In the past, we’ve had issues with women suffrage, slavery, and sanitation, among many other things.
Today we have gun control, AI, intended/unintended false information, vaccines, etc. as consistently hot topics.
In a few decades’ time, what views do you have now that may spark major social debate in the future? What conservative and/or progressive stances do you take today that might be too far on either extreme in the far future?
Climate change is real and really fucking shit up (am an Earth Scientist), but I’d be more worried about a global nuclear incident.
Climate change may do us in, but in all likelihood it will just increase the stresses on food and water supplies. Humans are extremely adaptive and will likely persist unless there is a cataclysmic event that kills nearly all food for decades or more. Scarcity of resources will dictate just how populous we will be 20, 10, 1, 0.1, 0.001 billion?
We’ve survived the Pleistocene when the earth was about 6°C cooler. We expanded greatly just after and have continued extremely well through the Holocene, making it our own (now Anthropocene). We’ve inextricably changed the environment for the worse, but it alone will probably not be the action that wipes us out.
This is very good to keep in mind. It doesn’t completely refute my very negative viewpoint, but puts some realistic caveats on it and points out that it is probably unlikely. Thanks.