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September 18 2019 I've had the Grist.org RSS feed in my news reader for some years. Grist does a pretty good job of presenting a range of perspectives on the unfolding ecological globe-spanning crisis, though they largely focused on climate change. Occasionally I try to provide feedback in the Comments section. Like so many sites these days, Grist has opted to farm out managing the ocean of reader comments to Disqus.com and that's were things kind of go sideways. Disqus is decidedly snoopy; they really, really want you to use some mainstream social media login so they can monetize and track you. To thwart this behavior I've opted to instead use a disposable email to create a Disqus account. In the past my comments generally have posted without issue. Lately however I'm finding comments mysteriously removed and within Disqus I see the comment flagged with "Detected as spam". I've tried editing down comments, removing anything I think may possibly cause offense, yet still my comments on Grist simply disappear. So, okay -- fuck you Grist -- and no donations for you. I'll still read your occasionally thoughtful article but will waste no more time trying to add to the "disqussion". - - My latest and final "Detected as spam" Grist comment: In response to: Andrew Yang: Fearmonger or climate realist? - Molly Enking - Sep 12, 2019 https://grist.org/article/andrew-yang-fearmonger-or-climate-realist/ None of these candidates are up to the reality humanity faces, but at least Yang isn't trying to perpetuate the myth that there is still time to turn global weirding around. As a US presidential candidate he has to have "a plan", however shallow and reality deficient it might be. There may still be the possibility for staving off extinction level warming, ie. 4+ degree C, but at least 2 degrees C is pretty much baked in at this point; getting the adaption conversation going is a good start. By the way, our so-called leaders know all of this and have for decades. So why has nothing tangible been done? Because to do so means powering down this globe-spanning industrial civilization along with all it's super fun toys and the possibility, for some anyway, to gain amazing levels of wealth and thus power. The thing is it's going to end anyway, and probably a lot sooner than most think. Because it's not just climate; it's a whole host of planetary boundaries that are close or in some cases beyond their tipping points. The ones that should be garnering the most concern are those that will contribute most directly to water and food scarcity. If we want to avoid the worst aspects of civil breakdown the world will need to embark on a dramatic reversal in human population AND consumption. And it will need a coordinated plan for dealing with migrants, spreading them around in an equitable and culturally sensitive manner. The UN is ideally suited for such a task if all the individual countries can be convinced to relinquish control of who gets to cross their borders. Is humanity up to putting the breaks on its own "success"? Humans can be very clever when it comes to getting the prize but what if the problem is too much of this short-sighted goal seeking? I think this is where the optimists have it wrong; human ingenuity has largely been manifest in getting MORE stuff, not less. It's very human-centric, largely in the present, heavily discounting the future. For illustration, look how long it took to get lead out of gasoline. From the very beginning the researchers knew lead in gasoline would cause all sorts of health and environmental problems. But the companies and the so-called leaders let it go ahead anyway because it was cheaper than alternatives for boosting octane. It took decades to get lead out of gasoline and even today lead is still in use in aviation. The colossal miss-allocation of resources to accommodate and extend the use of personal automobiles is of course the backdrop of the story but for now lets just say that putting ones faith in human ingenuity has some serious flaws. Instead of hoping for clever solutions to problems caused by previous clever solutions perhaps it's time to look behind us to see what kind of life is possible without the massive energy inputs and environmental impacts of the current civilization and try to get there in a graceful and dignified manner.