This has been a doozy of a year. And it’s the best year so far blah blah. So how are you all coping? Does it hit anyone else like a bolt of lightning that probably I - we - won’t die of old age?
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Yesterday I had a climate change anxiety attack. I came to the conclusion that despite wanting to have children, I shouldn’t because the earth is currently dying underneath our feet. Watching outside my window, a cat I’ve been taking care of brought her litter of kittens to take shelter under my awning, and it had me feeling very bitter, that I would never know the blissful highs and devastating lows of parenthood. All the joy and pain and love that embodies raising a child, past generations have forfeit through destructive environmental/corporate/profit-centered policies.
I was able to calm myself down, oddly enough through a few memes I saw. one of which being an old cunieform tablet that had a transcription of a man from Assyria decrying how the world was falling apart back in 1200 BC. And the second, one of Neil Degrasse Tyson saying simply, “If we can geo-engineer other planets, we can certainly fix our own.”
Made me feel a little more hopeful, that we could still prevent the worst of it, and perhaps fix what we couldn’t prevent.
Still not sure about having kids though. If I still even can, with the level of microplastic in my testes, and PFAS everywhere else.
Kids are very adaptive. They will grow up in this changing world and it will be normal to them. They will grow up instinctively being able to deal with things that we will forever strugle with. Kids are amazing in finding their own solutions, even at a young age.
I think it is much more important to be financially and emotionally able to support a child. You should ask yourself if you are able to do that. You can get financial and emotional support from your environment, many people do that (“it takes a village to raise a child”), but you can’t afford a full blown mental breakdown when you have kids.
I’m not trying to convince you to have children or not, just giving my two cents. There’s probably plenty who disagree, especially in a thread like this, so feel free to ignore me.
In my head, I envision year 2084 as one where humans are isolated mostly to the poles of the Earth, the only suitable farmland left. Where life is nothing like what I would recognize, and we’re merely prolonging the inevitable migration into underground dwellings, away from the harsh barren hellscape of our own creation.
But that’s not the reality. Human beings have the remarkable ability to adapt, and change our environment to suit our needs. I know that there are people smarter than I, that will figure out how to curb, and ultimately roll back the most devastating aspects of our pollution crisis. I know that we will survive, and thrive into the future, even if it means shrinking the population down from it’s current 8 billion.
But today, I can pick any spot on the globe, and find a terrible human caused crisis there, and some conservative politician doing everything in their power to make it worse (and make money off of making it worse). And that just fucking kills me.
It’s devastating. I want to be a mother so badly, but I know I’ll never be able to. It’s not even the fact that I’m infertile. After all I’ve been through my life has just been left too unstable. I’ve been left too unstable. I would love to adopt and raise a kid, but I know deep down I could never provide the upbringing that they deserve. I would just watch in horror as a precious child deals with the consequences of my instability.
We’ve both been afforded far too much trauma. It’s not our fault, but I’ll be damned if I make my problems someone else’s. It’s like, the one thing I don’t want to do. There are other ways to make a positive impact on the world without having children, heck, just look at Mary “Mother” Jones!
You won’t even adopt?
If I were in a better place financially/emotionally, I ABSOLUTELY would.
Same.
I don‘t. I‘m accepting that i, as an individual, will not be able to impact it and so i‘m pretty much going with it. Humanity will survive, thats for sure but i make sure to make the most of it in the time where it‘s still bearable.
I think I’m on an accepting phase too.
I’ve been through a lot personally and emotionally since I started reading about collapse 9 years ago.
I had a look at this publication a few years ago, it put me in a rough place for a few days.
Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model
Humanity will survive I’m certain of it, however our thermo industrial civilization will not and most of the people currently living in the planet will not.
It will happen whatever I personally do.
The best I can do now is to find ways to have the happiest life I can using as little ressources as possible for my family, my community (neighbors, friends …) and me. It’s a process that forces us to reassess a lot of things we were doing but it is fascinating.
Practically it means finding ways to lower our monthly expenses, try to consume local as much as possible and learning a lot of new techniques…
I am educated in science and I do not think humanity will survive, no. Most megafauna will probably die out. There are ~10 planetary boundaries and we’ve crossed a lot of them. Earthquakes and volcanoes will start picking up. AMOC collapse could be as soon as 2025.
Can you please elaborate on what you mean by “educated in science”?
