I agree with you and made a similar comment when the article talking about the report was posted here.
COVID-19 is a perfect example of the folly in believing "technology will always save us". In the U.S., the general sentiment was that technology in the form of vaccines and entrepreneurship will rise to the occasion, so let's just ride it out until then. Well after more than a year of shit show after shit show and 600,000+ deaths in the U.S. alone along with countless reverberations in society (businesses failing, long term health effects of COVID-19, basically a year wasted of schooling across all ages, unemployment, shortages, etc.), people are still like "we got the vaccine, we did it everyone!" I still hear people saying they got COVID-19 like it was an inevitability and no big deal and also now that the vaccine is here no worries. I honestly doubt that climate change, agricultural exhaustion, ecosystem destruction, over population, etc. are anywhere near the public's or even government's serious thoughts. If they are, they're likely to be wholly short term.
We can't even solve simple problems like destroying the dams and decreasing salmon farms in the Pacific northwest that are decimating wild salmon populations which has side effects like starving the resident orcas.
I have zero hope humanity will solve these upcoming problems in any way shape or form. We'll end up just dealing with them and reacting to them once they're here, like we do with everything else (at best).
>COVID-19 is a perfect example of the folly in believing "technology will always save us".
From a purely collectivist point of view, unchecked Covid only kills around 1% of the population and the vast majority are retired people, so it's not something society needed saving from as it has pretty much zero effect on humanity's long-term economic/technological progress.
I think the serious issue is more around long COVID and the associated symptoms with something that could perhaps become a chronic issue down the line.
Yeah, COVID is pretty bad. If possible, nobody wants to catch it.
But COVID to human civilisation is like a badly stubbed toe to a human. Painful. To be avoided. Maybe quite a bit of damage. Not really a threat if responded to in a rational way & with some whimpering.
Oh man, COVID-19 was a huge wake up call. I thought the response to Hurricane Katrina was bad, but the response to COVID-19 has been much worse. Scientists did a great job with rolling a vaccine out, but now every family's weird uncle refuses to get a vaccine. It just blows my mind.
> every family's weird uncle refuses to get a vaccine
Suppose I thought you should get some injections, and you researched it and concluded they almost certainly wouldn't benefit you, and might harm you. Would you be OK with being characterized as a weird uncle who refused to get a treatment?
COVID-19 is a perfect example of the folly in believing "technology will always save us". In the U.S., the general sentiment was that technology in the form of vaccines and entrepreneurship will rise to the occasion, so let's just ride it out until then. Well after more than a year of shit show after shit show and 600,000+ deaths in the U.S. alone along with countless reverberations in society (businesses failing, long term health effects of COVID-19, basically a year wasted of schooling across all ages, unemployment, shortages, etc.), people are still like "we got the vaccine, we did it everyone!" I still hear people saying they got COVID-19 like it was an inevitability and no big deal and also now that the vaccine is here no worries. I honestly doubt that climate change, agricultural exhaustion, ecosystem destruction, over population, etc. are anywhere near the public's or even government's serious thoughts. If they are, they're likely to be wholly short term.
We can't even solve simple problems like destroying the dams and decreasing salmon farms in the Pacific northwest that are decimating wild salmon populations which has side effects like starving the resident orcas.
I have zero hope humanity will solve these upcoming problems in any way shape or form. We'll end up just dealing with them and reacting to them once they're here, like we do with everything else (at best).