We’ve had a habitable wilderness for all of human existence until now. Dystopian society is now The only option for living in most of the planet. World has not always been this fucked.
World has always been fucked (see Billy Joel’s “we didn’t start the fire” for simple reference). Life is what you make of it
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The Antarctic used to have a giant ozone hole. In the late 1960’s, Lake Erie was dead from pollution. The Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so polluted it caught fire. Rain was so acidic that statues in cities were dissolving.
Read history instead of following social media hype. Despite Trump turning back the clock a few years, the environment has improved dramatically over the past 50 years.
breecher@sh.itjust.works 18 hours ago
Those examples you mention are pretty insignificant compared to the global warming crisis we are experiencing now. Reading history won’t really help, because we have never faced what we have faced now in human history: manmade global warming in an industrialised, highly specialised society.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
50 years ago most waterways in the US were so polluted as to be dead to wildlife. Cities buildings were black with pollution.
Global warming is actually minor compared to the immediate death people were facing decades ago. For example unchecked ozone depletion could have resulted in the destruction of all rice crops on Earth. An analogy that comes to mind is the Black Plague vs Covid. It’s not that Covid wasn’t (isn’t) a problem. And like Covid we are deploying modern technology to fix the problems. Solar is being installed everywhere. The US is going backwards temporarily. But the US isn’t the world. Europe and China are getting things done.
People who see the problems are the absolutely not the ones who should be killing themselves. They’re the only ones that can contribute to the future.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I grew up next to the Cuyahoga in the '70s and I don’t think people today could even begin to understand how nasty it really was. Old tires everywhere, rusting steel barrels full of god knows what, and a thick oily scum over any part of it that wasn’t moving. Factories along the edge had big drainage pipes that just emptied directly into the river (one of these factories made Oasis foam, that green shit florists stick flowers into). The real shocker was not that the river caught fire from time to time, but that it wasn’t on fire all the time.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 15 hours ago
This is a local observance and an expression of your privilege. That trashed environment didn’t disappear or get rectified, the pollution and heavily polluting industries nec4ssary to support our lifestyles were offshored and exported to poor countries.
salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 1 day ago
Fine. Until relatively recently, like before mass industrialization.
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Your premise is that it’s going to get a lot worse. But the past 50 years has been improving. It’s therefore reasonable to believe we will keep improving.
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I’m still waiting for somebody to make a mashup of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and The Prodigy’s “Firestarter”.
pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 hours ago
And I can’t make anything of it so I’m leaving