When I was 20 years old, back in 1965, there were people. Rockhead

[CC27]

Star Member MineralMan (126,811 posts)


When I was 20 years old, back in 1965, there were people

 
warning about bad things coming in the next 100 years. Mostly, everyone ignored those warnings. Concern about a burgeoning population load. Concern about nuclear weapons. Concern about shortage of all kinds of resources. Concerns about the planet's climate, too. We're still hearing warnings about those things, but most people didn't listen then, and most people aren't listening now.

I listened then. I pledged to myself not to add any further to the population of the planet. I started trying to reduce my own impact on the planet, through conservation and using as few non-renewable resources as possible. Others I knew shared the same concerns and made the same efforts.

Meanwhile, all around me and those others, people continued to live as though the future was just a fantasy world. Everything would turn out OK, they thought, if they thought about it at all.

Now that we're seeing the results of that lack of concern, some are blaming my generation for the problems. That's wrong thinking. The blame goes to the people of all generations who ignore or ignored all those warnings. There is a majority of people in every generation who live only for today and who never worry about the larger issues. That majority is to blame. Not everyone in those generations. Some noticed. Some cared. Some tried.

My generation started the Earth Day movement. My generation protested nuclear proliferation. My generation protested idiotic wars. My generation started publications like Mother Earth News to spread the word. My generation helped to make contraception easily available everywhere, and championed women's right to choose with regard to reproduction. At least some of us did those things. Not enough of us, apparently.

The same issues and warnings continue. And still, far too many ignore them or deny that there is a problem. That has always been the problem. Not enough people were, or are, paying attention. Now, we are beginning to experience the real problems that lack of attention has caused, even in wealthy nations like the United States. Now, we are finally feeling the neglect of important warnings. Now, we are realizing our past follies.

It's too damned bad we didn't and aren't paying attention. Too damned bad, indeed. I'm old now. It won't be long before I am no longer on this planet as a living being. I wish everyone had paid better attention, but they didn't. More's the pity.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212848390

Your generation if full of lazy moonbats, handout queens, and drugged up fools. Just look at your friends at the DUmp.

[67 Rover]

It won't be long before I am no longer on this planet as a living being.

schwing!!! 

[FiddyBeowulf]

My generation started publications like Mother Earth News to spread the word.

How many trees did they kill in order to spread that word?

[USA4ME]

MineralMan

It won't be long before I am no longer on this planet as a living being.

First he tells us he didn’t reproduce, now he’s promising he’ll be dead soon. The news just gets better and better. 

.

[zeitgeist]

 I haven't seen the Sandinista for a while.   

sandensea (9,669 posts)

15. Absolutely. I'd add only that the great shortage ahead of us isn't food - but water
Most of the world's water, as you know, is not potable.

And what little is potable, we're overusing, polluting - and now, allowing to fall into the hands of mafias like Nestlé and end-times types like the Bush family (who bought tens of thousands of acres in dirt-poor but water-rich Paraguay for this reason).

Here's hoping we can find a way to economically desalinate ocean water.

Otherwise, 2100 may be plagued not by oil wars or Bibi wars (as the world is now) - but water wars.

Response to sandensea (Reply #15)Tue Jan 7, 2020, 12:20 PM
Star Member MineralMan (126,829 posts)

17. Yes, potable water is a global crisis.

It's just one of many, though, and all of them have just a single cause. Too many people trying to access too few resources.

Response to MineralMan (Reply #17)Tue Jan 7, 2020, 12:38 PM
sandensea (9,669 posts)

27. Fortunately, most of the world's continents have gotten their birth rates under control

With one notable exception: Africa.

Its population has doubled in 28 years - leading to a worsening in already disastrous socio-economic conditions, and of course more wars.

It's projected to double again in 35 years. Nigeria alone will have more people than the U.S. by 2050 - can you imagine!

If purgatory exists, that's as likely a place for it as one may ever hope to find.

Wait what? Now doesn't that have a familiar ring?  <cough> $shithole <cough> country

Response to sandensea (Reply #27)Tue Jan 7, 2020, 12:43 PM
Star Member MineralMan (126,829 posts)

31. Yes. That's true, too.

And yet, global population continues to increase. We haven't managed to move into the negative birth rate grown numbers, and life expectancies are high, comparatively, anyhow. So, more mouths to feed again and again.

Africa is likely to be the first place to have a sudden population crash. Famine or disease, most likely, will be the cause.

And under the bus go the black folk.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.   And for all his nights with Rosy Palmer Rockhead has done nothing to stem over population.  Aside: There are some confessions about his early writing for Whole Earth.   

[Drafe Hoblin]

MM better brush-up on what a 'generation' is.  If he was born before 1949, he's not a baby-boomer.

His generation was called something else and they aren't associated with any of the social-political protests he mentioned.  An example of his would've been cheering-on the birth of the Hell's Angels-type of motorcycle-clubs, formed under the aegis of 'rebellion', etc.

Instead he goes-for the Vietnam/No Nukes card.  Weak.   

[DumbAss Tanker]

Is there a time in recorded history when someone DIDN'T predict bad shit was going to happen in the next 100 years?  Derp.