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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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What are the "world issues" of our age?

I am a high school social studies teacher (lame) and our curriculum is very old. As such, it is adamant that kids learn about the AIDS crisis, SARS, the Millennium poverty reduction goals, UN peacekeeping, third-world debt and the IMF, etc. It's all very Naomi Klein, Michael Moore-type stuff, and feels like teaching in 1992 with books written during the Cold War.

Most of those issues are still around, but they are obviously no longer as relevant to the globally-minded. Other than stuff like SARS, which has an obvious analog in COVID, what issues SHOULD we talking about. In 2007 you could pretty easily list the things that were considered "world issues" by the bien-pensant class. Has wokeism bulldozed all that? Are there constituencies out there who are still worried about this type of stuff? If so, what are they worrying about?

Climate change.

I didn't used to believe in this, and I'm still, say, maybe ambivalent? But I do think there's a real chance that we start seeing some serious shit in this regard in the near future, trends that happen slowly and then all at once.

There's no real chance we start seeing some serious shit - we are already seeing serious shit. 2024 is the hottest year on record, beating out... 2023 for the top spot. Corals all over the world are bleaching and dying and we're already seeing temperature zones marching away from the equator and towards the poles.

I highly recommend the following article, because I think it is the most reasonable take on the issue that I've seen. https://www.ecosophia.net/riding-the-climate-toboggan/

I recommend reading 'Apocalypse Never'. The coverage of climate-related injuries to ecosystems in the media is inadequate. Journalists are not neutral at all, nor are they competent.

we're already seeing temperature zones marching away

And? That article itself notes planet used to be much warmer and there were no real issues with that. The fantasies of runaway greenhouse effects are obviously just that- fantasies.

Perhaps so, but at those times there probably weren't cities of millions of people lying more or less at sea level.

There are entire countries built below sea level now.

If the sea level were to raise by 50 m over a few centuries, people could deal with that.

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