My thoughts exactly. I feel like a day doesn't go by where I learn about another potential problem that could lead to the end of civilization. What's a good way to stack rank / prioritize these issues to know what's most urgent?
I suspect you are seeing the result of a few generations of humans doing exactly what you are proposing and subsequently maybe (with effort) fixing the number one demand. All the other "future huge problems" have become the now huge problems and it doesn't really make sense to rank all the definitely going to destroy our way of life issues because they will all result in the same thing with a similar time frame (way too soon).
I have the same intuition. It’s not all that different from an old codebase that runs on even older (and disintegrating) hardware. You may keep fixing things, adapt to mildly new requirements, change a tape deck here, a consensator there, but eventually the whole system is going to come down and has to be replaced - there’s nothing we know that lasts forever in a self-repairing way, and that’s what’s going to happen to our civilization. Telling by the worms and the beetles my guess is it’s a matter of decades, not centuries, hopefully not years. The only hope is that we’ve wisened up sufficiently till then to renew without completely getting annihilated or being back at cave-and-sticks level.
Climate change has been talked about for decades now, and very little actually seem to be done. What is something you would consider a number 1 that was fixed? (I guess the ozone layer hole was a relative success).
On the drawdown website, refrigeration seems to be #1. Afforestation is up there. Family planning too. But supposedly we have to be doing all of these things on massive scale.
maybe although I got to think that a lot of these environmental issues destroying our way of life way too soon are interconnected, and it perhaps isn't as difficult to rank them as it might seem when viewed as singular unconnected problems.
> There is a goal, but no way; but what we call a way is hesitation.
-- Franz Kafka
And it just occured to me that the following quote expresses exactly what I'm trying to say if you change "loving" to "solving problems impacting poor people and future generations, and not creating them by running away from other problems or just out of sheer selfishness or boredom". I put it like thast because it's already acceptable to "look out for number one", it's just the "irrational" stuff, having caring about people who don't even exist yet, as well as animals and plants that can't even sue us, that we are still having problems with.
> Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all that is necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterward. This attitude can be compared to that of the man who wants to paint but who, instead of learning the art, claims that he just has to wait for the right object - and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it.
- Erich Fromm
Yes, we need big solutions, of course this can't be solved by people just buying a little less and recycling. But still, I kinda feel it's weird to think assume we would do the right thing at large scale, if only we knew the exact right thing to tackle, when we aren't even doing it at smaller (and supposedly easier) scale.
Sorry for basically just posting a bunch of quotes, but now that I thought of it, it just seems too fitting not to:
> A tiger catches a mouse with his whole strength. A tiger does not ignore or slight any small animal. The way he catches a mouse and the way he catches and devours a cow is the same. But usually, although you have many problems, you think they are minor, so you don’t think it is necessary to exert yourself... So even though the problems you have in your everyday life are small, unless you know how to solve them you will have big difficulties.
Not to imply that population isn't going to be an issue (especially since we're likely going to flood a bunch of arable land in the next few decades) but if the graph "Yearly Population Growth Rate (%)" here (http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/) is to be believed, there's been a pretty significant drop-off in world population growth in the last ~50 years and we're certainly nowhere near the exponentially exploding population crisis that people were fearing in the mid 20th century.
The good news is that we'll probably top out around 10-11 billion people. The bad news is that we don't manage to live sustainably even with 7.5, half of which live in utter poverty.
Not non-religious, but other religions - the fact that only -+28% are christians might give some humbleness to those feeling righteous and above all in religious aspects (ie us vs those poor lost pagans mindset).
Since muslims believe in basically the same god it gives you 54% (jews are rather insignificant portion of population). It still means 3.5 billions currently (and historically over 100 billion) are breaking 10 core amendments and should burn in hell eternally (grossly oversimplified obviously).
You can't just bring rationality, common sense or critical thinking into most current religions, they fall apart like house of cards.
I wish there would be some new major religion that would only preach a single thing - be a nice, good person to yourself and every sentient living creature out there. Nothing more required.
Not sure what you mean by that - you seem to be not very politely saying I got the stat wrong? I was referring to the line:
"No Religion affiliation (16%): atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion."
- which I think it's fair to summarize as "non-religious". (And 15.5% are catholic apparently)
edit: ..Although when I was at my most religious, 25 years ago, I didn't 'identify with any particular religion' but felt very close to a number of different ones - Hindu gurus, christian mystics, buddhism of various types, sufis etc.
