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.
An informative video from Dr. John Campbell about the increasing number of human deaths beyond what would normally be expected.
To get into a speculative mode: if excess deaths are what the powers that be want, is this enough? If they are, for example, looking to answer Henry Kissinger's question of how to get rid of several billion useless eaters*, the current rate of excess deaths will not reduce the population by several billions for many decades. Since climate change is projected to bring the carrying capacity of the Earth down from well over 8 billion (the current human population of the planet) to as little as one billion by 2050, seven out of eight people may need to die over the next twenty-eight years - and that's not including new births during that time, so the actual number would be even higher. A 90% target death rate would be in keeping with those numbers.
Mass starvation is inevitable under the circumstances. But starving peasants are dangerous peasants in the eyes of the elite. What other means might they employ to bring down our numbers without stirring up revolution? Climate change disasters will play a large part, clearly. Fires, earthquakes, floods, drought...all have their role to play. War, always an effective means of killing off excess population, seems a likely candidate. But it would need to be ramped up enormously from current high levels. A world war would seem in order, and it would need to take place soon.
But even a world war on the scale of the first and second world wars would be grossly inadequate. The first world war caused 20 million human deaths; the second, 50 million. A third world war for population reduction would have to kill 140 times the number of people killed in World War II at least.
This would be an event on par with the extinction of the dinosaurs. The sheer weight of rotting flesh would create disease vectors beyond anything previously seen on the planet. It would be likely to leave the planet effectively uninhabitable for larger mammals for thousands of years.
Sorry, this has been a bit dark. Just thinking out loud.
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* - "The elderly are useless eaters." - Henry Kissinger. quoted in the book The Final Days
Imagine a fight. Two opponents battling. Call one Red and the other Blue, if you like.
If the two are reasonably well-matched, you'd expect to see a fairly close contest. Sometimes one might be winning, sometimes the other. If it's a long battle, the lead might go back and forth many times.
But suppose that one - let's say Blue - suddenly changes their approach. Rather than trying to win, they start fighting a purely defensive battle. They never try to land a blow. At most, they try to make it look like they're trying to win, without actually ever attempting to be a real challenge to their opponent. What happens? The purely defensive side will inevitably be defeated. What was once a fair battle between equals becomes a slaughter and a charade.
Of course you've seen through this metaphor. I'm talking about the American two-party system. Ever since the Clintons and the DLC gained control of the Democratic Party, ever since they shifted their fundraising focus (and therefore their loyalty) from the public and labor groups, the Democratic Party simply stopped...trying...to...win.
Think of the major political and social initiatives of the twentieth century. Child labor laws. Food and drug safety. Environmental protection. The forty-hour workweek. Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid. The New Deal. The Civil Rights Act. The Great Society. The Equal Rights Amendment. Can you name any initiative supported by the Democratic Party leadership after 1980 that even approached the same level of significance?
If so, my comment section is open to you. But I'm not holding my breath.
In modern American history, all the passion, all the aggression, all of the initiative has been with the Republican Party and the financial elite - the 1% - that they (and the Democrats) serve. They want control over every state, every legislature, every branch of government. They want to ban abortion, eliminate environmental protections, wipe unions and labor rights out of existence, ban Muslims from immigrating, build a wall which would rival the Great Wall of China, eliminate the social safety net, shove gays back into the closet, end Social Security, allow unfettered religious discrimination by (but never against) right-wing Christians...the list is endless. And behind it all is the never-ending lust of the 1% for more tax cuts and more cash from the public till.
More. That's what it is. They want more.
And what do the Democrats want? Why, they're just playing defense. They want to preserve those things that the 1% and the Republicans want to destroy. But gosh darn it, they just keep failing. And yet they still keep collecting those big checks from Wall Street. You'd almost think they were losing deliberately!
And that's why it was such a shock when Bernie Sanders announced the first major initiative to expand the public good in decades: his proposal to make public colleges and universities free for students. It's not a terribly radical idea, in hindsight. If we can do it for grades 1-12, why can't we do it for the four years following? And any economist (or anyone with an ounce of common sense) knows that it would be a profitable investment of taxpayers' dollars: a better-educated people produce more, earn more, and pay higher taxes.
And infinitely more important, they form an educated population which is the basis of a successful democracy - and a free nation.
Progressives have lost the habit of asking for more. We've become good at cringing, and panicking, and despairingly trying to salvage scraps from the leavings of the 1%...but we've forgotten that in the end, it's the people who are the majority. Not the 1%. Not the political masters of either party. We have the power, if we choose to use it. All it takes is for the people to wake up.
But they won't be woken by pale, pathetic visions of slightly ameliorating the apocalypse. It takes a grand vision, or better still many of them, to inspire a downtrodden people to rise up and overthrow tyrants. Free college is just the start. Single payer is just the start. Why shouldn't the American public enjoy all of the privileges that our European cousins enjoy? More vacation time. Shorter work weeks.
And more! A guaranteed basic income for all. Proper mental health care for every citizen. And dental. Lifetime educational opportunities - not just mealy-mouthed "job retraining", but education to enrich the soul and improve the mind. We're not just economic units; our lives mean more than money!