Then you should recall that some of the largest megafauna ever lived for tens of millions of years at much higher temperatures(and therefore sea levels)
At higher temps that changed over thousands of years gradually. This is not that. And that’s even if “high temp” was the ONLY planetary boundary being crossed. It is not. There are numerous SIMULTANEOUS extinction events happening. Amd we know megafauna isn’t serving this time because we are in the middle of a major extinction event already. Millions of sea life and millions and millions of birds and insects are dead already, from being boiled alive in the ocean to starvation to pollution to bird flu.
Extinction of individual unfit species doesn’t mean the total collapse of life.
Individual unfit species like ALL birds and ALL insects and ALL sea life and ALL fish? Not including ALL corals and ALL trees (forest fires). Lol what’s left, really? In terms of biomass, that’s like, most of it.
That we are in an extinction event is widely known in the scientific community.
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2023/09/human-driven-mass-extinction-eliminating-entire-genera
^There, read up. Sorry to break the news to you.
like ALL birds and ALL insects and ALL sea life and ALL fish?
Where does it say that???
Not including ALL corals and ALL trees (forest fires).
Coral life is dying for the most part, but not everywhere
Global forest area loss has significantly slowed, and seems to be continuing to go down
Wildfires are not a significant risk to global forest coverage.
What I mean is that ALL species in those categories are affected. It’s not 1 or 3 species, it’s affecting literally every species across those Phylla. Your claim was that is was a few unfit species. It’s not, it’s all the species.
Several tree species in the US are undergoing extinction due to forest fires, including the Redwoods: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/23/extinct-tree-species-sequoias/
The coral thing you posted is kinda laughable, sorry to be rude when you’re facing total annihilation of most life on this planet, but I have been chuckling about that for a couple of minutes. https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-confirms-4th-global-coral-bleaching-event
“From February 2023 to April 2024, significant coral bleaching has been documented in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of each major ocean basin,” said Derek Manzello, Ph.D., NOAA CRW coordinator.
“Climate model predictions for coral reefs have been suggesting for years that bleaching impacts would increase in frequency and magnitude as the ocean warms,” said Jennifer Koss, director of NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP).
The 2023 heatwave in Florida was unprecedented. It started earlier, lasted longer and was more severe than any previous event in that region.
NOAA made significant strides to offset some of the negative impacts of global climate change and local stressors on Florida’s corals, including moving coral nurseries to deeper, cooler waters and deploying sunshades to protect corals in other areas.
(Do you see how NOAA was unable to fix the root cause of bleaching at any level? This is our governments failing us)
Global forest area LOSS has slowed. Meaning how much we are losing is going down, but we are still losing it.
Boreal forests in regions all over the world have been experiencing the worst wildfires in recorded history in 2023, according to new research.
The total wildfire emissions for 2023 is estimated to be almost 410 megatonnes, the highest on record for Canada by a wide margin, according to the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service dataset, which provides information on the location, intensity, and estimated emission of wildfires around the world. The previous annual record was set in 2014 at 138 megatonnes of carbon.
It isn’t even close to the end of 2024 fire season so I gave an article from 2023.
AMOC collapse could be as soon as 2025.
No. I also read that. There was a prediction that AMOC collapse might be inevitable by 2025 and take a couple centuries to happen.
We have pretty good evidence the currents are slowing, but no real data to predict if and when it might stop. A couple researchers made a prediction that is not currently accepted by the field. It’s just pretty dire, but would affect a few generations from now even if true
No, it won’t take a couple of centuries to happen, you misread. The collapse will most likely happen before 2050 according to new research which speeds up the timeline on the old research. The various environmental fields do actually agree on this and it’s accepted.
The impacts of an AMOC collapse would leave parts of the world unrecognizable.
In the decades after a collapse, Arctic ice would start creeping south, and after 100 years, would extend all the way down to the southern coast of England. Europe’s average temperature would plunge, as would North America’s – including parts of the US. The Amazon rainforest would see a complete reversal in its seasons; the current dry season would become the rainy months, and vice versa.
That means the collapse will happen, with immediate consequences as well as consequences that won’t stabilize for over 100 years, not taking into account other destabilizing forces. Like can you read?
Nothing you quoted even says it will happen, much less that the effects will be immediate
Uh, what? Earthquakes and volcanoes due to climate changes?
