I think that the first 20 to 30 years will be very difficult for humanity. There is a distinct reactionionary movement that is blocking or even reversing progress needed to fix various problems (including, but not limited to climate change, destruction of ecosystems, housing problems and the world population aging beyond sustainablitiy). It will get very messy.
After the boomer generation has died out as well as my own (GenX-er here), humanity can hopefully look forward again. As I age, I really think that it is our two generations that are blocking progress. As millennials and Gen Z ages, they will hopefully learn from us how not to do things.
I just don't see how. They are equally indoctrinated into the societal constructs that are creating the problems. The "boomers" were equally and imperfectly against the negative operating principles of their society when they were younger. They got played. Now we are faced with even more powerful special interest group (the ultra rich), with even less checks and balances than during the past 80 years. And now we're getting played too
Pretty pessimistic, short term (the next decade or two.)
I am optimistic about socialism and anarchism very long term (the next 100-1000 years,) maybe just because I try to remain hopeful on stuff like this.
Humanity has created some incredible things, we have so much potential to be a boon for the planet, for the animals, and for each other. But we must oust Capitalism, corporatism, statism, and fascism to even have a chance.
Realistic. The world will be fine, not so much for most of the lifeforms that currently populate it. Earth has gone through evolutionary resets before. The existence of deep sea hydrothermal vents with methane loving organisms means that Earth will most likely NOT become like Venus, even when all feedback loops run their course. The carbon released and washed into the oceans will feed the species that produce oxygen, just as it has before.
Both. I do believe that “communism will win” as an inevitability (with one big caveat, see below). Capitalism obviously is unsustainable and rife with internal contradictions that can only lead to its eventual demise. The obvious and broad example being that it requires infinite growth on a finite planet. But I think it can get very bad before it gets better, and expect it will further devolve into fascism (much more so than it already has) for most if not all of the western world, and the entire world will suffer as a result. Socialism, then communism will eventually emerge (since fascism is just as doomed by its contradictions as capitalism is), but before we get there, I expect there is going to be some truly unimaginably dark and horrible times on the way there. So in that sense, I am ultimately optimistic about the future of the world, but extremely pessimistic about its more immediate future.
But now for the caveat. I think that most people, even leftists, don’t fully appreciate how much climate change is going to reshape the world. There is a real chance that it will get bad enough that civilization may not survive, that humanity as a species will be among the many that don’t make it through the mass extinction we’ve only just entered. Even people fully on board with knowing climate change is bad and must be curtailed as much as possible as soon as possible still mostly don’t realize how much a genuine existential threat it is on a planetary scale, on a scale of centuries and longer. It is by no means a certainty, but given the feedback loops we don’t fully understand and definitely don’t know how to interrupt, there is a possibility of Earth even going the way of Venus. Obviously I hope that’s not the case, but it would be a mistake not to recognize the extreme potential of climate change. If we are able to mitigate it in time, I am like I said, ultimately optimistic. But I am beyond afraid that we won’t be able to mitigate it in time.
In other words, it’s not just “socialism or barbarism,” it’s socialism or annihilation.
there is a possibility of Earth even going the way of Venus
Not in the next few hundred million years - fortunately we can make the Earth inhospitable for human life well before the planet cannot sustain any life.
Well… nerd Earth becoming more like Venus is an inevitability in the high hundreds of millions of years (and for scale, multicellular life has been around for roughly 5-600M years, with the more than 3 billion before that just being simple single-celled prokaryotic life), but that is completely independent of anthropogenic climate change, it is because of the expansion of the sun towards it’s red giant phase. In terms of being habitable to life, Earth is easily past the half-way mark already, no matter what. However, that is far enough out that it doesn’t bear worrying about and isn’t something we can have any sort of impact on.
