u/PrinceOfTotalQuiet

Full disclosure this is a joke post based off some bullshit from r/collapse where they said and i quote that this sub was permabanning anyone who states the fact that climate change is accelerating. So yeah. Climate change is accelerating! I said it. I did the unthinkable. Ban me mods! I’ve broken the most important rule of all: acknowledging reality!

PLEASE BAN ME I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE. COLLAPSE IS RIGHT. LITERALLY 1984. DOOM IS ETERNAL. WOE IS ME.

I swear this’ll be the last I ask about this on reddit for a long time. Yes if you look at my post history this is like 90% of what I’ve been talking about lately and it’s not because I’m a bot, but because I have bad GAD and everything climate related lately is worsening it. I really want to believe there is hope, but for the last few days, I just can’t convince myself there is anymore. Europe’s boiling alive. The oceans are boiling. Humanity as a whole seems like it’s lost hope and resigned itself to misery.

Okay that last part isn’t entirely true. This is evidenced in the recent heavy shifting to renewables in many countries, as well as one of the worst case climate scenarios getting retired. Both of those gave me a lot of hope and optimism for the future, maybe not that climate change’s worst effects would be prevented, but that humanity could prosper despite them. Then summer happened. It’s probably dumb to assume that one bad heatwave negates all progress, but we all know worse ones are coming and that’s just the start of the worsening weather.

I don’t know how reliable reddit as a whole is with climate talk given the amount of bots, but I wanted to ask this sub specifically because I have seen a lot of pessimistic and optimistic news regarding the climate from it. There was one comment, months ago, don’t remember the post it was under, that said something like ”the worst case scenario has been averted”. And it seemed backed up, right? There was more to it than that, I don’t even remember who it was from. I know it wasn’t discounting horrible things still happening, but damn if it didn’t help.

Some legit reasons for retaining optimism would be appreciated. But what I’m really looking for is just an honest answer. I’ve been down this hole for days and getting offline and away from climate news would only get me out of it temporarily. Genuine hope would be so much better, but i don’t know if there’s any left. So, how awful is the future looking? Do our efforts justify optimism? Are we likely to still have good lives?

So yeah I will try and keep this short. I had, still kind of have, hope that the renewables shift, something I think we’ve all been waiting for in regards to climate change, would really help in the fight for mitigation. I had more hope for the future climate fight than I had in years when I saw how much it was taking off. I still want to feel that hope but with pretty much everything getting worse in terms of temperature and weather events (which I know will keep happening) and the online consensus(probably not a great gauge) leaning more and more towards “we are all gonna die from this, don’t have kids, maybe kill yourself before it gets too bad“ it’s feeling like that’s all for naught now.

I wanna believe humanity can adapt. I wanna place more faith in the recent 4 degrees celsius by 2100 scenario being retired. But now I see people doubting even that and not just on shitholes like r/collapse where suicide and despair are practically venerated. Really I may just be feeling this bad because of one article from the Guardian I saw that said something like Earth’s reaching critical energy imbalances due to climate change. But basically, the question I have is does hope remain for a good or happy future with all that’s going on? Does the renewables shift actually imply more hope for the future or is it likely to be temporary?

Yes I know this question probably gets asked a lot. Yes I did ask this question on r/climatechange like 3 days ago. Yes I know Reddit is full of bots and hopeless people thus its word on climate change is not at all gospel. I’m asking Reddit anyway to try and counter that, I suppose. Me asking this so often is stupid and accomplishes little but generalized anxiety disorder and bad climate news is a shitty combination.

So yeah I will try and keep this short. I had, still kind of have, hope that the renewables shift, something I think we’ve all been waiting for in regards to climate change, would really help in the fight for mitigation. I had more hope for the future climate fight than I had in years when I saw how much it was taking off. I still want to feel that hope but with pretty much everything getting worse in terms of temperature and weather events (which I know will keep happening) and the online consensus(probably not a great gauge) leaning more and more towards “we are all gonna die from this, don’t have kids, maybe kill yourself before it gets too bad“ it’s feeling like that’s all for naught now.

I wanna believe humanity can adapt. I wanna place more faith in the recent 4 degrees celsius by 2100 scenario being retired. But now I see people doubting even that and not just on shitholes like r/collapse where suicide and despair are practically venerated. Really I may just be feeling this bad because of one article from the Guardian I saw that said something like Earth’s reaching critical energy imbalances due to climate change. But basically, the question I have is does hope remain for a good or happy future with all that’s going on? Does the renewables shift actually imply more hope for the future or is it likely to be temporary?

I’ll end it here. I’m asking here because I really do wanna change things for myself on this. Sadly I still have an ICE car though I haven’t been using it much. My dad has a pretty old electric in the garage that we’ve talked about refurbishing for my use. He’s big into solar panels, we’ve talked about getting a generator for the house instead of a boiler. I’m trying to get a heat pump. Yet today I just can’t shake the hopelessness regarding the future of our planet and species. It’s no comfort to me that Earth will be just fine when we’re gone. I like humanity and I don’t want it to enter a future worse than the last three hundred years. If that’s even likely. If there’s anything more I can do to limit my impact, let me know

I’m sorry for this post being so similar to others as of late, but I feel this needs to be asked more directly. Not do you have hope, or should we be hopeful, but is hope actually reasonable anymore? For most of 2026 before this summer, I’d gone back and forth between total hopelessness on climate change and a sense of quiet hope and optimism in the future, largely due to the renewables shift. This sub actually helped a lot with fostering hope on that because I saw that, after so many years of people just hoping for a big shift away from fossil fuels, one was actually happening.

Pretty much all of that hope feels null and void with the recent heatwave. I feel like I was just fooling myself and so much of what I’ve seen has validated that belief. I’m not European and the summer where I am has actually been really nice so far, but that’s not gonna last with the heat dome coming. I know a lot of the struggle with the European heatwave is less the heat and more the lack of AC, but I fear we’re nearing the point where nothing can save people from the former. I have plenty of bugs and fireflies in my yard, but I’m fully aware both of those are close to total extinction.

I know thinking this way and seeking out bad information only makes me miserable and would probably kill me quicker if a global catastrophe occurred, so that’s why I’m looking for hope here. I know Reddit has a shit ton of bots nowadays and a lot of the doomer climate change comments are likely from those, but reality seems like it’s surpassing even their negativity. No one thinks things will get better, it seems. Does the renewables shift actually mean anything now? Is that still reason to be hopeful for the future? Is a societal collapse actually likely even though most climate scientists don’t think it is? Will the remainder of the 21st century make the 20th and 19th look like utopias? Will babies born today live to the age of 30?

Who knows. I’m rambling and dooming and will try and end with some hope because that is what I’m looking for in this post. I’m not actually saying that all is lost or nothing can be done. A few weeks ago I said online that I believed there was much more reason for hope in the future than there was just six months ago. Again, largely due to the renewables shift and how well it was catching on. I knew it wasn’t enough, obviously, but it starting at all was huge and it showed no signs of slowing. Is what I said accurate? Even with the heat this summer and the worse heat yet to come, do the renewables still give reason for optimism?