Friday, April 12, 2024

The real issues:

Between climate change and ubiquitous PFA/plastic contamination leading to infertility, the human race faces existential struggles for the next thousand years at least. More likely 5,000 years. And yet no one in power is even willing to consider that simple truth.

The human outlook in the years to come (assuming that our species survives, which is by no means certain) will be very different from modern sensibilities. With a steady decline in human fertility, protecting children will be a primary social obligation. Abortion will become irrelevant except out of medical necessity. War and its concomitant environmental damage will be universally unacceptable, although I fear that we're going to see a lot of wars in the meantime for habitable land (with the zone of habitability moving inexorably towards the poles) and resources.

The food chain will be...well, if we're lucky we'll only lose an incredibly broad range of flavors. Spices and luxuries such as vanilla and chocolate will be stories of legend at best. Local production will be the primary source of nourishment. Knowledge of preservation techniques will be extremely valuable. The worldwide contamination of water supplies will boost cancer levels through the roof. Anxiety and depression will hit levels heretofore unimagined, as will suicide and deaths of despair. The average human lifespan will be shorter than it has for tens of thousands of years.

And none of this was necessary. That's the thing that's hardest to take. Things didn't have to be this way. We knew better.

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