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posted by martyb on Friday June 14 2019, @11:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-end-is-near dept.

On our current trajectory, the report warns, "planetary and human systems [are] reaching a 'point of no return' by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order."

The only way to avoid the risks of this scenario is what the report describes as "akin in scale to the World War II emergency mobilization"—but this time focused on rapidly building out a zero-emissions industrial system to set in train the restoration of a safe climate.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/597kpd/new-report-suggests-high-likelihood-of-human-civilization-coming-to-an-end-in-2050


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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 15 2019, @12:45AM (19 children)

    Hmm... I was going to call hysterical bullshit on the entire FA but you may be on to something there.

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by nitehawk214 on Saturday June 15 2019, @01:26AM (18 children)

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Saturday June 15 2019, @01:26AM (#855842)

    Except that every generation in their 50's and 60's says the generation in their 20's and 30's is going to ruin everything.

    I am, of course, in my 40's, so I can laugh at both of them.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 15 2019, @01:43AM (16 children)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday June 15 2019, @01:43AM (#855848) Homepage

      I doubt it, people in their 20's and 30's now were fucked by the boomers by outsourcing and other things. I, for one, welcome our new millennial overlords and fully support their legislation for incoming death-panels.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @02:17AM (15 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @02:17AM (#855861)

        I sometimes wonder if they know just how very much they were fucked by the boomers. They never lived through the 60's and 70's, and the very few of them that watch old movies/tv shows would get a very distorted view of what it was like back then. They mostly seem to accept that this shit is just the way things are.

        Most people assume that the future is going to be pretty much like the present, and conversely, that the past is pretty much like now. Sure you can point out gadgets and say that's new, but they assume that the basic structure of society is the same, and that it always has, and always will, suck.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 15 2019, @02:32AM (9 children)

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday June 15 2019, @02:32AM (#855868) Homepage

          It "ain't always the same" for me, but I'm sure that's a typical story - You're a kid and you go to granny and grampa's house and they told you they bought it in the '70's for 70,000 dollars. The house sells a few years ago for $600,000+ dollars or more depending on the neighborhood. Meanwhile, you can't find a job because your grandparents' sons and daughters gutted our manufacturing and outsourced 90% of our tech.

          There went the American dream. You don't have enough money for a family, you can barely afford car payments and you have to live with roommates, so the one luxury you can look forward to is India pale ales with avocado toast on the weekends. Oh, and you're 60,000 dollars deep in student loan debt working for Fry's with a STEM degree. Then dad pulls up in his new Corvette and tells you to stop buying those Starbucks and that avocado toast because that's why you have no prospects for a well-paying job of starting a family, because you chose to spend the only remaining $20 per week you have on something you actually enjoy.

          I was going to praise the Mexicans here, because they live and die as families, but when you talk to Mexico Mexican ladies, they're all single moms.

          • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @03:37AM (6 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @03:37AM (#855888)

            You really want to hit them with the house price thing, you need to take inflation out of the equation:
            40 years ago you could buy a house outright with 4 of 5 times a basic laborers yearly wage. Now it's 20 to 30 times.

            The interest on that means that you will never own it. 30 year mortgages where 95% of what you pay each year is interest. How many families go 30 years with no expensive personal emergencies? The whole bullshit system is designed to bleed you forever and then steal the house back

            • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 15 2019, @04:17AM

              by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday June 15 2019, @04:17AM (#855896) Homepage

              Glad you pulled that out, because I was lying in wait for some dumb motherfucker to challenge me with muh inflation. Nobody here did. I guess these sonsabitches on Soylentnews do have some semblance of intelligence. There may be hope for us all yet.

            • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Sulla on Sunday June 16 2019, @01:31AM (1 child)

              by Sulla (5173) on Sunday June 16 2019, @01:31AM (#856122) Journal

              Another fun metric is to ask them how much of their monthly income went to paying for their apartment or mortgage. Most people I talk to (parents, grandparents) had 1/6 to 1/4 of their income go toward housing. The same property, and the same wage (adjusted for inflation) would now take 1/2 or more of that income.

              Another thing that is killing millennials right now was cash for clunkers. Right or wrong, it removed the glut of used cars on the market and took them permanently out of circulation. Instead of being able to get out of high school and pick up a beater for 500 bucks or 1k that would last you a few years, you have to pay 2-3k for something that doesn't have a bad head or a slipping tranny, at least in my area.

              --
              Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:35AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @03:35AM (#857749)

                That fits.
                Go from a one income to two income family, and from (1/6 -1/4) to 1/2 of income : 2 x ( 2 to 3) = 4 to 6
                Matches pretty well with: (20 to 30 years) / (4 or 5 years) = 4 to 7

                So either absolute housing values have gone up by a factor of at least four or wages are now less than a quarter of what they were.

            • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Sunday June 16 2019, @10:43PM (2 children)

              by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Sunday June 16 2019, @10:43PM (#856372) Journal

              You might be right about the ratio of income to payments, but this has nothing to do with how a mortgage works.

              With a 30 year mortgage, you own the home after 30 years, assuming you can make all the payments. Incidentally, an initial monthly payment that is 95% interest corresponds to a rate of roughly 10%. A typical home mortgage rate for a 30 year fixed is under 4%.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @11:29PM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @11:29PM (#856390)

                The interest on that means that you will never own it. 30 year mortgages where 95% of what you pay each year is interest. How many families go 30 years with no expensive personal emergencies?

                With a 30 year mortgage, you own the home after 30 years, assuming you can make all the payments.

                You're not exactly contradicting me there.

                Incidentally, an initial monthly payment that is 95% interest corresponds to a rate of roughly 10%.

                So I didn't bother working out the math exactly. I should have typed ">95% of what you pay is interest". 30 year mortgages are still becoming common and are blatant usury.
                It also isn't much more than 30 years since interest rates were higher than that. Going to bet the farm that they won't go up again within 30 years?

                • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday June 17 2019, @11:57PM

                  by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Monday June 17 2019, @11:57PM (#856837) Journal

                  I’m not contradicting you. I fundamentally agree with what you’re saying, but I don’t think mortgages are worth including in the discussion. The structure of a 30 year mortgage hasn’t changed in generations. It’s really the interest rate that matters, hence why I picked on your math. When interest rates were up around 18% in 1980, you could forget about even getting a loan, let alone making the first payment. Nowadays the problem for new buyers is their income relative to the price of the house. Likely a bigger and longer term problem than a spike in interest rates which has to be squashed by the Fed.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @05:01AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @05:01AM (#855906)

            Depending upon where you live it could be even more. Here in Seattle, my parents paid $28k for their house in the mid '70s and the land alone is worth over $600k. The lot next door was bought for $700k knowing that it would be knocked down pretty much immediately to build a new house in place of the crappy old one.

            Millenials are unlikely to find a deal like that pretty much anywhere. The places where property prices are that low are mostly in dying areas where there's no possibility of properly values ever skyrocketing like that.

          • (Score: -1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday June 15 2019, @08:01AM

            by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Saturday June 15 2019, @08:01AM (#855938) Homepage Journal

            WRONG. Incredibly incredibly wrong. You forgot, Donald J. Trump is President. Unemployment LOWEST( best ) in 50 years. Wages going up much faster than inflation. Consumer "confidence" highest (best) in 19 years. Shopping on the rise. Oil prices going up very strongly. Tremendous GROWTH. Economy ROARING like it's NEVER EVER roared before!! foxnews.com/us/us-retail-sales-rose-0-5-in-may-led-by-online-shopping [foxnews.com]

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by khallow on Saturday June 15 2019, @05:47AM (4 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 15 2019, @05:47AM (#855917) Journal

          I sometimes wonder if they know just how very much they were fucked by the boomers.

          Sounds like we should wonder about you as well. It's just first mover advantage. Boomers, at least the early boomers were first into those houses and such. Thus, they got a great ride on home prices. That's most of the wealth difference in a nutshell. Same goes for so much of the rest of the paraphernalia of modern societies.

          Then add in that the effects of globalization such as developed world workers competing with workers who cost a fraction, and you have a recipe for subsequent generations not doing quite as well. So what?

          They mostly seem to accept that this shit is just the way things are.

          Why isn't that the accurate assessment of the situation? At some point, you'll need to adapt to the situation. Blaming other people isn't going to make your life any better.

          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @06:25AM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 15 2019, @06:25AM (#855927)

            Then add in that the effects of globalization such as developed world workers competing with workers who cost a fraction, and you have a recipe for subsequent generations not doing quite as well. So what?

            Well Said Mr Khallow! If the peasants have no bread, well then, let them eat cake!!

            • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday June 15 2019, @02:02PM (2 children)

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 15 2019, @02:02PM (#855986) Journal

              If the peasants have no bread, well then, let them eat cake!!

              The "peasants" of the developed world have a hell of a lot more than just bread or cake. It's not even remotely close.

              The real peasants of the developing world meanwhile are experiencing the best improvement in the human condition ever. Look at what's going on now rather than recycle cliches that have been out of date for centuries.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @11:33PM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @11:33PM (#856393)

                The "peasants" of the developed world have a hell of a lot more than just bread or cake.

                They do indeed Mr Khallow. Why, some of them even have the skills and resources to build such useful tools as guillotines.

                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 17 2019, @03:06AM

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday June 17 2019, @03:06AM (#856466) Journal
                  Or modern societies. I think the "watch the world burn" types are going to lose this one.
    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 15 2019, @03:39AM

      Most of them have been correct.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.