> Chomsky said the current age is a “point of confluence of severe crises,” including the threat of nuclear war, climate change, a raging pandemic, economic depression and racial unrest in the United States.
Other events might or might not turn out to be more consequential in the long run, and it still be true that there are more things happening all at once than ever before.
That is a tautology kinda.
If we assume something that's bigger than anything else happens, what was bigger.
Nuclear war is silly, because The Cuban Missile crisis was scarier and probably would have been worse if it had of kicked off.
If climate change all happens in a year instead of 100 years, it's big, but not that big. You'd notice it less that the coronavirus.
> If climate change all happens in a year instead of 100 years, it's big,
He must not agreee with you on this is what I'm saying.
> tautology
Just a nitpick but please learn what the word means.
That's interesting. Can you say more about that? It's very much counter to the conventional wisdom (mass death, mass migration, mass starvation, destruction of coastal civilisation, etc..)
Due to my hyperbole it's a hard argument that if 100 years happens in one year it'll all be ok.
But yields from crops will improve in some areas and weaken in others
https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2011/02/18/food-se...
So there will be no mass starvation long term, after this super climate change year.
But I see no reason in the USA and Europe if they know what will happen with climate in a year, all the big farms won't adapt within that year.
To put all that change into a year will hammer the poor, but they will adapt within years and I'd see no reason the richer countries couldn't prop them up during the change over.
It's a tough hypothetical. The Netherlands probably couldn't do 100 years of climate change in a year for their dykes... I'm not sure. Maybe they could.
The coronavirus is also a big deal, you'll feel it for decades. What worries about it, is lost time. We are destroying time doing nothing during C19. Climate change 100 years -> 1 year, you'd lost a lot of stuff, but things would plod along.
From an American perspective, it's absurd to elevate "now" above the Great Depression, World War 2, the Vietnam War, and the massive social and political changes accompanying each, to name just three eras in the past century. Tack on another century, and now doesn't even make it into the textbook.
Yeah, there's never been another moment like this, but that's true always and forever. There are some big things going on all the time. Add them all up, and this is a pretty bland time in the grand scheme of things.