I’m the handsome guy circled in red wearing a green polyester suit.
Born at the peak of what may be possible in the universe, we enjoyed amazing lives made possible by a one-time windfall of abundant cheap fossil energy.
Since graduating in 1976 we chose to celebrate our good fortune like yeast in sugar by doubling our population from 4 to 8 billion and increasing our total consumption and excretions by over 500%.
To our grandchildren we will leave depleted oil wells, mines, aquifers, and soils, a dangerous climate, forests displaced by agriculture and sickened by ozone, many fewer species, oceans filled with plastic instead of fish, epidemics of opioids and obesity, and over $300,000,000,000,000 of debt not counting unfunded liabilities like pensions.
1976 graduation motto: “You are a child of the universe.”
2018 reunion motto: “Mission accomplished: We had a great time and left nothing of value for future generations.”
Some old friends from my high school class of ’76 are having a reunion to celebrate turning 60 this year.
I offered to give a talk at the dinner party on how climate change is spinning out of control and may kill our grandchildren, but my offer was not warmly received.
I clearly made a faux pas because climate change has become a little too sensitive to discuss in polite company given how obvious the trends are.
In hindsight, I should have offered to speak on our denial of the collapse of civilization that is underway due to human overshoot and fossil energy depletion, and how our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities is intimately linked to our uniquely powerful brain, and its wacky belief in gods and life after death.
That would have been a much more interesting after-dinner topic that most people haven’t seen in the news, and I could imagine a lively Q&A when I explained that the only “solution” is a global one-child policy, severe government austerity, and a forced contraction of the economy.
Despite the depressing subject, I’m sure there would have been some genuine happiness in the room as old girlfriends breathed a sigh of relief that they didn’t marry me.
un-Denial 
lol! Never mind Rob, we can’t all be popular! I’d have married you……more mature and with it than most of the kids in my class at the time. Good lookin’, too!
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Thanks kindly! All my life I’ve wanted to understand how things really work. Now that I think I’ve figured it out I sometimes wish I was in denial like most.
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R.M. wrote: “I’m sure there would have been some genuine happiness in the room as old girlfriends breathed a sigh of relief that they didn’t marry me.”
There’s actually a serious shortage of (physically appealing) women who want to do something besides be happy all the time. If everyone was living in proper context we’d all get grimmer as time passes and reach attitudinal parity.
Someone should create DoomerDating to increase the odds. Too many flighty women think all they must do is yoga poses while circle-groups heal the planet. Sticking out those rumps in splendid silhouette while the planet burns. :-]
Good site, by the way. DoomFlood is more satisfying than RealityLite.
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LOL! In case you are not aware, some of the very best minds in the world that think about human overshoot are female. I acknowledged them here.
https://un-denial.com/2016/07/04/on-the-quantity-and-quality-of-women/
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I’m a very well informed doomer woman Ed. So we are around. And yet it can be difficult to find people of either sex to talk to personally about such matters – thank god/whoever for the Internet! Yes, we see a lot of women preoccupying themselves with their personal appearance and ‘feeling good’. But they are mostly younger women shown via the media. My female friends and most women I’ve mixed with, may not be doomers but they’re not like that ( although I guess it’s who you mix with ).
As women get older too, we are wiser and start to value ourselves for more than our physical appearance – which human society has placed such importance on. ( unlike the society of birds, where beauty is more important in the males).
Btw, I do know many men who spend numerous hours of their lives looking at other men throwing or chasing balls around a variety of venues…..Are they ‘flighty’. Not a word ever used in connection with males. Frivolous might be better.
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Great post, Rob.
I, too, graduated high school in 1976 — Miami Killian H.S.
Keep up the great work,
~ Michael
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Thanks. I think our birth dates are also the same or very close. I finished the book “Beyond Words” by Carl Safina that you encouraged me to read. Very interesting and I enjoyed it.
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