I’m really worried about the state of the US despite being a white male who was I’ll coast right through it. I’ll also accept “I don’t” and “very poorly” as answers

  • @infinitepcg
    link
    11 year ago

    I don’t think this kind of catastrophizing helps. Climate change certainly doesn’t “threaten the fundamental existence of organized human society”. Sure, we should do more about it and future generations would be better off if we were to lessen the impact, but it is not an existential threat.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      51 year ago

      It isn’t catastrophizing when it is about a literal catastrophe which climate change is.

      It absolutely does represent an existential threat to the current and future lives of billions of humans.

      There is also a CATASTROPHIC loss of biodiversity and habitat occurring on earth, there is literally no other word for it and the consequences are so gargantuan it is difficult to wrap your head around. We are living in a mass extinction, which may yet include ourselves.

      • @infinitepcg
        link
        11 year ago

        I agree with your point on biodiversity and yes, climate change poses an existential threat to individual people, but not to civilization as a whole.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          21 year ago

          but not to civilization as a whole.

          facepalm no, I don’t think you understand the magnitude of what is occurring here. I am not going to sit here and argue semantics but suffice to say there is absolutely zero evidence that we won’t wipe ourselves out through habitat loss, collapse of the biosphere and climate change (that themselves cause a litany of other quick and slow moving disasters).

          To think civilization will inevitably make it through this is to understand the human organism as just a single species of ape, not a dizzying constellation of bacteria, viruses, plants, fungus and animals that sustains what we think of as “human”. We destroy that and there is no “us”. We can’t just take the human species and transplant it to mars and expect it to survive without the diversity of all those other species. You might as well pluck out a single ant from a colony expecting it to be able to survive alone.

    • @laverabe
      link
      English
      31 year ago

      Complete ecological collapse by the end of the century isn’t an existential threat?

      • @infinitepcg
        link
        11 year ago

        No, I’m certain that human civilization would survive.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        1
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Not if you loosely define “organized human society”. Imagine a bright future where you just live in your pod and be a happy meatbag that powers the Matrix. Hell, even corporations are “organized human society”.

        Those ghouls are saying we should dim the sun instead of disinvestment in oil.