This seems to be a very US specific outlook on things that most western countries have long since figured out. Extreme poverty, lack of health care, lack of social safety nets - all self-inflicted in the US. Take for example the recent closings of hospitals in rural areas of red states that have refused Medicaid expansion due to extreme political polarization [1]. It doesn't have to be that way, especially in a country as wealthy as the US.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/29/upshot/a-sense-of-alarm-a...
I wouldn't call WW3 a fix (short term anyway).
Even a small nuclear exchange would have devastating ecological consequences [0]
[0] "Radioactive fallout from these weapons’ debris clouds would reach the stratosphere, where it would travel worldwide, potentially contaminating crops and livestock as well as causing radiation sickness and cancer directly. Later, this fallout would cause genetic mutations in plants, animals and human beings, as it has in the vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear accident."
From: https://medium.com/freeman-spogli-institute-for-internationa...
Also, if we're talking about a world after the exchange of thousands of ICBM's I'm not sure how much relative impact the melting down of the world's nuclear power plants would have.
The problem has been considered before, though probably as a general safety issue rather than trying not to further irradiate a barren world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety
Nah, I doubt it. War is bad for business, and the global economy needs peace in order to extract maximum profit. Best to keep those wars to little backwater countries so we can keep spending trillions on mega-high-tech weapons without really disrupting the flow of money to bigcorp.
I don't really think it's helpful to talk about "the" problem, there's a big mess of coupled systems and most "moves" available to us have unpleasant side effects or unknown side effects on global or long-term time scales. we have a limited time and resource window where moves are still available.
I think what we're seeing with government's moving more right wing is the first step of this. These people are already operating on this assumption and plan on being the ones doing the telling.
And your comment is not only extremely insightful, it is exactly right - the current global political climate is a populist reaction by people tiring of being told by elites what they should and should not have and what they should and should not believe.
All of the fixes being proposed are, if we are honest, some form of rationing or another. That will necessarily reduce the quality of life of a large group of people, and they won't accept that no matter how strongly bureaucrats insist they should.
So such insistence will need to be backed by force, because it will be resisted by force.
I'm not sure this is true. It used to be socially acceptable to smoke in offices and inside, but attitudes changed. Now fewer and fewer people smoke tobacco in the UK at least. Even drinking is seen as uncool, with around 20% of 18-24 year olds saying they don't drink at all IIRC. I think a similar change in attitude could occur so people make ecologically-minded decisions.
A few ideas I've heard that I agree with are also:
* The Earth and ecosystem should have legal rights and be legally represented & defended in courts to oppose industries like e.g. fracking/mining/deforestation, etc., not as an after thought, but in terms that the Earth is its own legal entity and therefore ultimately owns itself and major industry would require approval from a group of trustees acting on behalf of the Earth.
* Companies should be legally responsible for putting the environment before shareholder profits (i.e. not be run for the benefit of shareholder, but for the benefit of the environment)
* Governments should pay people to keep trees on their land - not just landowners, but people who would fell the land. Maybe this would be some combination based on land ownership/licencing rights (e.g. tenancy) and universal basic income. This would probably need to be an international effort because e.g. we all benefit from the South American rainforests, not just people who live in close proximity to them.
It won't be simple to decide how to implement the above ideas, but we need to value the environment far more instead of just unsustainably stripping resources so a few people can make a fast buck. The idea that just because you own some land (or it's the commons) that you can do whatever you want with it needs to end. But whatever we decide, it is clear we need widespread, dramatic, global changes in our behaviour now.
At the time I'm reading this comment, the parent is not downvoted. The guidelines ask you not to obsess about downvoting in comments, because it's boring/repetitive, and often turns about to be moot, when the comment ends up being voted back into the black, which is often the case.