Preparing for An Unfriendly Future (Climate Change, Authoritarianism, etc)

[Maithanet]

The future looks pretty scary.  Democracies around the world are sliding towards authoritarianism (USA, India, Brazil, parts of Europe).  Climate change is happening, and the world community is unable to muster the political will to meaningfully confront it.  The result will be a world with more famines, droughts and floods, and far more refugees.  Those refugees will naturally flee to areas that are more stable, putting increasing pressure on those governments and likely fueling increasingly extreme anti-immigrant policies. 

I want to protect my family, but I feel very small in the face of these larger forces.  It is very hard to know what to do.  Immigrate to somewhere safer (even knowing that nowhere is truly safe)?  Move somewhere more remote in the US in the hope that the worst that happens won't effect us too badly?  Make the best of it where I am (I love my home and my neighborhood) and hope that things do not get as bad as I am imagining?  I have the privilege of being an upper-middle class person in America, so I have a lot more options than most people, although I still need to think about getting/keeping a job wherever I go. 

Should I learn how to farm?  Or emergency first aid?  Or martial arts? I could get a rifle and learn to shoot it, but I don't want to.

I'm not trying to make this thread exclusively about the bleak outlook of American politics, that is just my experience.  Please feel free to chime in with international perspectives.  How are people dealing with the stress of an uncertain and unfriendly future?  What actions are you planning to take and do you think those will actually help?

[Zorral]

Assisting to strengthening my community, city and state in every way possible.  There already is massive pushback from other elements in the city and state.  There is the inevitable sea level rise that affects every coastal community across the globe.  But, if we have the will, there are engineering mitigations.  Local EPA regs have to be amended and strengthened for the entire region, so we can continue to have food.

But others will then decide to take us over and make us the same desolaton of smaug as everywhere else.

[Heartofice]

I would suggest first step is stop reading so much stuff on the internet, go outside, take a walk and gather some perspective. 
 

 

[maarsen]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Assisting to strengthening my community, city and state in every way possible.  There already is massive pushback from other elements in the city and state.  There is the inevitable sea level rise that affects every coastal community across the globe.  But, if we have the will, there are engineering mitigations.  Local EPA regs have to be amended and strengthened for the entire region, so we can continue to have food.

But others will then decide to take us over and make us the same desolaton of smaug as everywhere else.

The worst part of the problem is climate migration. Florida for instance will be uninhabitable once the seas rise. Being in the position of have nots will not go well for them.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

I would suggest first step is stop reading so much stuff on the internet, go outside, take a walk and gather some perspective.

We've got a pretty strong track record that climate change doesn't go away by ignoring it. 

[Conflicting Thought]

5 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

The future looks pretty scary.  Democracies around the world are sliding towards authoritarianism (USA, India, Brazil, parts of Europe).  Climate change is happening, and the world community is unable to muster the political will to meaningfully confront it.  The result will be a world with more famines, droughts and floods, and far more refugees.  Those refugees will naturally flee to areas that are more stable, putting increasing pressure on those governments and likely fueling increasingly extreme anti-immigrant policies. 

I want to protect my family, but I feel very small in the face of these larger forces.  It is very hard to know what to do.  Immigrate to somewhere safer (even knowing that nowhere is truly safe)?  Move somewhere more remote in the US in the hope that the worst that happens won't effect us too badly?  Make the best of it where I am (I love my home and my neighborhood) and hope that things do not get as bad as I am imagining?  I have the privilege of being an upper-middle class person in America, so I have a lot more options than most people, although I still need to think about getting/keeping a job wherever I go. 

Should I learn how to farm?  Or emergency first aid?  Or martial arts? I could get a rifle and learn to shoot it, but I don't want to.

