Please come tell me I'm being unreasonably doomer (hexbear.net)

submitted 9 months ago by BigHaas@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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Alright, so we pump energy into a chaotic system and obviously the extremes will get more exteme. Stronger hurricanse, colder hurricanse and snap freezes, deeper floods, wet bulb events further north than you think possible, whatever. This is the known unknown.

I am existentially afraid of the unknown unknowns. At what point do the phytoplankton I'm currently breathing the poop of have a mass extinction event? All of human civilization is about to drown on dry land and I spend 5 days a week maintaining software that charges people for turning on their lights.

I crave death I crave oblivion death to america death to capitalism death to me.

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[-] BigHaas@hexbear.net 2 points 9 months ago

Let me give a more sober response lol.

The plankton are just an example of a species we rely on. There are dozens of these species, and we know from the recent snow crab die off that mass death events will happen and no scientists can predict them.

I think if we make it another five years without the first massive famine occuring we will be very very lucky. Should this urgency motivate some different tactics? Like maybe we could do something other than book clubs? Idk that's all drunk me was trying to say.

[-] BodyBySisyphus@hexbear.net 3 points 9 months ago

There's plenty of stuff happening that you personally can't predict that might kill you; you're still more likely to die in a car accident than you are in a famine, even with the new risks posed by climate change.

The cold truth of it is there already are famines - East Africa is dealing with simultaneous droughts and locust outbreaks and has been either severely food insecure or in famine since 2020. There will be more famines in the future, and they'll largely impact the already poor areas of the global south who can't afford to easily import food. There'll be production failures in the North as well, but we could take a 50% hit to our food production and still have enough to feed everyone - that's how much we waste. Prices will likely go up, yields will go down, quality will be lower, but we in the North will have enough food for a long time. If it makes you feel better.

Yes we absolutely should be doing more but I imagine those of us who have figured out what to do are out having an adventure-time and not posting about it on Hexbear.