Some of your list looks like entitled anxiety desperately in search of sympathy. For example you mention rising sea levels. Do you own ocean front property or did you just list that for some abstract reason? In most countries corruption is at record low levels. Wages are also at record high levels.
I know some nice Dutch people :)
I agree that we need balance in everything, but it's not too far fetched to think climate change will lead to mass refugee movements and result in a pretty turbulent world.
Rising sea levels will kill and or displace millions of people. That's heartbreaking for those who care.
Lying to get into office and pursuing legislation that is supported only by moneyed special interests are probably both corrupt things a politician can do, and they certainly erode trust in the government. But the don't get tallied up in the same way quid-pro-quo bribes do.
In many places and times, governments have been pervasively corrupt, so that for example, in practice you will never get a drivers license or a building permit unless you first bribe the inspector or officer who needs to award the permit. This type of corruption is on the decline in almost every country. To my (limited) knowledge it has been relatively rare in the USA throughout its history.
As for the rising sea level, thus far not mentioned in this whole branch of the comment tree is the fact that it's going to cost us all money. There have been billions of dollars deployed/invested in port infrastructure. It wouldn't even have to end up being submerged, to become unusable by some number/type of ships. That in turn either requires modifying/rebuilding/relocating (costs money), or reducing/rerouting/cutting off flows of goods (raises prices, costs money).
Not that that's a reason to get particularly depressed; the alienation is mostly what's doing that. But the economic precarity doesn't help matters.
Both of those (social isolation and a steady stream of bad news imbued with a desperate urgency and importance) would tend to discourage and depress normal human beings!
You have to look at it from a statistical angle. What percentage of population is capable of not falling prey to sophisticated machine learning algorithms which optimize for engagement rather than the user's well-being?
You are still commenting here for some reason. Does this bring any value to your life?
For one thing, "rising sea levels" is often used as a symbol, representing all the varied consequences of global warming, the most depressing of which may be global ecological turmoil, so you might consider taking it less literally.
For another, rising see levels are going to wipe some island countries off the map and displace a quarter of the Bangladeshi population, among other things. It doesn't seem unreasonable to be dismayed by the social unrest that will surely accompany those events.
Fascinating. It's good to see someone like you admit the lying.
Or maybe you slipped and let your guard down. This is probably a relatively safe place to do so. Average people don't read HN, so they'll never find out.
The problem with lying is that there are only two explanations: either your claims can't withstand honest scrutiny, or everyone's too stupid to understand the truth, so you have to fool them. History is littered with atrocities committed by those who believed the latter.
In your case, which is it?
Those same ancestors are still sticking around, living in those houses, and demanding tribute in the form of medicare and welfare payments (2/3rds of the federal budget).
I'm only saying this to spark and extend discussion: but a society in which Euthanasia is mandatory at age 80, with housing and monetary resources freed up for younger generations, is likely to be a happier and better place to live.
Alternatively we greatly limit immigration (including cross-border) - to only the most skilled and intelligent immigrants - and we create some kind of huge carrot/stick to get older people out of big houses and into smaller, managed apartments. A comprehensive land value tax, with discounts for families with children under 16, could solve this.
Another term for this is 'trolling'.
Millenials and Gen Z don't want optimism and hope. We want the other generation to be as frustrated and angry as we are.
That'd bring about change. Well, quite recently it did, but change in the wrong direction.
I'm on the older end of the Millennial generation, and everywhere I look things are heading pretty rapidly in the right direction. Sure, millennials aren't the top political priority, but that age range isn't ever the top priority, so it can't be the cause of this wide spread pessimism.
I mostly agree with you about social media, but I would add news and how news interacts with social media. Once the news figured out how to get the most views by really ramping up the hate/anger/fear, and were able to track that to the extreme, it really destroyed the way people get information. Every day is just more rage-bait fueled by this news/social media cohort.
[citation needed]
Global CO2 emissions are nowhere near peaking, let alone shrinking.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
Do you realize that the most optimistic projections in climate change papers already assume massive improvements in these technologies? They also assume massive carbon extraction technologies working at global scale that don't exist yet. Even these optimistic scenarios have dire consequences, and we're not on track to hitting these at all.
If it were a matter of "small improvements in over time", the tech would be sufficient, but it's more like we need to reduce double digit % of CO2 emissions year over year for the next several decades. https://twitter.com/robbie_andrew/status/1129667484527804418
Some countries do have declining CO2 emissions, but the ones that matter: China, India do not. Unless dramatic action is taken, we're still a long ways away from a global peak in CO2 emissions.
US CO2 emissions peaked in around 2007. Per capita CO2 in the US is the lowest it's been in 50 years. We're behind the EU in CO2 reduction, but it is going down.
