Pissing away the Future

So here's the deal. Climate change is a thing, its a big thing and by thing I mean problem. Now by problem I don't mean, "oh we're gonna have to have some really uncomfortable discussions." I mean the world as we know it is changing at a frankly alarming pace and if we don't, as a species, do something drastic about it with a fucking quickness a horrific number of people are going to die. It might not seem like it but I hate to soapbox about this, and not just because I think humanity could probably benefit from a bit of a pruning. I hate to get into the climate change thing because talking about it is largely a meaningless proposition for someone like me. Either you agree with me that its a problem and are taking steps in your own life to do what you think can help, you don't care either way and just want to get on with your business, or you think all this "climate" nonsense is just a conspiracy to control the populace or what the fuck ever. If you fall into that last category, by the way, we can't hang anymore and I sincerely hope you die in a painful and culturally scarring fashion, that others may learn from your failing.

The reason I feel the rather rare desire to approach this topic is because of something said on The Nightly Show last week. Usually, I really enjoy Larry Wilmore, he's witty and direct. But to see him flipping shit to the people trying to come up with solutions to a problem that has been plaguing California (not to mention huge swathes of the rest of the fucking planet) for years, a problem that even more of us are staring down the barrel of, pissed me pretty badly off. All water is recycled. Water treatment is a colossal part of the world we live in and people have been doing it in one way or another for a very fucking long time. Some people feel icky about the prospect of drinking water that used to have shit in it and to some extent that makes sense. Unfortunately for these folks pretty much all water has had shit in it. A goodly amount of it has probably been piss. Odds are you drank a little formerly-piss water today even. That's why filtration systems exist, so that by the time you drink it, your water doesn't bear any meaningful resemblance to the piss (or commercial waste, or industrial run off) that it used to be.

I'm hitting this one pretty hard but its not just water. A while back the U.N. suggested people start phasing insects into their diet to prevent against possible insecurity in the food supply. Of course it was kinda laughed off, but livestock is hard to raise, and costly, and if something goes wrong (like the world smolders and livestock becomes too resource intensive to keep alive) a huge number of people are going to be fucked. We can't afford to laugh off solutions at this point, no matter how icky it makes us feel. There are problems amassing in the world, too many to face down and certainly too many to ignore, and its not just irresponsible to keep calm and carry on, its self destructive.