Thread by @kurteichenwald

The greatest threats facing this planet are greed, lack of common sense, and arrogance of ignorance. We are facing an assortment of unparalleled threats - medical, climactic, financial - but those who profit from us endlessly divert with irrational nonsense to fuel rage of the...

2...uninformed against allies. Medical experts across the globe say we are being hit by bacterial and fungal threats that are beyond our ability to treat, and people are dying. They also say that anti-vaxxer ignorance is leading to a collapse of mass safety against viruses....

3...with the result that bacteria, fungi and viruses are all posing new and ever increasing threats. Climatologists have warned for many years that warming would lead to the growth of fungi that represent an increased threat of mycotoxins, and it is happening. Meanwhile, the....

4...climatologists have also provide the literal equivalent of centuries of man-hours establishing the threat of climate change, which is already starting to hit hard. Then, we have the financial threats, where massive debt - piled up endlessly whenever there are tax cuts - ....

5...lead to economic analyses that our interest on the debt will soon become the largest portion of our budget. What do all of these have in common? The big contributors to politicians do not want these problems solved, because it will cost them money. In order to address the...

6...emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, we have to stop using antibiotics in meat production. More antibiotics are used for animals than for humans, and this is massively contributing to the growth of drug-resistance bacteria. There is no magic cure - once the bugs are strong..

7...enough, lots of folks will die. They already are. The fungal infections have two issues: The corporations that grow produce use anti-fungals on a massive scale, leading to resistance. And of course, there is the predicted - and occurring - impact of climate change on....

8...the spread of new, toxic fungi as the growth, coupled with the resistance, create a nightmare. The impact of climate change is spreading across the globe; it is probably too late to do anything about it - we seem to believe we can hit the brakes on the train when we are....

9...three inches from hitting something on the tracks. The consequences are inevitable now, the only question is how bad will they be and can we act to decrease the impact. But we won't because fossil fuel companies know this threatens short term profits, and so we must....

10...ignore it, in their minds. Then financial - eventually, America will be unable to borrow enough to pay interest on the debt, we will default, and America will be over.

How did we get here? How is it we can't fix anything? I gave the answer at the start: Greed, lack of....

11...common sense and the arrogance of ignorance. The watchers of Fox News are beyond reach - these people actually believe tha those who want to address climate change are trying to ban cows and airplanes, when in fact this was a statement about the need for negative emission...

12...growth BECAUSE of those things that will not be banned. This is science, but for the infantile idiots on Fox, it became "hehehe!! Cows farting!" and when that took off, they said "Oh, when they wrote "cows wont be banned soon" that meant they want to ban cows, rather than..

13...explaining the factors that lead to the need of negative emotion growth. These same idiots believe that democrats are fighting to make it legal to kill just-born babies - somehow sidestepping state murder charges - because Fox and the other liars tell them so. Others say....

14...climate change is a fraud (or is real and is not caused by man, or is caused by man but there is nothing to be done about it - there story doesnt stay straight) - a fraud that involves almost all climate scientists, all PUBLISHED climate scientists (there is disagreement...

15...about ELEMENTS of the science, as there is in any scientific pursuit, but not about the underlying conclusion), and the others in the fraud are every other indistrialized nation, American corporations, international corporations, our defense department, etc....

16...why are all these experts wrong? Because Hannity, Limbaugh and their fellow college dropouts, as well as lawyers and other non-climate scientists - say so, over and over, even though this makes no rational sense. Why are there no studies backing this up? Why, because....

17...scientists only make money by publishing lies. Seriously. They believe that the people who gain fame in science are the ones who publish the same things as everyone else - NOT the ones who disprove something. And where are these unpublished studies showing climate change....

18...is a fraud? No one with the expertise to write one has written one.

What is the logic of anti-vaxxers? There are conspiracies - between drug companies and doctors and blah blah - because Facebook says so. Or this a freedom issue. Or there is some other reason why....

19...their ignorance should put us all at risk.

My bottom line: This is not going to change. Greed and stupidity and gullibility will not change. I have come to agree with people smarter than me who say that we are witnessing the events that will eventually lead....

20...to the end of the human race. Not in our lifetime, but our grandkids, who will see all the nightmares predicted to hit by 2050 and 2100, will curse us for every lie and deception we made. The world will survive. Bacteria will survive. But man is too immature to handle....

21...the impacts of technology, too laze and greedy to face the problems it creates. I read the words about the end of species for the first time in the book The Uninhabitable Earth and realized, yes, there could be an end point. Man is just a species. Disease, climate....

22...and financial wreckage combine into the potential death of a species. As our technology and science have become more sophisticated, we have become dumber. We have become more susceptible to propaganda. And we are at the mercy of those who care more about a dollar in their...

23...pocket than the threats posed to their grandchildren.

What is the answer? I don't believe there is one. Once the consequences hit - more than they are already - we will spend all the time blaming each other, yelling on cable, until the last light burns out and we are gone.

not emotion growth - emission growth.