As a budding scientist back in the 70's, I heard of it then and they took it seriously.

Some Repugs think that it started with Al Gore.

But I took my eye off the ball with a marriage and a high-tech career making the Internet run faster. I finally took another look at the world situation in 2004. I was stunned, but I was still looking for solutions. It took a couple of years to realize there really weren't any, and that the situation was not going to be reversed by deliberate action. Then another few years to figure out why we couldn't do it, and to accept the outcome.

There is no opportunity in this crisis, just a lot of twisting and turning and posturing and bargaining and wishful thinking. It's an ever-tightening crisis without a resolution.

Paradoxically, there's some peace of mind to be found in coming to terms with that realization.

Your perspectives have always resonated very strongly with me. We are the Cassandra species: just sentient enough to see the pattern of our lives and the future, but not able to change who we are enough to shift the course of the future.

My position has been relatively ... unpopular ... with the solutionistas. But the constituency on this side of the fence appears to be growing as time passes.

in the USA and among sycophantic followers.

Done well, this will alleviate some of the (human, and hopefully not only human) pain and clarify the way moving forward.

As aware individuals? To be honest, we do what we can. Me, separated a few years ago & now myself, 61, I'm still looking & learning, making young friends, art and music and living relatively lightly.

I also see our collective intelligence outpacing all of it, one way or another. Seems to me a lot of academics are still living in a linear world. There is more than just a this or a that

Disconnect ...

I don't think so.

If we had a way to make nuclear waste safe and if we did not expose water to radiation, that would be a possibility. But as it is . . . . nuclear energy is just another way to destroy our civilization, maybe our planet.

We humans are too prone to error to be trusted with nuclear energy.

with so many so called progressives supporting a centrist-right.

thanks.

Where are you Going? I'm gonna Pick a fight think this is 2nd best akin to "Then we shall fight in the shade (300)"

complete with the laugh, so it sort of sticks in my memory.

We have been at perpetual war around the world and that even though we elected a Democrat as president.
And there is no sign at all that it will ever stop. No one even talks about it anymore.

Was fucked then and are fucked now.

The list can go on and on but "We're Fucked" is an apt descriptor.

A Republican in thin disguise. Wall Street was his largest contributor as it is for Hillary.

No significant change will happen until we elect a non-corporate leader.

The 50% of bio-diversity that will die by the end of this century, or is it by mid-century(?), have no voice in our rampant destruction of Earth. Change/mutate fast or die is the option they have. The planet has been here before, facing this kind of crisis, but not in many millions of years.

Because there is a cascading effect that could make it sooner and greater.

Greed is a beast that is devouring the whole world, and it seems invincible.
But it is not, because it destroys itself in the end.

in ecosystems and social systems breaking down globally. We are here together, and I hope some of us take actions to preserve some regions for the future, despite everyone else giving up to the apocalypse.

Some are "more equal" than others,

FFS.

we're all here. Yes this society is seriously diseased.

Capt. James T. Kirk, as a real person, William Shatner stated that over-population was going to be
mankind's downfall. He is probably right, though climate change is coming on strong.

The Human species is basically a virus that is destroying its own environment.

I'll give it another 2-300 years. I'm taking bets....

Less than a hundred years for the majority of places.

Some places, like Syria, are already fucked.

Before the rot snaps it neatly in half

It's not as simple as country A (e.g., Syria) going then country B (e.g., Yemen) next
then country C ... as shitloads of the the people who were in country A have now
moved to countries S & T, overloading them so the combined migration spreads to
countries H, K & P which then ...

There is going to be a serious battening down of the hatches in the near (very near)
future which will have the effect of pouring fuel on the anger of the migrants, leading
to some serious unrest and the corresponding backlashes.

One big clusterfuck affecting ever-increasing amounts of the 99% while the scum
at the top continue to "justify" their obscene greed and dismissal of the problems.

"Interesting times".

You sound alarmist and hyperbolic and all that ... but you are absolutely right.

So we need to fucking revolt now -- not 4 or 8 years from now. By then it will be too late.

If Bernie can't carry the nomination, we need to keep the fucking pressure on the Triangulating One with marches, protests, flooding local Democratic precincts with ourselves to take over the Party, etc., etc. -- or else ... We're Totally Fucked!

But I don't know if I'd call it a privilege...

Some are not satisfied with a life that includes an abundance of every thing they need. They must have far more than they need while they seek to deprive millions. These malevolent beings are not found in some far off distant "enemy" nation. They are right here in the nation of our birth plotting our destruction.

Maybe Trump will build a wall to protect you and give you a bit more time.

... I knew when I was 5 years old that something was NOT right. I didn't know the words "we're fucked," but if I had, I would have said them. 5 yrs old.

and I think just about anyone would agree with that.

Solar panels on the White House, that Reagan took down. Did Clinton or Obama put them back up? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think so. Yes, he was a true liberal, an environmentalist, a humanitarian. Rare these days in politics. You probably have to go back to TR to find an environmentalist of his stature, back when Republicans were often better than the Democrats.

Took until 2014, but they did put a few up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/09/white-house-solar_n_5292869.html

Good to know you managed to make it this far.