Earthquakes and Volcanic Activity has been tied to sea level and air pressure changes. So one leading theory is that climate changes will more likely than not cause more activity, however the last year has shown no such changes yet Source on last year activity
Why are you such a doomer?
Lol no you’re the poopy-butt!
Do you see how silly ad hominems are? Do you want to talk about something substantial? Or would you like to continue your tantrum because you don’t think the same as I do?
Humanity will survive
…will it though?
Yes, don’t be ridiculous
Nah. It’s only been around a very, very short time and it won’t remain much longer despite probably being one of the longer stints the planet’s seen of life so far. We should still get to punch MAN into the high score screen and be seen by other players later on, like we saw with DNO.
Some humans somewhere will survive. We’re the most adaptable and intelligent species on the planet
We are the most intelligent, not the most adaptable by a long shot.
That also doesn’t guarantee anything, we are smart not capable of impossible feats of magic. If the situation is irreversible that’s what it is and you die. The end.
We’re the most adaptable and intelligent species on the planet
Which makes all the other life on earth really sad if you think about it. /s
It’s easy to fall into doomerism, but the truth is we are incredible in taking immediate dangers head on. We just happen to be shit tier in doing something against anything vague in the future. A human TPK, without tapping into SciFi, is out of the question.
My guess is humanity will, but society probably won’t, at least not in or near it’s current form.
Where did you get the idea that you’re not going to die of old age?
Depends on the rapidity of the onset of the negative effects of climate change. If it’s slow, we’re gonna lose a lot of people, but we’ll be able to preserve some form of civilization. The worst affected will be the usual poorer people and those who can’t geographically escape the heat for whatever reason.
Worst scenario is rapid onset that disrupts the global network of food, energy, manufacturing, medicines, materials, etc. that literally keep everything working. If that goes tits up in an uncontrolled way just plan on losing a very significant chunk of the world’s population very fast. At a certain tipping point we also lose the people that know how to make things work. Modern society works because we have the ability to free some people from manual labor and subsistence existence to take on highly specialized learning. From fixing the grid, to doctors, to IT specialists, to the academics that teach these specialists. Lose enough of them and you lose the knowledge of how to do anything that makes modern civilization work.
So it all depends on your views if you think you’ll make it to old age. Do you think the world will collapse quickly or will it be a controlled descent? It certainly doesn’t look like we’re going to solve a damn thing regarding anthropogenic climate change, much less reverse anything, and we’re already stuck facing the damaging climate changes we started.
If it’s slow, we’re gonna lose a lot of people, but we’ll be able to preserve some form of civilization.
Assuming this is the best case scenario, are you willing to make a prediction about number of deaths by a certain year?
The reason I ask is because I think climate change alarmism is an unscientific, nonfalsifiable system of beliefs that don’t match reality.
And part of that is that people never make solid predictions. They resist it. Are you willing to make a solid prediction with an actual timeline on it, given this is your best case scenario?
It certainly doesn’t look like we’re going to solve a damn thing regarding anthropogenic climate change, much less reverse anything, and we’re already stuck facing the damaging climate changes we started.
Yeah we’re definitely not going to reverse climate change.
As far as I can tell, the main disrupting effects of climate change are going to be higher sea levels. So lots of people will have to move, or protect their cities with dikes.
There will be more farmland than before, given the effects of CO2 on plant growth.
I don’t see any scenario where it leads to a collapse of civilization.
Hah, you’re ridiculous.
We can’t even predict the weather yet you want me to give you timelines for climate change impact and entire geopolitical and worldwide logistical systems. Not even supercomputers can predict that.
Congrats on your manufactured, pseudo-intellectual “gotcha”. Why don’t you go learn about chaotic systems and the study of anthropogenic climate change and make your own predictions…
Oh, and for the record, if we’re all cheering about redrawn beachfront property being the worst of it in a century I’ll eat my hat. If I’m right, well…you’ll probably be hungry enough to eat yours.
Warmer seas = more energy in the seas = bigger storms, bigger droughts etc. that’s what we’re seeing already and will be getting worse in the near term. Sea levels - we don’t know enough about the deep structure of Antarctica to put a timeline on. Recent discoveries have shortened thinking as there was liquid water in areas we didn’t expect.
Youre a certifiable idiot.
100mg Fluvoxamine and 5-10mg Diazepam a day seems to be working for me.
