Is now the sweet spot for human civilization?

Sure, if you ignore climate change and fascism on the rise everywhere.

That's the problem--ignoring impending climate change. As long as YOU'RE happy.

That’s my point. It’s going to get worse from here on.

OP, the 1990s after the Cold War was that time albeit without the modern internet and smart phones. 9/11 changed that in so many ways.

I’m not advocating ignoring climate change. I’m advocating recognizing how it’s going to make the future worse than the present.

If you're rich.

The internet and smart phones are huge advances, r4.

We're already experiencing the effects of climate change--one of the big reasons for the massive global migration is climate change that's fueled droughts in the Middle East which has then led to unrest in places like Syria.

I'd say we're past the sweet spot, which was maybe the 1990s.

I'm dreading what's going to happen--80 percent of Bangladesh is in a flood plain and that country's packed wall-to-wall with people.

I don't see how you find that comforting, r5. Also, the effects of climate change aren't a hundred years away or even fifty.

It's the last moments of relative peace and tranquility - for some - before we descend into chaos and eventually extinction as a species.

We have fucked ourselves but good.

Life has always been better for the rich.

Who says I find the idea that human civilization is going to decline “comforting?”

We're not going to go extinct--there are a lot of humans out there, but it's going to be very rough going. I wouldn't want to be in Africa or Asia.

Apart from climate change, the rise of nationalistic right-wing nuts make this a far-from-sweet time to be alive. And international and domestic terrorism, killers with unchecked access to gun (in the US).

I liked the '70s.

I'd say the sweet spot was 1993 - 2001.

India’s 6th largest city just ran out of water. All the reservoirs are dried up, the monsoon season hasn’t come. There are 11 MILLION people in the area. The climate breakdown has begun.

Humans still have the capacity to save ourselves and the planet, but the political will isn’t there. I’m glad I didn’t have children. I still don’t want to witness the 6th Mass Extinction in my lifetime (and be among its victims).

There’s no way 1993-2001 could be considered a sweet spot. Life without the internet and smartphones could never be considered a sweet spot.

Fifty will be the new twenty in a matter of time.

Re :R13 - 'I wouldn't want to be in Africa or Asia.'

This!

The thing that TICKS ME OFF is that the economic realities and ripples reverberating from all this inevitable shit emerging and going down within near decades AND dead set in my lifetime via the necessary intersections of First, Developing AND shithole Third World is inevitably and inextricably also going to screw with the peaceful ease and comfort of MY First World elder age livelihood day to day.

Yeah - pillory me for being just another whitebread selfish cunt. So be it. I got educated, employed,, became an adult doing all the usual 'right' things pretty much. I'm not like some rich cunt - just your ordinary Gen X worker bee.

I HATE that I'm looking down the barrel of this global interaction of Bio and Eco and Human population breakdown with fuck knows what array of repurcussions yet to arise and emerge.

Realalising I will no longer be able to predictably rely on the traditional trappings and everyday life of a First World older person grinds my gears.

The piffling effort to have some control over my Retirement years NOW for life 20-30 years hence that will likely involve skyrocketed costs, and my own weakened lack of power in regards to accessing limited resources of ALL kinds anyway seems so ludicrous and almost undercut by pointlessness as a Ordinary Joe.

**We're not all 401k'd up tobthe eyrballs either. Even. those lucky Retirees rich cunts smug in anticipatiom future gated privilege and safety ate also kind of fucked and they too will likely STILL face elder years in a sort of siege state psychology before the dementia drooling takes proper hold. Robots, automation and comfort of a kind yes I guess? Yet-

The 'global' intersections of this crisis is tipping point scary as fuck if you even bother to dwell on it in even the simplest terms. Most don't. Most conversely shrug and continue as per fucking normal their routine day to day -and that's including the corporate and military and political PTB and schmucks worldwide meanwhile with fuck all real and tangible communication effort, consensus or cooperative impetus. If anything- it's actively, even deliberately conflicted.

We've got fucking school kids protesting in the streets FFS! I can't envisage how HORRIFIC scary fuck it must seem on most levels to these kids? I'm an employed, saving adult with skin in this game and have nearly NO shred of a proper sense of future or control that should be normal.

Where's MY future Retirement of occasional pleaant travel and trips to Europe or brunch by the pool and off to a morning peceful clean beach swim afterwards?? Knowing that NONE of this will remain the same is SHIT.

TL:DR Sweet spot? Whatever sucka. As though all your day to day dedication to things you value and work now for will mean sweet FA.

Yep- cane my arse DL - but you know I'm right.

The population growth is largely in Africa as well as Pakistan and the Phillipines but the leading economy may in the future be China, which is a far more racist society than the US, Canada and Western Europe.

Exactly R6! This is the new Gilded Age...the perfect time to be alive when you are among the 1%. Not so much for everyone else with wage stagnation and declining quality of life.

I keep thinking that Japan with its economic stagnation and below-replacement birthrate might have it right. They got everybody up to a certain level of comfort, but stopped trying to push their economy at the expense of everything else. Better to slow down than race towards a catastrophe.

China's economic growth contains a lot of padding, corruption and abuse of natural resources in ways that aren't sustainable. Its rivers are seriously polluted, the Gobi Desert's still expanding and its looking toward a massive problem with an aging population. India's another country where there are way too many people for the land to support.

In most of these places, the issue isn't the birth rate, which peaked in the early aughts, it's the increased lifespans. There are a lot of people right here right now and none of them are getting any younger.