On the contrary, civilization is going down, and it astonishes me.

With the climate catastrophe, we face an existential threat to our very existence and yet we not only refuse to do anything about it, we continue to invest in more fossil fuels.

We have threats of comparable magnitude from other forms of pollution, like plastic, and from deforestation and the ongoing mass extinction.

I first learned about these issues in the 1960s and 70s, and it bothered me at the time, but I believed that humans would rise to the challenge. But after 50 years of not just inaction, but positive action encouraging these threats, I can't kid myself anymore that we will respond to these issues before it's too late, because it was too late twenty years ago.