{"id":67333,"date":"2024-04-16T17:24:15","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T22:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67333"},"modified":"2024-04-16T17:24:15","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T22:24:15","slug":"what-optimism-and-pessimism-are-in-the-21st-century-a-reflection-on-are-we-doomed-and-two-narratives-of-the-human-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67333","title":{"rendered":"What Optimism and Pessimism Are in the 21st Century, a Reflection on \u201cAre We Doomed?,\u201d And Two Narratives of the Human Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What Optimism and Pessimism Are in the 21st Century, a Reflection on \u201cAre We Doomed?,\u201d And Two Narratives of the Human Journey<\/a><\/h3>\n

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  1. \u2018Things I\u2019m ashamed to admit\u2019: TikTok trend driving new level of oversharing (The Guardian<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  2. How the Ray-Ban Wayfarer became the accessory of choice for the men-children of the world (El Pais<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  3. Why We’re All Still Waiting for the EV Future (Inc<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  4. US will push China to change a policy threatening American jobs, Treasury Secretary Yellen says (AP News<\/a>)<\/li>\n
  5. Assessing the health burden from air pollution (Science<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \n

    Hi! How\u2019s everyone? Thank you for joining me, and welcome new readers.<\/p>\n

    Today we\u2019re going to discuss\u2026 \u201care we doomed?!\u201d That\u2019s the kind of dismal, reductive framing that\u2019s emerged around an issue that deserves better\u2014decline, degeneration, the rise of a number of troubling trends, all at once.<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s reflect on this sort of question together, beginning with\u2026<\/p>\n

    Exhibit One In: \u201cAre We Doomed?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Did that make you shudder a little bit? If you don\u2019t quite get the point, let me spell it out.<\/p>\n

    Right about now, climate scientists are a little horrified, bewildered, and perplexed. We\u2019re in \u201cuncharted territory,\u201d and warming\u2019s outpacing models, sometimes by a very long way. It was recently 40 degrees Centigrade in\u2026Antarctica.<\/p>\n

    Meanwhile, the average person is less and\u00a0less<\/em>\u00a0likely to believe that this is real, aka, there\u2019s such a thing as human-made climate change. In the last few years alone, the number\u2019s grown significantly, and over a quarter now believe that climate change is due to \u201cnatural causes, up from just 14%. That\u2019s not an absolutely high number in itself, but the trend is striking, disturbing, and sort of mega-troubling:\u00a0increasing\u00a0<\/em>numbers of people are climate deniers.<\/p>\n

    …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What Optimism and Pessimism Are in the 21st Century, a Reflection on \u201cAre We Doomed?,\u201d And Two Narratives of the Human Journey Quick Links and Fresh Thinking \u2018Things I\u2019m ashamed to admit\u2019: TikTok trend driving new level of oversharing (The Guardian) How the Ray-Ban Wayfarer became the accessory of choice for the men-children of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[141,196,215,34267,16981],"class_list":["post-67333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-climate-change","tag-decline","tag-doom","tag-doomerism","tag-umair-haque"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67335,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67333\/revisions\/67335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}