Okay, my friends, it’s time to talk seriously.
We are screwed, blued, and tattooed. We are so fucked that we can’t see straight.
The vast majority of people are in complete denial about the level of pain coming down the pike.
The combination of climate change and ecological collapse is going to hit us like a high-speed train carrying nitroglycerine derailing in the middle of a oil refinery.
The timing on this shit is unclear. I have seen coherently argued cases that ecological collapse could happen soon. Heck, I’ve seen cases that say it, er, should have happened by now.
But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Combine climate change with the way we have utterly fucked up our management of fresh water, and this is going to lead to, in a reasonable best case scenario, hundreds of millions of deaths, and a billion or so refugees.
The aquifers are being depleted in wide areas in China, India, America, and elsewhere. The groundwater is also being polluted.
No one is prepared and no one is doing sweet fuck all. I get chewed on for being “cynical,” but the people who are not worried are absolute fools and morons: Anyone who cheered the Paris accords on the environment was delusional at best. They had no enforcement provisions. Virtually no one was going to meet those goals AND the goals were insufficient to begin with.
We were told they weren’t going to do enough, and that the signing countries weren’t going to hold themselves to it anyway, and people pretended to believe this BS was going to make the least bit of difference?
Grow the fuck up.
Now, if you are not old or the sort of sick that means your lifespan is shit and your odds of surviving and major catastrophe are crap, or if you care about your children or some other people, you need to start taking this into account in your personal lives.
We are BEYOND STOPPING THIS.
It is too late. Too late.
Tattoo that into your brain.
Even if our governments suddenly were run by people who cared, it would be too late to do anything but prepare and try and reduce how bad it will be.
But they aren’t doing anthing, and they aren’t going to be doing anything soon enough. Heck, soon enough was about ten years ago, and that was optimistic to any sane person. By 2008, I was thinking “Yeah, we’re fucked, but maybe, just maybe, if we act now?”
Frankly, I was delusional. Hope’ll do that to you. Horrible drug. Obviously, our leaders are psychopathic douchebags with the planning ability of mythical lemmings (the real animals are not as stupid as the legend), and obviously most voters don’t take the issue seriously, and obviously nothing was going to be done no matter who was elected.
But, y’know, “hope.”
Alright, hope’s over. It died for me by February of 2009, on a bunch of fronts.
High-speed freight train, carrying nitro. Derailing. In the middle of your life.
I don’t know when this stuff will really hit. Probably someone has made the prediction that is right. But I do know it will hit. I know it will cause major wars between major states. I know it will cause waves of refugees in the millions. I know it will cause vast numbers of deaths.
This is obvious.
So take it into account in your planning of your life. I’m not talking politics in this post, that ship is done. Do what you can at the political level if you want, but I’m talking about your personal survival and that of people for whom you care most.
If you live in the most vulnerable countries and areas (for example, India will be absolutely creamed), take that into account. But also take into account we have a very fragile, just-in-time delivery system.
Are you on drugs? I mean that literally. Legal, psychoactive drugs, or legal, life saving drugs. The US had a major shortage of blood bags due to Puerto Rico getting hit by a hurricane because, hey, they were made there.
We have an intensely locally-concentrated production of materials that are then sent to entire continents and countries through fragile supply chains that end in warehouses that do not hold large stocks, because everything is “lean and mean” and “just in time.” Shocks hit a system like that, and there will be shortages. Medicine, food, fuel, and plenty of other stuff.
So start building in some ability to survive if you care about surviving.
And don’t allow yourself to go all delusional thinking it won’t happen. The best you can hope for is you die before it does. It’s a good bet for some of us. But if you’re young and healthy, or care about people who are, no.
Note: Yes, this post includes swearing. No, as a commenter you still can not swear. Also, comments suggesting that climate change is not real, etc… will not be approved. Further, apologists, that warmer climates are more lush in the long run does not change the short term catastrophic adjustments, where short term means decades to centuries.
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