I’m remember the Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country in which what effectively was a cult purchased a large plot of land that had been killed by something along the lines of overuse/neglect/etc. and all sorts of people scientists/lawyers/engineers came together and basically resorted it, made it arable and wild life returned. Shame it probably couldn’t happen without the cult aspect.
I'm an undergraduate student and in no financial position to start or join a company.
This just further illustrates that a large segment of society is powerless against things like this. The headlines don't help, they just actively worsen my mental health.
I'd look at the positive trends. Dire warnings have, in the past, often lead to improvements that prevented the worst outcomes.
Fatalism and resignation are not good nor helpful for you as an individual, nor for society as a whole (they also forestall meaningful corrective action).
The fact is that large trends have mostly pointed in the right direction over the last century or so, on a worldwide scale. (Examples: [1]-[17])
Note: Some of these writers and arguments are co-opted by rabid libertarians or ideologues that argue that all is well, there is nothing to worry about, and nothing needs to be done (and certainly no government regulation of business) [N1]. That is nonsense, and not a position I advocate.
There are many worrisome trends, and we have to do something about them. But, there have been predictions of doom since the dawn of mankind (see: Malthus [D1], Ehrlich [D2]), and they have not panned out, either.
Conclusion/TL;DR: Things have largely gotten better for humanity over long timeframes. There are still many problems now (inequality, climate, etc.), but if we apply ourselves, there is a good chance we can tackle them.
[D2] Ehrlich, in 1968: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb] But a UN report in 2010: 'the percentage of the world's population who qualify as "undernourished" has fallen by more than half, from 33 percent to about 16 percent, since Ehrlich published The Population Bomb.'
This is basically what “communism” is. And I do think communism is the only answer for a world facing a lifetime of declining resources and productivity. Capitalism is great for a world based in perpetual growth but under long-term deflationary pressure it will deliver a worse quality of life and be more oppressive than a more collective form of government (and it must be violently oppressive to keep the mass of starving people from threatening the meager profits that will remain).
You’re already seeing this in the younger millennials and Gen Z. We’re smart enough to see what’s coming and more of us are radicalizing every day.
Yeah. It just doesn't cohere with human nature. Capitalism at least manages. Communism seems like something that would happen maybe post-singularity and after scarcity is solved. And we'd be like homogenous spacefarers like the aliens depicted in our stories.
I seriously doubt governments emerging from ecological collapse will be as pleasant as one of the 20th century eastern-euro communist governments you're probably thinking of.
Surveillance today is already more all-encompassing in democracies than it was in Eastern Germany. Just wait for an emergency that scares people enough, and that becomes weaponized.