That said, the climate change that we as a species are causing right now could lead to a runaway greenhouse effect on much shorter time scales. The fact is, there have been times in Earth’s history where it has been so hot that complex life could mostly only survive at the poles (with the equator being a death zone to all but simple, single-cellular extremophiles) and there have been times where Earth was encased almost entirely in ice except perhaps at the equators - not just our usual conception of an ice age, but “snowball earth,” and this was likely caused by certain forms of simple life, fascinatingly enough. The feedback loops we are triggering right now have a potential to drastically change the composition of the atmosphere on a far shorter timescale, one in which we are talking about an end to most complex life (obviously ourselves included). It was almost certainly volcanism that caused Venus to go from a mostly habitable planet to the completely, utterly inhospitable world it is. Volcanism has also been responsible for extreme heat and mass extinctions on Earth, but obviously it never tipped over into Venus-like territory. The thing is, right now we’re changing the atmosphere at a rate far faster than volcanism has in the past! And rate of change matters a lot with this kind of thing. I’m repeating myself, but again, it is not a certainty but it is a possibility that anthropogenic climate change could hit tipping points that Venus-ifies Earth on a much shorter, nearer term than anything relating to the expansion of the sun, on time scales that are worth worrying about (if we value humanity as a whole), and is the sort of thing we can have an impact on.
Then you need to do more reading because I did work in this field and have read the science on it as well. First all, you have to take into account what time scales are being discussed. What you’re reading is, I’m all but certain, just talking about the coming few decades, in which yes, millions at least will likely die. And even then the science that tends to reach the public is toned down, pacified, and doesn’t represent the whole truth. You should be familiar with this as a communist trying to get an understanding of what’s really going on with the world via popular journalism. Is what you’re reading about “catastrophic weather events” also discussing what will be happening 1000 years from now? 10,000? Despite the longer scale, what we are doing right now and in the coming decades will have an effect on those longer scales. Climate change is so much more than simply an intensification of weather events. It is literally a rapid change to the composition of our atmosphere. An atmosphere which has, by the way, been completely altered by life in one of the most chemically fundamental ways possible, from a reducing atmosphere to an oxidizing one. This is what I mean when I say even many leftists just do not understand how extreme the risks are here. A runaway greenhouse wouldn’t just kill a billion, it could well end our species and most other species of “higher lifeforms.”
Pessimistic/realistic. There’s lots of pollution, most food is low quality because it’s cheaper to manufacture and aiming for looks rather than increasing quality raises profits. Technology is specifically made to be hard to repair and has set lifespan plus all the licensing and subscriptions. No privacy. Everything moving to cloud for even more control. Corporations have way too much power and can get away with almost anything. Supermarkets can be more and more expensive without signing up for their loyalty programs. Education is stuck in the past. …
Very pessimistic. Besides the current problems like wars and Trump becoming the next president of the USA (which as a European citizen really scares me), climate change is going to fuck over human scociety big time in my life time. Well, it already is but still humanity as a whole is doing jack shit about it. Giant oil companies keep digging for new oil and gas, the best selling cars are unnecessarily huge SUV’s, planes are still being subsidized rather than trains, humanity keeps eating meat, plastic usage and production is barely going down.
The current problems the news is full about don’t really matter in the long run when we’re literally making our planet unliveable and humanity is clearly still denying it.
The plan just seems to be more standard American bullshit. Which would happen no matter who was president. Remember how genocide Joe was going to save democracy? Instead the creepy bastard murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
There was four years of Trump and nothing particularly bad happened.
Except that time a million and a half people died and literally the whole country had to stay inside collecting unemployment and washing our groceries while all of his followers got super amped up and violent because they weren’t (always) being allowed to make things worse
And that little bonus surprise at the end and how a sizable portion of the country including some important judges hates elections and anyone who makes them happen now
According to the GIEC (IPCC) report if nothing changes, and nothing is changing as you remarkably said, the fall of our society will start in 2040 because of food shortages due to the climate.
2000 fucking 40! It’s tomorrow. I am destroyed by this future and really don’t understand corporate and/or politicians.
I still have friends making babies and not think that their life will be miserable in less than 20 years.
I think that’s the one yes. Decreased food yield from 2040 to 2099 onwards.
Also, even if I’m not into that, an old fart like Nostradamus or something like that (I don’t remember his name) wrote at the time that humanity will be greatly reduced around the first part of the 21th century. And now scientific studies more or less agree with that.
I have hope that humanity will change, I have zero hope that the ones who can do things (industries, huge corporations, rich peoples, politicians) will do something.
Apparently it’s better to die seated on unused billions rather than having a living world for your kids.