Member-only story
At some level we all know that disaster is looming, though many are in conscious denial
Climate change and wealth disparity, the gigantic problems of our age, have been growing for decades, like slow-moving weather systems — hurricanes or tsunami — but on a much slower and vaster scale. Most of us have read forecasts about them. Each of us has had personal reactions to those forecasts, and we are making individual decisions about how to behave in the face of them, including possibly denial.
Those of us who are old may expect to die before things become too dire to affect us badly, except psychologically.
Those of us who are wealthy can attempt to build personal protections for themselves and their families against the coming storm. If they are socially aware and generous, they may attempt to help other people, too.
Those of us who are poor can only try to survive day-by-day as the poor always have.
And those of us who are young face a daunting future and a stark choice — whether to try to join the wealthy as individuals, or whether to make common cause with other people to build systems of survival collectively.
Those of us in the middle — neither very rich nor very poor, and neither very old nor very young — are also under increasing pressure to make that stark choice between individual and collective survival.
How are you coping, or are you in denial?
