Also distorting our sense of danger is our moral psychology. No one has ever recruited activists to a cause by announcing that things are getting better, and bearers of good news are often advised to keep their mouths shut lest they lull people into complacency. Also, a large swath of our intellectual culture is loath to admit that there could be anything good about civilization, modernity, and Western society.

It seems he was right in this instances as well, as evidenced by the down votes being applied to your comment.

Actually, everything, at least in my local area, is pretty good. There's no food shortage, we have medicine and vaccines, I voted recently and, at the polling booths, there was no one with guns telling me where to mark the ballot paper. The employment rate is pretty good. I feel safe and secure in my home and on the street.

What is it with everyone trying to scare the crap out me everywhere I turn.

Sure, things could be better, but I don't recall the last time the marauding hoards of barbarians came through and took all the women and children and burned all the crops, so can we all just relax for a moment? We might get along better that way.

We're a pretty persistent pest, we've even learned to write things like "Deliberate concentration and inhalation of contents of can may prove harmful or fatal" on the back of cans of fly spray - that's pretty impressive for a species who posses The Bomb.

We'll make it through these troubling times, just like we've made it through the past, what? 40,000 years?

Just chill the <expletive deleted> out.

I remember the marauding hordes, genocide has occurred in your lifetime. Just not to you.

To be taken seriously any thought of our species has to consider the whole world and several hundred years of history and future.

*Conditions apply, nothing is free

And "nothing is free" is a stupid belief. Lots of things are free. Pretty much everything that matters IS free.

This happened very recently to the Yazidi people, but maybe it didn't happen to you. The only difference is they killed all the men too.

Pragmatist: let's fix these problems.

There's a big difference between solving problems (which means communicating about them) and getting upset with problems. Changing the world for the better is inspiring, not depressing. Whether you get upset with the message is a choice that you have made.

FTFY

"Everything is peachy" is just wishful thinking.

Everything IS peachy. Fixing problems is the opposite of what life is about. It's fine as a hobby, albeit a rather dull one (I can think of a thousand other things I'd rather be doing, but hey, whatever rings your bells).

In purely hypothetical terms imagine that within 30 years climate change becomes severe enough that it unavoidably affects my life. For example sake, let's assume that I live in Dubai and Dubai becomes uninhabitable[1]. This would limit me on a daily basis and I wouldn't be able to do the things that I want to do.

If that's not your concern, that's perfectly fine. It's also perfectly fine that I discuss these problems with other people who care about them. If you don't care about this discussion it's always trivial to ignore it.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/extreme-...

That should only happen when things are actually "just peachy". It might be a while before then. Several years at least.