I'm not trying to make this thread exclusively about the bleak outlook of American politics, that is just my experience.  Please feel free to chime in with international perspectives.  How are people dealing with the stress of an uncertain and unfriendly future?  What actions are you planning to take and do you think those will actually help?

what i do know is that going the individualist rout is not gonna work, the only chance we have is to work together forming communities adn supporting each other, sounds like hippie shit but doing it alone (like you and your family) will not work.

being from Chile we are sadly very dependent on what other more powerfull countries decide to do, but we will live with the worst consequenses of that action or inaction...we are already living it, and we cant go to no place that is going to be untoched by this.

i am not dealing with this in any healthy way i think, for like a decade or more of knowing nothing will be done and in fact is getting worse, so my mental heatlh is not good. anxiety, depression and rage. trying to numb some of it, but underneath is just hell. 

actions... just radical fucking actions, sabotage, trying to disrupt the system. i dont know. im even wondering why do some people get to live like nothing is happening and the rest of us live with the consequences, and should we let them live like that? i think not, fuck their tranquility and peace of mind.
 

sorry for the  stream of consciousness

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

We've got a pretty strong track record that climate change doesn't go away by ignoring it. 

I think whatever happens you are not approaching the apocalypse, treating the world like you are is very bad for your mental health.

[Maithanet]

1 hour ago, Raja said:

Emergency First Aid is always a good idea! Basic life support and the ability to use an AED are invaluable.

Yeah, I agree that seems like a valuable life skill regardless.  I took a CPR class a few years back, but I think I need more than that. 

1 hour ago, Conflicting Thought said:

being from Chile we are sadly very dependent on what other more powerfull countries decide to do, but we will live with the worst consequenses of that action or inaction...we are already living it, and we cant go to no place that is going to be untoched by this.

i am not dealing with this in any healthy way i think, for like a decade or more of knowing nothing will be done and in fact is getting worse, so my mental heatlh is not good. anxiety, depression and rage. trying to numb some of it, but underneath is just hell. 

It is pretty hard to deal with this in a healthy way.  It is very hard to simultaneously work as hard as is needed (read: very hard) on the things that you can change and not drive yourself crazy on the many things totally out of your control.

[Spockydog]

Fusion power is the key. Once we can run those reactors 24/7 most of the problems we face today will be solved. 

 

[DanteGabriel]

I can't tell if I, the deeply in debt middle class suburban American citizen, or my brother, the wealthy business owner in a corrupt tropical country, is more fucked. Like which of us is going to be able to offer refuge to the other?

My wife and I wanted to move to Hawaii in ten years or so when we sent Dante Jr off to college (assuming we can afford the tuition which will probably cost more per year then than I currently earn). I figure Hawaii's political situation won't be too bad, but how bad will climate change screw them?

 

[dog-days]

I'm thinking of buying a flat on the coast, getting a deckchair, a gin-and-tonic, and a novel by JG Ballard, then waiting. Not as useful as studying agriculture or emergency first aid, but has a certain style. 

[Raja]

2 hours ago, Maithanet said:

 Move somewhere more remote in the US in the hope that the worst that happens won't effect us too badly? 

7 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

 I figure Hawaii's political situation won't be too bad, but how bad will climate change screw them?

I can understand moving to get away from a directly harmful situation, but I'm someone that has moved fairly consistently over the last decade to different countries, yet I find myself still despairing at the state of things back home in India. You would think 'out of sight, out of mind' would work, but in my experience it doesn't.

[IFR]

20 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Fusion power is the key. Once we can run those reactors 24/7 most of the problems we face today will be solved. 

 

The only problem with cold fusion is that it will be 30 years before the tech can be employed practically, just as it has been for the last 80 years, and just as it will be 30 years from now. 

