Some people tell me not to worry about the future. No one can predict the future they say, and humankind will solve all problems anyway…
Maybe they are optimists, except from what I have seen optimism is just an excuse to do nothing. Humankind will now magically solve all the problems we created? That would be a neat trick. People claim technology will save us. Except technology got us into this mess in the first place. From massive mining equipment to factory fishing ships to missiles and bombs to McMansions to automobiles, technology doesn’t fix things, technology seems to be the path of destruction, but that isn’t even the point of this post: the point is the utter failure of humans to make good decisions.
Required background context:
- Read these nasty facts on Climate Change
- This rather long blog on Human Ignorance
- And the incredibly depressing Dying Planet
All caught up? Now we can continue.
Overtime people have changed for the better: no more human sacrifices, we don’t (as often) go to war over every little slight, don’t have (legal) slavery, etc. Unfortunately change seems to come extremely slowly to us, and the planet is heading to disaster at a very rapid rate.
“Bad people seek power more than good people”, and they are willing to cheat, lie, steal and kill to get it. So bad people are in power and always will be. Just look at our incredibly useless so-called “leaders” (politicians). Ignorant people, who are the majority, make bad decisions, the worst of which is they support bad people. There is only a minority of people who want to save the planet.
I’m not saving they shouldn’t try, I certainly am trying. By the time the majority wakes up one day and finally realizes shit, the alarmists were right all this time it will be too late. It probably already is.
Maybe people will wake up and do the right thing? Just the opposite. Consider one example (of many): fishing and the state of the oceans (which is really, really, really bad). Countries like China know there is a problem, so what do they do? They go after even sanctuary's with even more gusto (and expand their fishing capabilities) guaranteeing the complete collapse of fisheries globally within the next few decades. In the 1980’s Canada closed the “Grand Banks” due to over-fishing. Forty years later the fisheries have not recovered!
History is full of the same behavior. When humans see a resource collapsing, they do not conserve. Instead they try to get as much for themselves as they can while they can, guaranteeing collapse. The truth is just too many people are greedy ignorant short-sighted selfish idiots who act not only against the interests of the planet, but even against their own long-term interests.
Greenland is toast, the Arctic is toast, glaciers around the world are toast, and Antarctica is well on it’s way. Sea level will rise meters this century, resulting in the flooding of many coastal cities and tremendous migrations of people. This will be multiplied by people forced to leave parts of the Earth that will become too hot for human (or mammal) habitation. Not to mention many parts of the world are losing their primary sources of water, glaciers and ground water.
So there will be even more pressure on Earth’s finite resources; our use is already way beyond what the planet can replenish. The result is the environment is toast, and along with it most life on this planet. The populations of almost all species, that are not either human or farmed by humans, are collapsing and have been for a long time. History shows the arrive of humans results in the extinction of many species.
The “canary in the coal mine” has died. The downward spiral is intensifying at an increasing rate. There is a very high chance the next 100 years will be very ugly for us and a complete disaster for all the other living things we share the planet with. Our tortured-for-their-entire-lives farm animals will survive, lucky them.
The chance of run-away global warming is now quite high, and it might ultimately end life on this planet as global average temperatures surpass 100 degrees Celsius.
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