Sigh.....

[mdehners]

I'm at my lowest in Optimism for Humanity and this is from a guy whose high school had a well-stocked fallout shelter. I thought there was Hope in the mid Eighties when my "Visions" stopped but they started up a couple yrs ago and are getting to the point that I'm consciously ignoring them.
For those who don't know me from Midgard or for yrs here in Cybergard, back in the late 70's through the mid 80's I'd be going along, minding my own business and suddenly I'd be Seeing a landscape superimposed over(translucent so when it happened when Driving I didn't crash...). After a couple of documentaries about Chernobyl a few yrs back(or those 'After Man' ones) the damage looked about a couple decades old. Empty buildings and streets, some with vegetation strongly Growing. No obvious damage, just as if everyone left or died. No visible bones but they wouldn't be. Even in desert climes they're gone in a few yrs. These stopped in the mid Eighties and now they're back. Since I started Repressing a couple yrs ago it's not ALL about Trump. Perhaps that which brought Him to Power....
I've NEVER Understood many folk's attraction to Chaos. Maybe since I grew up an Army Brat stationed mostly in 3rd World countries(a big reason why I'm not surprised at all about Turkey's decent into Madness)and in the 1st World one's bases tended to be in areas where the locals were happy to do menial work because it meant access to indoor plumbing and regular Hot water. The Anarchist Mentality ("Tear it all Down and Start Over....those that Survive")is Alien to me. No wonder I like Restoration as opposed to "Renovation" shows;>.
Both of us are just Hoping things hold together long enough for both of us to Pass since with my Diabetes I won't last long enough to teach Chuck(or someone who could look after him) Survival skills. My SIL expects the Ascended Masters(tm, pat-pending) or whatever newage term they're using for the same old same old nowadays and my brother assumes folks are too Logical to "Shit in their own living room". Since I've had folks during college who had done such after a bender....I'm not so Optimistic.
I think I'll go work in the garden....
Cheers,
Pat

Comments

[arlie]

No visions here. But strictly limited optimism. I don't think humanity will do well even if the only problem they/we face is the results of pumping out all that carbon dioxide, and they/we don't deal with diminished resources by throwing nukes around, or bioweapons, or other long-lived contaminants.

We're headed for a dinosaur-era climate, via serious climate turbulence, or possibly with the turbulence remaining even after the new climate has arrived. Our ability to produce food will be drastically reduced, while at the same time most of our major population centers will be flooded - probably in slow motion.

And being human, we'll try to cope with the situation using more of the stuff that caused it - i.e. fossil fuels - and/or via bandaiding one prominent symptom while ignoring others. (Fixing the warming with geoengineering won't help with ocean acidification, for example.)

All this with a backdrop of other significant risks, and general environmental destruction. The "Internet of Things" will be (is) the "Internet of security holes" as well as the "house/car/etc. of EMP vulnerability". Wiping out pollinators is a grand way to improve the food supply, in an era where it's already at risk to global warming. (And we'll try to use *more* of those bioengineered crops with the pesticide resistance, combined with mega-pesticide doses, as climate change reduces our yields, farther attacking the pollinators.) I could go on and on.

My guess is that unless we sterilize the planet with nukes, some humans will survive, ultimately (if not immediately) at a greatly reduced tech level. And the whole thing probably won't come to a head in either of our lifetimes. (I turned 60 recently.)

One of my friends here is interpreting the recent spate of climate-related disasters as the faerie being angry at humanity, because of the abuse and damage to the planet. That's one way to frame it, for those who can't see the somewhat more direct link. (He probably can see the direct links generally, but he's seeing a spike this year that he's not attributing to the physical causes - I on the other hand am seeing a bit of bad luck, and a surge in reporting in American-facing media ... not all that much of a spike.)

[mdehners]

I'd be very surprised if the species died out since we're pretty much in every biome and location planet-wide. This present civilization? a couple days without Power and any city affected with be aflame. I can easily see a single EMP triggering a paranoid rush to Oblivion....TODAY. That's not adding in Disease or some tech-based disaster. Or even natural ones.
Just this yr's natural disasters for the US will leave little resources left for the next round, and there WILL be MANY. We're already seeing Human migrations from massively changed biomes. I wouldn't be surprised seeing it happening here in the States in our lifetime. Hoping no but....
Cheers,
Pat