India and China are worrisome, but China is making solar panels as fast is it possibly can. Political priority of millennials was mentioned in this context too. I haven't seen it, is there wide-spread support among Millennials for the trade war with China or other aggressive measures which will move manufacturing to countries with better CO2 regulations?
Read the assumptions behind those projections and get back to me. They are very, very conservative and should be read as a "best case scenario".
Ex:
- Economic growth is assumed as part of the model
- They look at the marginal economic cost of an additional very hot day today, look at the projected increase, and assume that the impact will scale linearly
Even those numbers are damning, and are put forth to help justify the cost of climate action. Reading them as "well that's not that bad" is just way off the mark.
> US CO2 emissions peaked in around 2007. Per capita CO2 in the US is the lowest it's been in 50 years. We're behind the EU in CO2 reduction, but it is going down.
Not nearly fast enough. Direction is correct, but magnitude is not nearly as big as it needs to be. Assuming that technological progress will make up the difference is magical thinking that the data does not back up.
You're hand-waving away what experts are saying based on a gut feeling of "it's not going to be that bad" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias). I recommend reading some papers, especially the NCA, and really sitting with what they say. https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/
This is laughable untrue.
EMISSIONS may have peaked (I'm not certain that's the case long-term), there's still plenty of carbon in the atmosphere and continuing to be added. The effects of carbon emissions will continue to compound on themselves[0]. We are still well on our way to >2 degree global warming where island nations will be eaten up by the sea, we will struggle to produce food for the population. Much of earth will become unlivable[1].
The effects of carbon emissions on global climate are not linear. They're exponential. Once the changes start they are impossible to stop.
If you think we've got climate change figured out, I really encourage you to read into the subject a little more. It's incredibly serious. We have already started seeing the effects. It's not too late to do something about it, but sitting back and assuming someone else has it figured out it fantastically irresponsible right now.
[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/science/earthworms-soil-c... [1] - http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-...
I'm well aware of the risks from existing coal burning plants, new plants being built in China/India/etc, shipping, feedback loops with stored CO2 in the ocean, all of it.
It's nice to imagine that the world can turn on a dime, but it can't. The global "situation" is going to get worse before it gets better, but the proverbial ball is rolling in the right direction.
It doesn't matter how many solar panels are deployed[1] What matters is how many gasoline cars, coal plants, and gas plants are going dark.
Net-over-net, they aren't.
[1] And this decade of break-neck speeds got us to... 2% solar deployment. We may hit 5% in another decade - and we need to get emissions to net zero in six years, if we want to avoid catastrophe.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/census-data-half-of-us-poor-or-...
I would note that over the past year though, that wages have been ticking up for the poorer groups at a solid pace (~4%) and inflation has remained low.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/business/economy/wage-gro...
Only about 15% of Americans participate in the stock market, most of the rest of the world doesn't even have the access. The best investment opportunities are being reserved for the elites. 2009 housing crisis resulted in a massive wealth transfer to the people who happened to be in position to take advantage of it. Capital gains are the primary cause of inequality.
Technically unemployment is low, but the share of involuntary part-time work has been steadily climbing. Young people are working these low paying dead end jobs just to survive.
https://www.businessinsider.com/unemployment-vs-involuntary-...
57% of Americans cannot afford a $500 surprise expense.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-50...
This is mostly a self-inflicted problem. A little discipline and saving straightens this out in short order, if people can accept a little inconvenience to live within their means. But people have a shockingly poor understanding of personal economics.
Expecting people to be critical thinking and deliberate in the way they conduct their lives, without first conditioning them to be so, has always been and will continue to be unrealistic.
I just object to the implicit "so it's not really a problem" or "so nothing need be done" that come along with "This is a self inflicted problem".
I don't care who's fault it is. This is a real problem for countless children who are worse off because their parents squander their income and it's a real problem for me because my government has to allocate its attention and resources toward an electorate in need of financial assistance.
I don't know if the solution is personal finance classes in high school, or internment camps for people with credit card debt. But I'm pretty sure the laissez faire attitude is not in the best interest of anyone.
I think the problem is one of culture. The 20th century was basically a gigantic advertisement for hedonistic individualism. It's not surprising that that mode of living is turning out to be unsustainable for everyone to participate in. By holding people responsible, you put some pressure on to create an alternative archetype to that of the "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll" 20th century heroes.
I think we have a long way to go though. Just yesterday there was a piece on HN about Millennials and Gen Z becoming more pessimistic. It stated that their number one priority was travel. Maybe the post-Gen Z generation will prioritize savings and more stoic living after they watch the aftermath of the previous two generations focusing on hedonistic spending.