I grew up thinking there was a decent chance we would run out of oil and civilization would collapse. EVs were not a thing and I remember reading about how an economical battery big enough to give a car good range was not possible, and that modern civilization in general was impossible without cheap oil. I read detailed articles about how impossible powering modern society without fossil fuels was… articles that are now clearly wrong.

My parents grew up thinking they might die at any moment in a nuclear war.

I’m not saying nothing will happen. Obviously we are already dialed into this and it’s physics and it will have effects. I’m also not saying past successes guarantee future ones.

I’m just saying that every generation since WWII has grown up with at least one impending doom scenario and yet here we are.

“May you live in interesting times.”

Personally I think we will be forced to adapt to climate change, and that it will be expensive and in parts of the world ugly. It will drive migration and conflict. It will rob us of dividends we could have spent on better things but instead must be spent on infrastructure mega projects. It will kill and impoverish and start wars.

But we will make it.

People will say never again, let’s never ignore warnings like that again. But we will probably forget that lesson, unfortunately, and future generations will grow up under some other avoidable doom cloud.