On the bright side, at least their not being called crazy extremists as much as gen x was for pointing this out...
It's insane we lived through Al Gore and all the boomers from both parties saying he was crazy.
We could have avoided 20 years of war, and started fighting climate change before shit got close to this bad.
Yup. I wasn't old enough to vote, but I remember him being mocked for it. There's even a South Park episode about him.
I still think Jr. stole the 2000 election. There's just too many coincidences. He just happened to win a tight recount in the state controlled by his brother? Yea, sure... 😑
Not to mention the Brooks Brothers riot that has paralles to the current wave of people trying to stop vote counts when they start losing.
The 'what-if's?' are endless.
South Park tried to backcycle on it by having an episode where manbearpig is real, albeit many years later, but the damage was already done. Fuck south Park for using their massive platform to propegate dangerous misinformation
Admittedly, to South Park's credit, there's a 2 or 3 parter that is in part about how wrong they were.
But yeah, a history where Gore wins is so tantalizing. Hell, maybe we have a carbon tax!
Sure, but that was more than a decade later. People had time to grow up from pre-teens to voting adults during that time.
Why should I do anything about manbearpig if China isn't doing anything about manbearpig?
That was the peak line from the episode. They just nailed that conservabro character.
How can you look around at the world we are living in and have any hope for the long-term future. I am 39 and had already ditched the notions of children or retirement. But now I am rethinking pets as they can't be guaranteed food and comfort for the next 10+years. We are so screwed. I feel horrible for the younger generations and I believe whatever society exists after the climate reckoning will look back on us as hedonistic monsters.
As someone about the same age, I do understand your concerns, at least in part. And while things look bad, to be frank I think there's also a lot of good to see in the current world.
Traditional values and desires have little place nowadays and are becoming impossible to achieve (though I think a lot of that was true for the boomers as well, they just pretend it's not), but new things are appearing that's good. We're healthier overall than previous generations. We're surrounded with luxuries that previous generations would've considered impossible for the average person to have. We have opportunities abound to find careers, livelihoods, passions, and any number of other worthwhile pursuits that weren't possible even two decades ago.
If you let go of the preconceptions of previous generations, I believe there is a countless number of things that are good now that didn't exist even one generation ago. Maybe having a traditional career, getting married, having children, and owning a home are becoming more and more impossible, but that doesn't mean friendships, hobbies, and any number of other things of value are out of reach.
I don't make a lot of money. I've given up the idea of marrying and having kids. I will never own a single detached house. I don't even see a future where I will ever retire. But I don't think those are reasons to say I am unhappy. I enjoy each and every day, find value in my work, enjoy my hobbies, and have friends, even if some of us argue constantly about our conflicting political leanings. The world now, despite climate change, dictatorships, rich assholes hoarding everything they can, political apathy, insane and transparent corruption, and any number of other horrible things in the world or even in my own city, I think the world now is better than it has been in the past, and will continue to become better.
You just...need to let go of what drove your parents, and find new things to bring you joy that wasn't possible for them. Because there are countless things that are possible now that wasn't even when you were a child.
"dealing with" is a charitable way to describe "pacing around my apartment desperately trying to avoid thoughts of existential dread"
~~concerns~~awareness
You just wait, the more it sinks in, the lower the birthrate will get. Then you'll see what a demographic crisis looks like. And this future is already sealed. The only question is exactly how bad it will get and how our society is going to react to it. Look at the last two large societal shocks that happened in the 20th century for clues.
And on the other side, there are people who want to have kids but can't afford to start a family.
Literally none of my friends from major urban centres had kids until their 30s, and several of them are now aging out of being able to have kids (without being able to afford housing) or facing fertility challenges (now that they're finally in a place to try to start a family).
Them and us in the same boat. But look, it's the same engine driving both the climate crisis and the unaffordability one.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
With catastrophic weather events rapidly becoming the norm each year in Canada and around the world, young people are increasingly worried about their futures.
Speaking to CBC News in Victoria, with a haze of wildfire smoke hanging in the backdrop, Hannah Fessler, 16, expressed worry about people her age left to deal with problems created by previous generations.
Such accounts from teenagers like Fessler and Silva augment research studies that illustrate how climate change is impacting young people's mental health.
As weather events threaten to change entire landscapes in coming decades, experts worry that mental health resources might fall short of meeting people's needs.
The consensus within the Canadian Psychological Association is that the prevalence of climate anxiety will worsen in the next few years, according to a spokesperson for the organization, and there are not enough mental health professionals available to meet this growing need.
It's tough to gauge whether call volumes increase in times of natural disasters, she said, but Martin speculates that a 30-per-cent spike in contacts to Kids Help Phone in June could have been driven by climate change-induced incidents.
The original article contains 1,013 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
We’re going to see WWI levels of PTSD, which they called “shell shock” back then. We’re already breaking suicide records this year so it’s just going to get worse. I have no idea how we are going to fix this.
Shell shock wasn't PTSD. It was actual neurological damage from the concussion of constant artillery strikes nearby for prolonged periods.
Interesting, I hadn’t heard about that. Looks like there’s good evidence to back up that explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock
More antidepressants! /s
Nowadays the line would be "Have you considered MAID?"
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