This is everything I have to say. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.
The global crisis is worse than we predicted.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2115231119
Global warming has been modelled on greenhouse events. But our governments are forcing a greenhouse event within a mini ice-age. Consequently, the perturbations we have already instantiated are far more, and utterly, devastating.
There was another study published this week on bacteria, which have new generations on minute-to-hour timescales (not decade long timescales like eukaryotes), showing a maximum evolutionary threshold of continued flourishing in no greater than two-degree warming.
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/sciadv.abk3511
The ecosystem will not survive the continued assault. And the ecosystem is a house of cards… society has already pulled out the foundations…
When has society ever faced end-stage capitalism with a dying, global ecosystem? And where nothing proportional is being done about it; every country’s electorate are being lied to by politicians who are operating for personal financial gain alone. Financial gains coming from the obscured 0.1%, to maintain the profoundly unequal distribution of wealth.
And this is compounded by a substantial anti-academic movement within the Western World so that science is not trusted… partially because the public education system is insufficient to train adults how to think critically as well as university education being institutionally elitist. Then there is REVERSING laws on individual rights and freedom and upholding questionable, religious tradition; Roe vs Wade and now prominent politicians tweeting that interracial and same-sex marriage is unethical too. This is all too dangerous.
When my teenage single parent mother was at university she was able to get a mortgage for us. But, I’m almost 30 with no savings and renting for more than my parent’s mortgage. The lie that we work hard and get rewarded; I have the equivalent of an Ivy League education and I have struggled with earning more than minimum wage. I was born working class and I will likely die working class. The problem? The only reason we are ever able to retire is the assumption that we can survive on 40-60% of our salary BECAUSE WE HAVE PROPERTY BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. I likely wont be able to retire.
But want to know the kicker? I still need to work and/or study every day (can’t remember the last time I had a weekend off) because there is no way for me to survive otherwise. And I survive. Every day is a battle as I try to build a future for myself which has both financial and emotional security.
What can I be reasonably expected to do to preserve everything which makes life beautiful? How am I supposed to trust that a world which I want to live in will be present in 5-years never mind 30-years? I don’t even want to live in the world as it is now.
The vast majority (99%) of us are trapped in this destructive capitalist nightmare, completely stripped of our dignity and ability to fight for what is good. We are systematically oppressed.
What do we do? Not only long-term, but each day just to keep ourselves going?