Doomwatch

 

(Doomwatch was a  British TV series from the early 70s).

One of the new aspects of living in today's world is deciding whether we should be alarmed and how to act accordingly. The US has often been accused of kicking the can down the road as a way of squelching cognitive dissonance. It's an easy way to turn down the volume. Then you don't have to do anything.

In terms of what is happening with persistent drought around the globe, we're not in extremis yet. There are ways we can move water around and I'm sure people are thinking about other ways to adapt to drier climates. But everywhere you look on social media it is this "doomwatch" thing--the "disaster movie" theme I keep revisiting. I think it's related to our image-based culture.

More than a century since the advent of photography and cinema, it's probably changed or brains in fundamental ways. Now YouTube watches the images you're watching and feeds you more of those images. Anything watched on screens these days is an exercise in image gluttony. But there is interesting and enriching content nonetheless, be even that isn't conclusive. It can be a moral hazard--geoengineering for example. There might be a well-produced documentary about it that can be convincing but you have to consider whether the eye candy is fooling you.

6/20/2021