with time, I learned about the fraud that is plastic recycling and how capitalism is really not interested at all into solving the issue. My city is fining people for putting recyclables in the trash, but the recycling centres are full and they themselves trash the recycling. What matters is short term profits and virtue signalling. What matters is to look green. Just buy electric cars and everything will be good, apparently. Buy green! But don't stop buying!
Then a pandemic happened and people disappointed me en masse. We could see the changes in the environment and in ways we could live, but most people were "EaGeR To GeT BaCk To ThEiR RoUtInE", even if it meant commuting 5 days a week to the office, just to "resume" the economy. What mattered was not other people, it was the economy. Even when they forced us to stay inside with curfews, people couldn't go out to run/walk in the evening, they barred unvaccinated people from stores (I'm vaccinated 4 times but it's still not okay), it was all for the economy and to save the system, not the people. And if you had a minor disagreement with this, you were a grandma killer for wanting to go cycling at night. Then we went back to our routines and nothing will ever change. People are whining because of paper straws and want the plastic back. And all this straw stupidity is not even important on the grand scheme of things. Most people don't want to change anything. Most people will not vote for change. The system does not have any incentive to change.
I never owned a car and everyone around me is telling me how great they are and how I should definitely buy one because it's useful and practical. I would have total absolution! Some people here are vociferously fighting against active and public transit, and the government is actually cutting public transit funding. People are yelling at me when I trash some plastic instead of putting it in the recycle bin, then they drive away in their car that generates literal tons of toxic fumes and greenhouse gases in the air, accusing me of not caring.
I gave up a few years ago. We will deserve most of it.
Don't worry, the rich will eat well and survive, with their private security forces willing to kill others, while the poor will starve and die. We'll have rations and curfews but it will all be for the good of the ~~people~~ economy. Just like in the pandemic, It will be an effort of the poor, to save the rich. That's what we want. You just have to become rich before it happens.
- Seconded. It's so baffling to me that we have seemingly forgotten the purpose of the economy. It is supposed to be there to benefit our lives and instead it is costing us everything. Some slave away on their knees building streets and others waste the precious few laps around the sun staring at lights in a box. We have the technology to give everyone enough such that the average person would only have to work a few hours.
  For a comparison in a very real sense:
  Prior to the Neolithic revolution, which put an end to our nomadic past and turned our species into agriculturalists, it took more than 50 hours of labor (mostly gathering wood) to “buy” 1,000 lumen hours of light. By 1800, it took about 5.4 hours. By 1900, it took 0.22 hours. By 1992, 1,000 lumen hours required 0.00012 hours of human labor.
  We've put the cart before the horse on an unfathomable scale. A good life for all (current humans and future) is within reach but the economic system that has created this bounty has grown out of control and serves nothing but itself anymore.
  
  Skeezix’s Law: The purpose of the economy is to extract as much value from the populace as possible, but whatever means possible, in any way that offers an alibi.
  In your grandfather’s day, choice, privacy, and leisure were humored by the economy. As the decades have passed, the economy has advanced to become a machine increasingly fine-tuned to extract value. As the world burns and resources run out, the economy attempts to adapt by strengthening its extraction methods further.
  The average human sees 2000-5000 ads per day in one form or another.
  
  It does provide some promise though because if we want to live good, peaceful, sustainable, educated lives, the technology is right there, but there is an external and only barely human force that is imposing a malignant culture on us all.
- The bit about not being able to go outside is because people were using it as a pretext to explain why they weren't at home... when really they were off socialising and increasing possible infection points.
  It's why they closed children's playgrounds here in Australia, parents were using their children playing to gather around, then held empty coffee cups to explain why their masks were off. I've never seen so many people desperately swigging at water bottles in a supermarket in my life, or young men clutching at low dose asthma inhalers either. Somewhat amusingly, none of these behaviours have shown up since.
  If people could have shown any level of responsibility... but there we have it, don't we? They can't see beyond the end of their own nose, and this is why we are here, finding out.
  
  When I arrived on earth the first thing that struck me was just how fickle, shortsighted, gullible, and inconsiderate the bulk of your species is. As this planet burns your noses are stuck in phones watching YouTube shorts.
  We’ve decided to leave. You’re not worth conquering and certainly not worthy of joining the stellar empire. Expect no more crop circles or foo fighters.
  Your people is a beast.
- The rich will live long enough to preside over a dead planet. Having billions of dollars to buy an apple is useless when there are no apples to be had for any price. They’ll die like the rest of us, just way more alone. Assuming they aren’t burned out if their bunkers along the way by starving hordes with nothing to lose.
  
  Yes but they’ll probably stockpile enough macbooks to last a long time.
  
  It's not quite true. It's very unlikely the planet will become completely inhabitable to humans anytime soon. There's going to be a tipping point of enough extinction to completely stop any more damage and return to a balanced ecosystem. Once that happens, it's very likely the people with the most power will be the ones in the remaining habitable zones.
  
  I think your assumption operates on the premise that some form of recognizable modern civilization will remain. I don’t think it will. Once mass deaths start for humans it will also cease the global flow of petroleum products, materials, and foods, either due to wars or just the structure being so damaged that it cannot function. Once you can’t get fuel, can’t mine things, can’t refine them, can’t transport them, can’t fix the machines that make fertilizers or tractor parts, can’t keep the computers running, the internet collapses…that’s it. Hell, that’s the good scenario, not the one where the ocean overheats /-acidifies , killing everything in it including much of the planets oxygen generating algae. Civilization is done. Almost all surface minerals are gone because we’ve already mined them, well, except coal…but that’s what helped get us here in the first place. We are literally back to a Stone Age or scavenging materials from the bones of civilization.
  Mad Max or some similar post-apocalyptic desolation is a far more likely scenario than any situation where a holdout of modern civilization exists.

379 comments