Thread by @AlexSteffen

A question-assertion I often hear:

"Isn't it too late?"

"Too late," here, meaning a state of affairs where our destabilization of the planet and limited human progress have doomed us inevitably to the most catastrophic of outcomes.

The simple answer is "No. It's not too late."

The slightly longer answer is that at this moment, the truly big choices are still in front of us. The difference between the best possible and worst possible outcomes ahead are staggeringly vast.

Giving up before we fight for the best outcomes available is unwise and unethical.

The more complex answer is that

"At no point on this trajectory will it be too late to work to make things better. "

We won't know—we can't know—within our lifetimes whether the general ruin will become so severe that *nothing* can be done to stabilize the Earth and better humanity.

We can't know because the systems we're discussing are now too complex for simple judgments like "game over."

Beyond that, it's pretty clear (to me) that humanity is already moving forward in ways that make the very worst outcomes less and less likely.

No guarantees, of course, but I'd say the odds of epic collapse are lessening now, not growing (tho we're more aware of the dangers).

In fact, I strongly believe that inducing premature despair is a tool of predatory delay, as I wrote here:

medium.com/@AlexSteffen/p…

I get—believe me, I fully understand—the pain of the losses we're experienced and the even greater losses that are now inevitable. I even get that the desire to give up is rooted in that pain, and the sheer fatigue that comes from watching our civilization burn, year after year.

But ethical people don't get to give up in the next three decades, and if some folks have already made the decision to do so, their best contribution to the debate would be to seek sources of solace, not soapboxes.

The rest of us have work to do.

PS: Planetary futurism pro tip

A host of cognition biases, cultural dynamics & forecasting limits make positive outcomes much harder to envision than dire impacts.

I think most of us massively underestimate how good things can still get—even with the enormous problems we face.

PPS: Also, it's always worth remembering that the stories we hear about the future are always burdened with assumptions and agendas, conscious or not. Be a critical consumer of futures.

medium.com/@AlexSteffen/f…