amazing timing - Ian Welsh puts pen to paper on exactly what I've been thinking this morning

having a bad day to start the week, continuing a deterioration of my mental health

and reading the wishful thinking aspects of Paul Gilding's The Great Disruption wasn't helping

because I think we're royally screwed, we just don't all recognize it yet

but he did recognize it...  he just couldn't handle the despair he was feeling about it so started to believe in fairy tales... like the world will come to its senses and completely re-invent everything before its too late for the ecosystems we depend on.... fairy tales

we are absolutely fucked; its not if but when; and we've got no clue (at least the vast majority of us)

because we as a species suck at those types of determinations

fuck, we suck at critical thinking in general

how else can one explain:

• Tulip mania or TSLA or Bitcoin; AAA-rated CDO-squared and NINJA loans; NASDAQ from 1500 to 5000 to 1500 all in 3 years; 
• Christianity is correct; no, Islam is; no, Judaism is; no, Buddhism is; no, Hinduism; no, Zoroastrianism; no, Mormonism; no, Jainism; no, Shinto; no, Scientology; no..... (never mind Zeus or Odin or Ra or Quetzalcoatl or ...)
• 2 planes caused 3 towers to come crashing down.. and everyone has collective memory loss about the 3rd one
• Osama Bin Laden was given burial at sea.. not brought back to the US... and, no: no videos, no photos
• infinite growth on a finite planet

so, given my mood and my current state of mind, it was pretty great timing to read Ian Welsh's post this morning:

Making Sure YOU Stay Alive When Millions Are Dying. Ian Welsh. April 2, 2018.

Ok my friends, it’s time to talk seriously.

We are screwed, blued and tatooed. We are so fucked that we can’t see straight.

The vast majority of people are in complete denial about the level of pain coming down the pike.

The combination of climate change and ecological collapse is going to hit us like high speed train carrying nitroglycerine derailing in the middle of a oil refinery.

The timing on this shit is unclear. I have seen coherently-argued cases that ecological collapse could happen soon. Heck, I’ve seen cases that say it, er, should have happened by now.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. And combined with climate change and the way we have utterly fucked up our management of fresh water, this is going to lead to, in a reasonable best case scenario, hundreds of millions of deaths, and a billion or so refugees. [That's best case, remember]

The aquifers are being depleted in wide areas in China, India, America and elsewhere. The groundwater is also being polluted.

No one is prepared and no one is doing sweet fuck all. I get chewed on for being “cynical”, but people who do so are absolute fools and morons: anyone who cheered the Paris accords on the environment was delusional at best. They had no enforcement provisions. Virtually no one was going to meet those goals AND the goals were insufficient to being with.

We were told they weren’t going to do enough, and weren’t going to hold themselves to it anyway, and people pretended to believe this BS was going to make the least bit of difference?

Grow the fuck up.

Now, if you are not old or the sort of sick that means your lifespan is shit and your odds [of] surviving major catastrophe are crap, or if you care about your children or some other people, you need to start taking this into account in your personal lives.

We are BEYOND STOPPING THIS.

It is too late. Too late.

Tattoo that into your brain.

Even if our governments suddenly were run by people who cared [instead of sociopaths and megalomaniacs], it would be too late to do anything but prepare and try and reduce how bad it will be.

But they aren’t, and they aren’t going to be soon enough. Heck, soon enough was about 10 years ago, and that was optimistic to any sane person. By 2008 I was thinking “yeah, we’re fucked, but maybe, just maybe, if we act now.”

Frankly, I was delusional. Hope’ll do that to you. Horrible drug. Obviously our leaders are psyhopathic douchebags with the planning ability of mythical lemmings (the real animals are not as stupid as the legend), and obviously most voters don’t take the issue seriously, and obviously nothing was going to be done no matter who was elected.

But, y’know, “hope.”

Alright, hope’s over. It died for me by February of 2009, on a bunch of fronts.

High speed freight train, carrying nitro. Derailing. In the middle of your life.

I don’t know when this stuff will really hit. Probably someone has made the prediction that is right.

But I do know it will hit. I know it will cause major wars between major states. I know it will cause waves of refugees in the millions. I know it will cause vast numbers of deaths.

This is obvious.

So take it into account in your planning of your life. I’m not talking politics in this post: that ship is done. Do what you can at the political level if you want, but I’m talking your personal survival and that of people you care about.

If you live in the most vulnerable countries and areas (for example India will be absolutely creamed), take that into account. But also take into account we have a very fragile, just in time delivery system.

Are you on drugs? I mean that literally. Legal psychoactive drugs, or legal life saving drugs. The US had a major shortage of blood bags due to Puerto Rico getting hit by a hurricane because, hey, they were made there.

We have intensely locally concentrated production of materials that are then sent to entire continents and countries thru fragile supply chains that end in warehouses that do not hold large stocks, because everything is “lean and mean” and “just-in-time”. Shocks hit a system like that, and there will be shortages. Medicine, food, fuel and plenty of other stuff.

So start building in some ability to survive if you care about surviving.

And don’t allow yourself to go all delusional thinking it won’t happen. Best you can hope for is you die before it does. Good bet for some of us. But if you’re young and healthy, or care about people who are, no.