I’ve been doing occasional psilocybin and hedonism and that’s been pretty good so far
I really wanna try psilocybin. Like so much I’m thinking about growing it myself, just for one time, ego-shattering trip to break this cycle.
Sure, or even if you want to just microdose your first time, it’s super worth it. It’s pretty fun imo
My issue is trying to get my hands on it. I’m hopeful the up-and-coming trials of this, ketamine, and the like prove overwhelmingly successful, and quickly. I’m drowning in my own to-do list!
It grows wild on the Oregon coast along the beach grass basically as soon as it rains in the fall (maybe give it a week or two of rain) throughout winter. It is decriminalized here in Oregon so not illegal for me to tell you this, either :)
You can also legally order spore kits, which I recommend for a beginner, if you’re growing yourself.
Thank you for the information. I may try my hand at growing it if I’m feeling brave this fall!
I make myself the change I want to see in the world so I can live and die with a refreshing feeling of superiority.
I love it! Change the world for the better… out of spite XD
The world is fucked but apparently people like to live the way they do, so I expect worst shit.
Edit: I have to admit I believe there are worst shit why people will not die old.
Badly. Really, not much more that I can say about it. The future terrifies me.
At least you can acknowledge it’s real at some level 😭
We live on an ocean-going sailboat. We make our own water and electricity. We have ~25 years of membranes, filters, and most parts. While we have the means to move around to cooler climes, going further northward means more severe storms and shorter working life of everything. So there’s that consideration.
Having the escape hatch of the boat does a lot to ease the anxiety.
Other coping mechanisms:
- fixing people’s bicycles for free and evangelizing micro-mobility
- monitoring and mapping marine health in maritime communities (kelp, fish counts, bottom conditions); yes this is “just” monitoring, but one measurement is worth 1000 opinions and hopefully helps to move the needle on getting everyone to pull together on environmental protections
- community education on aeroponics and micro-hydroponics
- community support on emergency preparedness
I’m sure I’m skipping over some of my other copium prescriptions, but those are the most salient.
I love this guy
Wow that’s amazing, do you have social media I can follow?
Our social media and blog are severely neglected, in large part because of surveillance and chokepoint capitalism (see: Cory Doctorow). But this would probably be the best entry point into our socials: https://youtube.com/@svcascadia
Hopefully you can evolve some webs on your feet for better swimming after we all live in Water World.
This thread is ridiculous
We had the same idea. Even ended up living on an old 37’ for about a year… then we popped the stern tube during an engine test (40 years worth of copper corrosion)…
Well you can imagine what that was like. It was only through sheer dumb luck that we saved literally everything we own. That coupled with some expensive engine repair and we ended up spending the cost of the boat again in repairs.
There’s more to the story but ye, we live in a house now.
This is not to discourage any one btw, just pick your boat better than we did. Also, you need to be really into DIY or really rich, because God damn, boat stuff is expensive!
Weed mostly
My girl 🫶
I still try my best to do what I can. But at the same time I’ve come to terms with the fact that we’re all fucked and everything I’m doing is pointless. But I’d rather do what I can and strive to do better than give up and make things worse. I have completely selfish reasons for doing my part and it’s literally just because I’d feel like an asshole.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw
I found this video to be helpful in putting things in perspective. Basically, despite all the news, we are making progress and it is a priority. Technology is improving really fast to the point where renewable energy is actually the more economical choice.
A lot of companies are actually making an effort to implement more green policies. I work for a tech company, and a lot of discussions revolve around energy efficiency and performance per watt.
Remember that climate change activists want to make the world seem much worse than it is. That’s their “job” after all - to raise awareness and attention. It doesn’t mean what they are saying isn’t true, just that you should view it as them putting a negative lens on it.
Personally, I worry about many things, but not really climate change. With most issues there conflict between two groups. But I think most people generally think climate change is a real thing, even if they disagree on its priority.
It already is worse. The number of extinctions in the last few years alone is heartbreaking.
I don’t think that activists want it to seem worse than it is. I think they’re trying to wake us up from sleepwalking collectively into disaster. The ones I listen to seem pretty measured.
I found this video to be helpful in comforting me. It minimized all those scary truths those pesky scientists keep bringing up. Once you find just the right take you can be on the bandwagon but with zero responsibility and accountability!
This is why the moderates will be first.
I didn’t say that.
My point was that saying “nothing is getting better and everything is terrible” is doing a great disservice to all the hard work of people actually working on solving this issue. There’s certainly a lot of work that still needs to be done.
