this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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me_irl
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It's really sad that many young people are so pessimistic about the future. Despite some setbacks the last years, in many ways the world is still in a better place than it has ever been in human history.
Child mortality is still lower than ever, (extreme) poverty is still on a declining trend, we're actually on track to stop the worst climate change (thanks to massive Chinese investments), AI could vastly improve our lives in the future...
That said we do live in uncertain times, fascism is on the rise again, a nuclear war could still kill us all, fighting climate change is not done,l and AI could ruine all our lives; but pessimism is not the right mindset.
Extreme poverty may be declining but that doesn’t mean more people in the west are not being pushed into food scarcity due to stagnated wages and corporate greed.
It remains sad that in the world with enough artificial nitrate fertiliser to produce enough food for everyone in abundance and enough food in abundance to feed everyone in the west companies are still putting perfectly edible food into dumpsters and then covering them in motor oil to prevent freegans and dumpster divers while elsewere, famine still happens.
In the West too life is generally better than ever, also for people under 40
I do joke a lol, but things in many areas are so much better than 30-50 years ago and considering Brits in WW II had to turn out all their lights to hinder German bombings - most of us are being peddled fear by the media and it's not THAT bad.
Where did you get the climate hope bit? last articles I glazed over were 'we missed 1.5 deg target and instead put the foot on the pedal to make it faster' and 'climate migrations coming and mass famine'.
Sounder doomerism to me but I don't really have a good source to be optimistic at all.
Not to mention each message to chatGPT burns the equivalent of a water bottle worth of water.
And does not provide a bottles worth of water value in return
In short, solar prices are declining exponentially and deployment is growing exponentially. There are even companies claiming to be able to make efuels from air using solar cheaper than fossil fuels by the end of the decade.
Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie is a good book if you want to read something optimistic.
Thanks for this. I haven't been letting it get me down in the past, but having two kids can certainty start making me question what the heck their future will look like
Your daily life not being an actual warzone is an extremely low bar to set for things not being bad.
Also the climate claim they made was pure fantasy.
No, we damn well aren't.
It could also make it vastly worse in the future, which is the more likely scenario.
It's not a clear cut case, but if you look at the development of solar, battery and other renewable technology we definitely are on the right track to stop the worst. We might even be able to reverse some of it by the end of the century.
Yes, I wrote that in the next paragraph...
Some times this place is really worse than Reddit, wallowing in self pity and downvoting anything positive. In many aspects this is still the best time to be alive no matter where you live in the world and the future is potentially very, very bright.