In your opinion, what should we be most concerned about?

[TauroLomo]

The war?
Inflation?
Global warming?
The NHS?
Womens rights?

What else?

There has been very little but big, somewhat terrifying, news stories over the past couple of years. Sometimes I find it overwhelming, it’s almost as if my brain can’t decide what to worry about first.

In your personal opinion, what current issues either globally or closer to home, warrant more intense and concentrated attention?

And I know it does little use to worry about things we have no control over, perhaps that was a bad choice of phrase. But I suppose I want to educate myself better on what’s going on around us and would massively appreciate some views and opinions on what you deem to be most pressing.

Thank you.

Agree with this. I am mid fifties. I have had 4 gay friends in my lifetime. Three are dead ( 2 from suicide and one from potential complication related to addiction).

@JoonT the problem with the depopulation argument is that it ignores the fact that there is a huge disparity in the carbon footprint of humans in different places. African women may be having more children but their entire family won’t exceed the carbon footprint of one westerner. I think a bigger issue is the super wealthy and mega corporations taking up more than their fair share of resources.

But you won't get stressed about the other stuff

And you know this, how?

War.

Realistically China and India need to stop using coal. We can't do much here. But we do have a bigger carbon footprint. USA has about 6% global population but uses 40% global power / oil. So it's not really overpopulation.

Africa will go from 1billion to 4billion People by 2100 according to un projections so expect geopolitical shifts.

We need to stop tilling in farming which also drives desertification of arable land over time.

Simple answer.

Men / Males

They're the cause of all the issues of the world.

The war? Males having a pissing contest will lead us down the path to nuclear destruction.

Inflation? Big men with big brain making big maths choices..

Global warming? Who invented the causes of this? Men..

The NHS? Male politicians putting in male managers that have no experience of health care.

Womens rights? Males have wanted them erased for as long as the sun has risen.

Sort all life's problems, put all but the best looking men on an island.. Australia will do. They can all argue about how to cook burgers right and mansplain to each other why pressing them is good or bad.

I think we are closing in on that self limiting point as a species. We all know deep down that we will never solve climate change or plastic pollution, the human population will keep destroying the planet until it collapses and takes us with it. We dont have the will or the willpower.

It's already affecting the world awfully already but so far all the uk really sees is a bit of a hot summer and some inconvenient floods. So long as we are all right eh? Meat free Monday, walking all journeys under a mile and banning plastic straws makes us feel good and like we are making a difference.

Who cares that according to Earth Overshoot Day that people used all of the world's resources by July last year? Or that if everyone lived like the UK then that would be May? By comparison, in 1971 Earth Overshoot Day was in December.

I dread to think what it will be like for our little ones and our grandchildren. Its heartbreaking. But at least the rich have yachts.

Yeah, but how much stuff do we buy from those countries. Our hand might be clean but our souls arent.

Interesting you say that - I recently stumbled across an article about the differences between our closest relatives, chimps and bonobos, and the lessons we can draw for humanity. Chimps have a very violent society where sex is used to dominate. Bonobos are a matriarchal society and are very peaceful. Males are banished from the group when they reach sexual maturity. Head females protect younger females from unwanted sex. It did get me thinking about what the world could be like if we were also a matriarchal society.

I’m primarily worried about the people in Turkey and Syria right now.

This is a couple of years old.

Climate change will literally dwarf everything. I've followed it for 40 odd years, we are totally fucked

This 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Well, the only one we can have an impact on is the NHS so we should fix that by funding it properly.

The rest are concerning, but we have zero control to little influence over them.

Overpopulation and demographic crisis'the world over.

We have a situation where the global population is too high for our current way of living, contributing massively to global warming but also to likely unrest as the population shifts start to occur.

Russia's population is shrinking massively, Japan's is screwed, China's is shrinking and most of the west are breeding at less than replacement levels. Combine this with rapid growth in population in other areas and there'll be a shift in global powers and I imagine wars to control this shift.

On top of that, you have millions and millions more young men than women in the world, men who have no chance of finding a partner because they outnumber their female counterparts so much. So you end up with lots of angry young men, a shifting global power balance and country's slowly dying out - feels like a great opportunity for a lot of war because angry young men are always easier to feed hatred and war to and make ready made martyrs for the cause.

Given that the overwhelming majority of the world's politicians, war mongers and corporate fat cats are male, then perhaps women's rights should be nearer the top of the list.

NHS and global warming. But all the things you list are deeply worrying and impacting people.

Also add misinformation to the top ten threats to humanity. If we can’t agree on the truth, then we can’t even begin to discuss the solution.

Bonobos are not peaceful. It’s matriarchal but just as violent. Young females regularly steak and kill the infants of low status females, some bonobos even cannibalise their own babies. The females will gang up on and kill adolescent male Bonobos- they’re not “banished”- they’re bullied until they leave and die alone in the forest or are killed by their own mother and sisters. The matriarch is commonly murdered and then replaced by one of her daughters.

Ah, maybe the article wasn’t that accurate then.

I get like this OP and I specifically worry about it in relation to DS (he’s three) as I feel like there’s so much to worry about and I can’t protect him from any of it.
when I think about potential for war, other pandemics, global warming etc it really panics me as I think, how can I keep him safe and happy? So rightly or wrongly I try not to think about it too much daily and just do my bit where I can.

So I did some more reading and it seems that whilst bonobos can be violent, it’s comparatively rare. Here’s the article I was taking about before: www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/making-sense-chaos/202209/are-bonobos-the-answer-ending-gender-violence?amp

I’ve just finished a very recent book on female apes. It seems for years scientists only watched the males so lots of old information was based on assumptions about females.

The female behaviours were ignored- it was thought all the interesting behaviour was male behaviour in animals and females were passive, mild, boring. So that’s why you even see statements like “male chimpanzees commit infanticide, but no recorded case of male bonobos committing infanticide” in older articles.

Climate change. But I believe we have power for a short time to influence it. Wrote to companies such as Tesco currently supporting destruction of the Amazon via suppliers and vote for pro eco policy parties in elections (doesn’t appear to be the current lot). We are a large economy and collectively we have power. We need to use it. If we don’t this island is doomed as it’s not self sufficient.

Homicide is rare, but fingers and toes bitten off, deep lacerations, not rare.