I keep stroking away. I blame it all on the alcohol.

too many ppl with their heads up their(censured ). or worshiping the almighty $ . the book "silent spring" came to mind just now .

It all depends on how you look at human development. I can make a case for 1970, 1950, 1880, 8,000 BCE or right back to the harnessing of fire. But putting a date to it is pretty much irrelevant at this point. We are where we are.

#1 blockage preventing progressive action is US-UK (anglosphere) disfunctional politics.

There is no political constituency for degrowth, anywhere on the planet. Especially not for the scale of reduction in both population and economic activity that it would take to bring the world back into balance. That goes for any kind of government you can name, from monarchies, dictatorships and theocracies to any sort of democracy.

Politics can only shape growth, it can't (and in general has no desire to) halt or reverse growth. There has never been a political body in human history that has actively reversed the growth of the society it governed.

There have been two - just two - examples of deliberate steady-state societies in the last mumblety-thousand years - Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868 and the tiny Pacific island of Tikopia. Every other society has been based on the principle of "growth if possible."

Even Bernie or Jill Stein wouldn't reverse the growth of the American economy as a matter of policy.

rationalism which can perceive the limits being reached.

However, as you say, there is not yet any viable political process for it due to widespread ignorance, superstition, propaganda and brainwashing fomented by existing invested financial interests.

It didn't take propaganda to convince people to switch from horses to automobiles, or to adopt electric washing machines and air conditioning.

in non-essential 'goods' and 'services'.

Plan ahead. Control supply. Educate demand.

the planet was pretty much in balance until mankind came along. I'm not sure we have the will to restore that balance.
Do you suppose the Kochs and other uber-wealthy types have established underground enclaves so that their progeny will survive?
I can remember reading that North Korea has been working on underground cities that will survive a nuclear attack...

... and YOU will atone."

Shocking independent statistic, as posted at the Seattle Children's Hospital website:

http://www.seattlechildrens.org/medical-conditions/brain-nervous-system-mental-conditions/epilepsy/

Epilepsy in Children

Epilepsy happens more in children than it does in adults. It affects about 1% of the general population - one out of every 100 people. About 5% of children younger than 5 years old have epilepsy. That is about one in every 20 children under 5.

This number does not include children who have seizures caused by a high fever. These kinds of seizures are different from epilepsy. They are called febrile seizures. They either happen only once or only when your child has a fever.

<>

Excerpts from Epilepsy Foundation Community Forum: http://www.examiner.com/article/parents-question-vaccines-as-epilepsy-rates-rise-to-1-20-children-under-five

But we're the progressives? I mean, aren't we?

OTOH, I may be thinking of his acronym, which absolutely rocked: OFHWAD.

In retrospect, he picked a dreadful moniker, though.

He may indeed have beaten me to the punch. Let's make this thread in honour of all the DUers on E&E who saw the writing on the all and had the courage to say it out loud.

OFHWAD, Dead Parrot. This one's for you.

This forum has some of the best posters I have found, and there are many.
Thank you, it is welcome relief from the stupey people.

Humans are going to join every other apex species in life's history soon enough.

We as a collective are doomed by a lack of vision to change and a lack of courage to tell people who believe in magic and imaginary friends that they are wrong.

Greed.
Religion.

You don't need any more to drag humanity to its own gallows with nearly no fight at all.

Get out of your cars and stop ordering from Amazon. And quit having kids.

In the past whenever I've had the temerity to post something like this, I've received harsh scoldings for defeatism, and something close to ostracism. Now this.

The awakening is happening. The times they are indeed a-changin'.

I read it on DU, after all!

My friends think I'm a doom-&-gloomer but I think they have their heads in the sand. I don't know how much longer things can remain the same, but I don't think for long. Article after article states that in the real world things are accelerating faster than the computer models. And we're gonna what? Reduce carbon emissions by 30% in 20 years? Good grief. We are so fucked.

1970 I was in elementary school.

My teacher, Ms. Starns (a truly wonderful gentle person) told us, "if even the world warmed by 1 degree, it would effect everything we do".

I never forgot those words.

fast forward a few years to my sophomore year in highschool. My science teacher, Mr. Gelb (another fantastic person) told us, we are on track to have a 2 degree rise in global temps by the year 2050. (he was an optimist)

by the time I was in college in the early 80's, I continued on the path set forth by Ms. Starns and Mr. Gelb and did my own reading. I started paying attention back then to what the "alarmist&quot remember this was the ray-gun era) scientists were saying about the rising temp.

I knew then that we were fucked, especially when ray-gun removed the solar panels off the white house.

and so it goes.

to echo your statement, "we're fucked". Yes, we are indeed fucked.

to quote Winston Churchill, "the Americans always to the right thing...eventually". Sadly, we don't have that luxury anymore. we waited way to long, by about 40 years.

Humans as a species probably won't. This interlocking, wicked predicament is something we are simply not equipped to handle.

all the ecological responsibility in the world isn't going to help.

But our numbers will stop increasing. They will even start to fall, driven by a raft of insoluble misfortunes - possibly quite soon now. That's one of the unfortunate side effects of being fucked. If they don't, we'll be even more fucked later.