[Knight Of Winter]

Without trying to sound like a condescending asshole, OP's statement could benefit from some historical perspective. Every generation thinks its own set of problems are so special and so uniquely bad; and is worried about potentially even worse stuff the future may hold; but fact of the matter is - we in 2022 are living better, more enlightened and safer lives than almost anyone ever in human history. And while I'm not downplaying the climate change which is greatest challenge today's civilization is facing - go back at any point in human history and you could make such bleak statement about the present and make ominous predictions about the future. Yet, each of these times, in worse circumstances than we now are in today; society somehow managed to survive and thrive. Just for reference:

- 20 years ago if would have been (also) climate change and terrorism on the rise.
- 50 years ago if would have been Cold War and far far more widespread authoritarianism and lack of democracy than today
- 80 years ago in would have been WWII
- 100 years ago it would have been WWI, followed by Great Recession
- 200 years ago, it would have been widespread poverty (by today's standards, most of then-population would be poor), along with slavery, colonization and constant wars
- beyond that, it's basically a state of permanent existential dangers: ever-present pandemics (without vaccines to prevent them or modern medicine to treat them); wars; poverty; no concept of universal human rights etc.

Really, looking from this perspective: what is it specifically about present day that makes our particular set of issues so unique and unsolvable; or to induce such pessimism?

[JGP]

1 minute ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Without trying to sound like a condescending asshole, OP's statement could benefit from some historical perspective. Every generation thinks its own set of problems are so special and so uniquely bad; and is worried about potentially even worse stuff the future may hold; but fact of the matter is - we in 2022 are living better, more enlightened and safer lives than almost anyone ever in human history. And while I'm not downplaying the climate change which is greatest challenge today's civilization is facing - go back at any point in human history and you could make such bleak statement about the present and make ominous predictions about the future. Yet, each of these times, in worse circumstances than we now are in today; society somehow managed to survive and thrive. Just for reference:

- 20 years ago if would have been (also) climate change and terrorism on the rise.
- 50 years ago if would have been Cold War and far far more widespread authoritarianism and lack of democracy than today
- 80 years ago in would have been WWII
- 100 years ago it would have been WWI, followed by Great Recession
- 200 years ago, it would have been widespread poverty (by today's standards, most of then-population would be poor), along with slavery, colonization and constant wars
- beyond that, it's basically a state of permanent existential dangers: ever-present pandemics (without vaccines to prevent them or modern medicine to treat them); wars; poverty; no concept of universal human rights etc.

Really, looking from this perspective: what is it specifically about present day that makes our particular set of issues so unique and unsolvable; or to induce such pessimism?

I'm way too stoned for this.

[Jace, Extat]

One political party has openly embraced using violence and political extremist actors to directly contradict any democratic rebuke of their views, and the public at large is so fucking dumb that they don't even care. 

That's new.

[Raja]

3 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Without trying to sound like a condescending asshole,

Yet you manage to.

[Maithanet]

2 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Really, looking from this perspective: what is it specifically about present day that makes our particular set of issues so unique and unsolvable; or to induce such pessimism?

Society as a whole seems to have abdicated from confronting challenges, and instead assuming that they will go away.  Climate change requires a massive response, and it did not happen, is not happening, and has no real prospects to happen.  The impacts of climate change serve to make all other human challenges, such as rising authoritarianism, far more difficult to confront. 

[Spockydog]

11 minutes ago, IFR said:

The only problem with cold fusion is that it will be 30 years before the tech can be employed practically, just as it has been for the last 80 years, and just as it will be 30 years from now. 

It's my understanding that the technology exists today. But it runs on Helium-3.

If we can get that shit off the moon we're sorted. And it doesn't seem to me like it would take thirty years to get mining operations up and running. I mean, it's just there, right on the surface. 

[IFR]

5 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Really, looking from this perspective: what is it specifically about present day that makes our particular set of issues so unique and unsolvable; or to induce such pessimism?

Climate change to the degree anticipated is unique and increasingly unsolvable in the magnitude of effects that will occur.

Human beings are reactionary. When the ecosystem undergoes a drastic paradigmic reformation and the geosocial structure is vastly and irrevocably altered, consequences ensue. The exact consequences are impossible to predict, but one can assert that exceptional times arise from exceptional circumstances.