We’re always 10 years from total annihilation and destruction. You can worry your whole life (tons of people do) or go on with your life. The earth has dealt with far far far worse outcomes in the past and there’s no evidence that it’ll reach that in the newr future.
Problems were fixed because we did stuff about them. The abandonment of cfc gasses was huge. Treaties on fishing and hunting has saved tons of species.
Any single person can probably get away with not doing anything, and the problems will seem to magically go away, but they only do so because some people act. (And usually it takes a lot of people.)
"Total annihilation" may be a bit far-fetched, but what we are much closer to is global war, death and suffering for you, me, and everyone we know.
Just to cover one angle (IMO most likely one): reduced living space (sea rise) and food shortages will cause massive migrations. Think how the whole EU went basically insane over a bunch of refugees from Syria (and the aftershocks still threaten to shake it apart). Climate-change induced migrations will be much larger, and this time around actually backed by countries people are fleeing. Wars are likely. Proxy wars are likely too. And nukes won't be off the table either.
Even if you live so far inland that waters can't get to you, people will. And if you survive that, then lack of people will get to you as the global supply chain stretches to a breaking point and suddenly no one can make anything as all the components came from China. The lifestyle we're all used to depends on global-scale systems with single points of failure.
You're right, the earth has had worse and will be just fine. After all the earth is just a rock, it's not concerned about emissions or life.
It's not the earth anyone needs to worry about, it's the humans. We've not been through worse and our smaller challenges often have catastrophic outcomes.
We’re always 10 years from total annihilation and destruction.
I know people talk in hyperbole to make a point but can you point to any credible source in the last 30 years stating we are close to total annilhilation within the next 50 years? No one doubts the Earth will be fine. The doubt is whether or not human civilization will be fine.
I think an even better way is not even human civilization, of some sort is in doubt.
It's civilization where you get to walk to the store and buy a week's supply of food in exchange for money, and expect to do so the next week just as easily, which is in doubt.
> We’re always 10 years from total annihilation and destruction. You can worry your whole life (tons of people do) or go on with your life. The earth has dealt with far far far worse outcomes in the past and there’s no evidence that it’ll reach that in the newr future.
This got down-voted to hell, which is odd, because it rings true.
The "total annihilation" isn't even that hyperbolic. I've seen comments here on HN that depict our world as under imminent threat of global nuclear war, or that depict our world as suffering from a mass extinction (caused by humans) that will end all life as we know it.
I believe those statements are the hyperbolic ones, and one should be allowed to call them out for that.
"I have the story of a turkey that is fed for 1,000 days by a butcher, and every day confirms to the turkey and the turkey’s economics department and the turkey’s risk management department and the turkey’s analytical department that the butcher loves turkeys, and every day brings more confidence to the statement. So it’s fed for 1,000 days… "
Every day somebody was able (even accidentally) to start the nuclear annihilation of the whole world (hint: it's not "just a president" who can do that, but many, many more): the complex systems and the war plans are actually maintained in which everything happens in just a few hours.
Our statistics that it didn't happen yet is not a proof that an "accident" (oh, sorry, it was an error!) can't very easily happen any moment now.
> Our statistics that it didn't happen yet is not a proof that an "accident" (oh, sorry, it was an error!) can't very easily happen any moment now.
Observing a pond exclusively frequented by white swans in the past is not proof that black swans don't exist, but from that fact alone you cannot derive any reasonable expectation of seeing a black swan upon a random visit to the same pond.
The history-repeating argument, when applied to drunk driving: "so far I've always made it home without killing anyone".
I read a lot about history and the one common thread that appears over and over again is that history is only repeating until it stops doing so. So many cycles that must have seemed eternal to those inside have eventually come to an end. One day, every Cassandra will be right.
The history-repeating argument, when applied to astronomy: "so far, the Earth has revolved around the Sun".
Just to show that the history-repeating argument can be made ad absurdum both ways.
We have ample empirical evidence that drunk driving poses a significant risk of killing someone, hence there should be a non-trival level of expectation of this outcome.
We have absolutely zero empirical evidence as to what actions may trigger a nuclear holocaust, and we're currently not seeing any of the popularly accepted causes for the 5 mass extinctions of the past.
