This is the end, my urban friends, the end.

[savoloysam]

Growing international tension, financial markets on the brink again, climate alarms being wrung out, a cost of living crises with no end in sight, divide and rule tactics more successful than ever, etc etc.

I said when when Covid struck it felt like a turning point from which there would be no return.

Am I being "alarmist"

 

[Pickman's model]

not at all, you're being really restrained and understated

 

[Pickman's model]

tbh much of the international tension, cost of living crisis, divide and rule tactics etc are due to climate change - climate change was never going to reduce tensions and bring people together, it will drive them apart. it's no surprise that it's all going to shit when politicians everywhere are running round like headless chickens, either refusing to face up to climate change - eg shammer with his predictions of endless growth - or greenwashing like mad. doesn't matter too much imo what people do because a) i believe a range of tipping points have been crossed, eg the arctic permafrost, the melting of the thwaite glacier in antarctica, and b) even if governments did get their act together, the damage the Big One between the usa and china scheduled for 2025 will do will undermine good work and inflict such environmental damage that it'll be as naught.

 

[savoloysam]

 

[savoloysam]

Us older Urbz were lucky, we were the last generation to "Have it good" and most of us have lived relatively good lives.

What future do the kids of today have?

 

[girasol]

It's the end of the world as we know it but it doesn't mean there's no future. It's just a different future from what we expected. We fucked up the planet, and now it's time to face the consequences, but other civilisations collapsed... Whether or not humanity survives this time is the question.

edit: On a good day I think we can make it, but on a bad day I do wonder: do we really learn from our mistakes or will greed always take over? Greedy people seem to rise to the top and take over.

 

[Ax^]

hmm did you older Urbz not live thru the threat of nuclear war for about 40 years

massive inflation 70's/80's and a fuel crisis in the 70s and then maggie

meh things just look worse now


its always been a bit of shite show



so happy days

 

[savoloysam]

 

[Chilli.s]

What future do the kids of today have?

Luckily they have the same optimism that we had at their age

 

[Pickman's model]

Luckily they have the same optimism that we had at their age

for so many of us at their age we saw the fall of the berlin wall, the collapse of 'communism' in the eastern bloc, the end of apartheid south africa. and for a bit it seemed it would all turn out ok. but how we had that chimera of hope snatched from us.

 

[DotCommunist]

permafrost

suppose we'll have to start calling it something else now. Just 'frost' maybe.

 

[girasol]

hmm did you older Urbz not live thru the threat of nuclear war for about 40 years

massive inflation 70's/80's and a fuel crisis in the 70s and then maggie

We now, once again, have the threat of nuclear war on top of climate armageddon - inflation is on the brink of causing another banking crisis. We just got through covid - so now we know something like that could happen again at any time.

It just feels like it's coming from all sides... Life is too complicated and stressful.

 

[cupid_stunt]

With the exception of the worst of climate change, I've lived though everything in the OP and survived.

Luckily I will not live long enough to witness the worst of climate change, I worry a little about that for the younger generations, but I am sure they'll adapt and survive it.

 

[_Russ_]

If only Armageddon could be selective and just take us fuckers out without all the other more worthwhile creatures inhabiting the planet.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

 

[krtek a houby]

Remember the 80s in Ireland with massive heroin problem in Dublin, the hunger strikers, Thatcher intransigence, the FF and FG merry go round, unemployment, emigration, Dunne Stores, Stardust, the Kerry babies, moving statues, AIDS, no divorce, no abortion, no legal gays, Dessie O'Hare, Michael Cahill, Sellafield fallout, Ronnie Reagan visit, and the USSR threat, Spike Island, Slane riots, the ozone layer and all the rest.

The Doomsday Clock was ever ticking and nostalgia for those golden years has given way to the fear of the future.

It's always been bad, it just has never felt so in your face, hopeless and relentless.

 

[Pickman's model]

Remember the 80s in Ireland with massive heroin problem in Dublin, the hunger strikers, Thatcher intransigence, the FF and FG merry go round, unemployment, emigration, Stardust, the Kerry babies, moving statues, AIDS, no divorce, no abortion, no legal gays, Dessie O'Hare, Michael Cahill, Sellafield fallout, Ronnie Reagan visit, and the USSR threat, Spike Island, Slane riots, the ozone layer and all the rest.

The Doomsday Clock was ever ticking and nostalgia for those golden years has given way to the fear of the future.

