Ashes are falling from the sky and the sun is practically red. People don’t care. Nobody notices or even makes changes in their daily lives to do anything about it. People are selfish. Why does nobody care?!?! My family and everyone else around me is walking around like brainless zombies. Indulging in their selfish daily habits without a second thought about the very planet they live on. I straight up have a headache and feel nauseous just thinking about it. When you do mention it, they ridicule you and call you insane or a hippie for demanding for them to change their lifestyle and align their actions with their moral. I seriously cannot be closely related to the human specimen.

All they do is consume without empathy, without any regard, without consciousness.

Hi, I know I posted like 2 days ago but my brain is in hyper fixation and nobody in my real life to process this with, so hopefully it's okay.

First I have a question that may be better for the main collapse sub but honestly I feel intimidated by the big brains over there. Do we know why all these predictions seem to be 10-15 years ahead of schedule? I get some of the initial causes, like feedback loops and stuff but why does it seem nobody's adjusting for that now?

This brings me to my next question that came about as I was searching for the answer myself. Why does there seem to be an almost optimism among environmentalist? Not just neo-liberal "don't give up, write your politicians" optimism, though that is the bulk of what I'm talking about. Predictions that are still more conservative than even current reality is a big part of it, but also I've seen people saying that it won't be as bad as we imagine in places like r/climate. I found videos from "climate scientist" who say people who say we're collapsing are actually just propagating big fuel propaganda to give up. I'll admit, I do think we should give up on trying to fix the system within the system, but it's because all we can hope for now is mitigation and it's blatantly obvious that it won't be coming from world leaders. That said, I don't see it as trying to convince people to give up as much as prepare them to shift from big scale global efforts to more localized community efforts that actually have some degree of impact.

I don't want to accuse everyone who has less extreme views on this issue if the same thing but... I don't really grasp how anyone who is working with the data + witnessing real world events can downplay the realities either to the point I wonder if anyone else is suspecting massive plants? I just can't wrap my head around it. Of course it gets eaten up and any doom gets nothing but criticism. I actually sat and really reflected on of maybe I really was falling for conspiracy thinking but I can't find any wild leaps or cognitive biases between the data and my conclusion, though I know I am certainly not the most educated on the subject it just comes back feeling like gaslighting.

Last bit to my rant is, what if we are being overly cautious? I know there's the whole apathy thing but I really think it anything climate deniers pushed the entire conversation into a place where people are apathetic because it's "not 'that' bad".

Maybe people are busy. Maybe people have personal problems and a lot going on in their lives. Some people have a limited capacity to understand like so many of us do. Maybe their emotional bandwidth is currently limited. Maybe understanding would destroy their worldview. Maybe it would plunge them into a deep depression ... and do I want that for them to prove that they care? No. They have nothing to prove to me.

I know that because they're just like me, and you. Just look at all the common ground we stand on as human beings. They are still the innocent children they once were, just all grown up and affected by their environment, living in a dysfunctional society. It doesn't mean they don't care about the admittedly amazing and beautiful natural and man-made world. Just because they're distracted and seem unappreciative of what they have doesn't mean they don't wish to preserve it like us.

Most people are empathetic souls and good at heart. Mental health is in decline for a reason. They deny and distract for a reason. Maybe it's because they feel helpless or don't want to think about depressing things. And maybe that's because of their backgrounds. Maybe it's a trauma response. Maybe it's just "too much" for them. But it's not because they "don't care."

Lots and lots and lots of people care. MOST people care. If they could change things, they would change a lot of things, just like you. If they could prevent climate change and plastic pollution and ignorance and suffering and chaos and pollution and disease and declining quality of life they would -- for the other animals, too.

And just like the innocent children, they are no less deserving of the same kind of empathy and care children are allotted.

They did not ask to be here. We did not ask to be here. They did not ask to struggle and work their whole lives. They did not ask to be problematic and to be scolded for being problematic when they never meant to be in the first place.

Please stop reducing people who don't understand or don't have a healthy perspective to worthless, parasitic sheep.

We are literally family, along with everything else walking, flying and swimming the Earth. We are in this together and need each other. Try to show a little respect even when others seem disrespectful. Understand that we are all sometimes messy, imperfect emotional creatures. And at the end of the day, we would hope to leave the world a better place than we found it, just as it was left for (most of) us. You see how attached people are to comfort ... And they are just like the people that will be born in the future. That tells you all you need to know about how much they care about future generations, and people JUST LIKE THEM all around the world. Because they basically currently *are* those living creatures

They may not know it, they may not say it, but they care.