There are three lenses on how to look at the world:
- The world is awful.
- The world is much better.
- The world can be much better.
These need not be mutually exclusive and you are limiting yourself if you only focus on the world through one of these lenses.
I should minimize the hard hard work and message of the others to protect the feelings I think they have. Then, I should create a strawman argument.
No, apathetic moderate. You’re the greater obstacle.
Eh. I do what I can where I can. It’s something I’m trying to get better at accepting about myself. No use sressing about things I have little influence over.
Given all the arguments I’ve been in online, I’d hardly describe myself as “apathetic” though. :P
Dude, don’t waste your energy on this guy.
I’d hardly describe myself as “apathetic” though
I believe you’re heart’s in the right place. I’ll write a sincere response, though it’s deep meta.
Given all the arguments I’ve been in online
If you ever feel like that alone isn’t the best thing for you then the rest of my message could apply.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
The individual who wrote the line above called it the “great stumbling block in (our) stride toward freedom”.
I do what I can where I can.
One thing you could choose to do is read his words in the context he wrote them, think about how the themes apply to almost everyone today, then target specific individuals with good questions.
How dramatic, nothing this year is out of the ordinary.
People crying that during the summer it gets hot? Ridiculous.
Lol
I’m hoping you just forgot an /s. But just in case, there’s nothing ‘ordinary’ about it. Unless you are talking about the ‘new ordinary’.
I just distract myself by focusing on how my life is falling apart. Occasionally I’ll distract myself from my crumbling life by stressing about how the world is burning.
I just feel like the world burning is going to become how my life is falling apart very soon
We have solar and a plug in hybrid car. I try to support small local businesses. We moved to a place with historically cooler weather above sea level. I vote in all the elections I can. I keep up with the town planning board and try to influence towards car independence. I stay hydrated, wear natural fibers, and try to buy used when I can.
I become a stauncher anti-capitalist every day, since capitalism and its unsustainable and literally impossible aim of infinite growth, and the greed and corruption it encourages, is why climate change is not only happening but also not being treated seriously, and abolishing it is the only hope we have of dealing with the damage climate change will bring and try and minimize it going forward (since its past the point of stopping it entirely).
The whole point of those responsible shifting blame on to individuals who have nothing to do with the decisions that got us here, nor the profits they make, is to get you to the point you’re at now - hopelessness which leads to inaction, or desperation that leads to futile action (like banning straws or paying to reduce your “carbon footprint” - a term they made up for this exact purpose, and so on, all of which are there to make sure you’re criticising your neighbour for their recycling habits instead of the companies that say they’re recycling and get paid to but really send the garbage directly to landfill, or to a developing nation already drowning in western trash).
What you actually need to be is angry and focused, to ensure your anger is aimed at the right people and the systems they uphold that got us here. Those systems are not natural or inevitable or immutable, they are artificially created by and for the benefit of a really small group of humans, a group we could easily be rid of if we actually united to do so.
This could have been written by me. I despise capitalism, capitalists, and if I could, would ensure that every company knowingly polluting or harming people or the planet would be dissolved and their boards put in jail, or worse. I have always hated capitalism, I’m realizing, the older I get, and learning how many of these companies KNEW the consequences of their greed makes me even more radicalized against it.
We glamorize wealth hoarding and that baffles me. I have a 4yo son. I see in him the same things I see in these capitalists. I give him what he wants, say a scoop of ice cream. I get some for myself, maybe a different flavor, and he asks for mine. He gets upset when I tell him to enjoy what he has and that I want to enjoy my ice cream too.
Recently, we got into LEGO and I will be building something, usually just fucking around, and I’ll start to make something cool. He’ll come up and want it. Even with other blocks, it’s what little I have that he wants. Sometimes, there is no amount of persuasion to allow me to continue what I’m doing.
I’m convinced that greed is just a regression/stopping of cognitive development to the level of a child. I would pity these capitalist fuckers if they weren’t destroying the planet and our lives for their greed.
Makes me think, sure, go ahead, build that bunker to escape the disaster you [capitalists] created. Nature may not be able to get in that easily, but people didn’t become the apex hunters of this planet from giving up. Persistence will reap what you have sowed.
I honestly believe that billionairism is a mental illness and should be treated as such. Involuntary confinement and treatment, because they’re a danger to others.