It's always been bad, it just has never felt so in your face, hopeless and relentless.

things like shell to sea, the water tax, moore street, the housing crisis and so on show that under the administration of fine gael and fianna fail the 26 cos will never be run in the interests of the people, that any similarity between public policy and the proclamation or the democratic programme of 1919 is purely coincidental

 

[Artaxerxes]

Luckily they have the same optimism that we had at their age

More and better drugs

 

[krtek a houby]

things like shell to sea, the water tax, moore street, the housing crisis and so on show that under the administration of fine gael and fianna fail the 26 cos will never be run in the interests of the people, that any similarity between public policy and the proclamation or the democratic programme of 1919 is purely coincidental

Ryan Tubridy is going off the Late, Late so there's a sliver of joy in it

 

[cupid_stunt]

Remember the 80s in Ireland with massive heroin problem in Dublin, the hunger strikers, Thatcher intransigence, the FF and FG merry go round, unemployment, emigration, Dunne Stores, Stardust, the Kerry babies, moving statues, AIDS, no divorce, no abortion, no legal gays, Dessie O'Hare, Michael Cahill, Sellafield fallout, Ronnie Reagan visit, and the USSR threat, Spike Island, Slane riots, the ozone layer and all the rest.

I remember most of that, I always try to focus on the positive things, at least there was some bloody good pirate radio stations.

The big ones in Dublin being Nova and Sunshine.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

We've always been on the brink of disaster. Wars, famines, depressions, nuclear threats, floods, earthquakes, blah blah blah. Difference is that now we've got 24 hour news coverage and social media, so it seems more frightening and all-consuming.

 

[savoloysam]

We've always been on the brink of disaster. Wars, famines, depressions, nuclear threats, floods, earthquakes, blah blah blah. Difference is that now we've got 24 hour news coverage and social media, so it seems more frightening and all-consuming.

That's a bit of a problem because the media always emphasizes the negatives. You're right that things have always been bad but it seems to me it's started to get a hell of a lot worse since Covid.

 

[gentlegreen]

I will start to feel hopeful when Tory voters get as angry at being taken for mugs as the French are at being made to wait until 64 to get their state pensions.

 

[Jennaonthebeach]

In history disasters have wiped out civilizations but we've never had global problems like we have now which won't just wipe out one civilization on one region of one continent. The stakes now are planet wide. This is a relatively new situation.

 

[pbsmooth]

in the style of a c-list 90s TV presenter - if Trump and the Tories win their next elections, I'm going to live off-grid in the middle of nowhere and hopefully go slowly mad.

 

[Pickman's model]

In history disasters have wiped out civilizations but we've never had global problems like we have now which won't just wipe out one civilization on one region of one continent. The stakes now are planet wide. This is a relatively new situation.

yes we have. for example, the changes in weather in the seventeenth century, written about by geoffrey parker Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century | Department of History. you may recall that the mid-seventeenth century was a particularly bloody time, coinciding with eg the 30 years war in europe. not to mention 1816, the year without a summer Year Without a Summer - Wikipedia sure, not quite on the scale of today's fun, but it's not like we've never seen elements of climate change before.

 

[Pickman's model]

in the style of a c-list 90s TV presenter - if Trump and the Tories win their next elections, I'm going to live off-grid in the middle of nowhere and hopefully go slowly mad.

or you could stay here and accelerate the process

 

[_Russ_]

In history disasters have wiped out civilizations but we've never had global problems like we have now which won't just wipe out one civilization on one region of one continent. The stakes now are planet wide. This is a relatively new situation.

The industrial revolution has so amplified the Human influence on the Eco system that it has no historical precedent

 

[ska invita]

I take a long view of history on these kinds of things...most of what is happeningt is standard fayre and theres even some reasons to be cheerful...were it not for irreversable climate change <we're in fact uniquely historically fucked

 

[Jennaonthebeach]

but it's not like we've never seen elements of climate change before.

that sounds like something a climate change denier might say.

Sorry but the scale of what's happening now can only possibly be compared to events that occurred before humans even existed.


yes there have been civilizations wiped out by things such as climate change, but whether we knew it or not, it has never threatened the whole of human civilization before. Add to that global trade, global banking, the most powerful nuclear weapons we've ever had, more pressure on natural resources than we've ever known before. It's really not comparable to anything we've seen in history.