An unstoppable wave of suffering and death

 The current crisis in Ukraine not only puts us on the verge -- if not an inescapable path -- to nuclear destruction, it also forces humanity to ignore the environmental collapse that's been brewing since the beginning of the 20th Century.

World-wide, authoritarian governments push back against democracy, while democratic countries and confederations have to satisfy voters in order to get anything done. While individual voters may value their freedom, and access to government, large groups of them act from narrow interests to the detriment not only of their nation but of the world as a whole. We've had decades to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, for instance, but instead have only looked for cheaper prices for the poison.

This fossil fuel dependency plays strongly into the doom set in motion as Russia warms up the missile launchers in eager anticipation of the showdown with the West. China might hope to play the moderator, but no one can put the brakes on Putin's aggression except Putin himself. And the war crimes of his soldiers show that he has no shortage of depraved followers enjoying the sadistic task of terrorizing their way to a dominant role strictly by virtue of their willingness to take us all to hell with them in a fireball. As long as democratic governments are rightly afraid to ask their citizens to sacrifice for the war effort by dealing with high prices and shortages in a wartime economy, Russia will continue to act with justifiable confidence.

As Russia and China play Bad Cop/Slightly Less Bad Cop with the rest of the world, the cult of the strongman leader seems to offer a path to safety for anyone willing to knuckle under and kiss up. The depraved and sadistic see career opportunities in such regimes. None of them seem to give much thought to how short a run they'll have. One side or the other will probably blink in the nuclear confrontation, but by then we'll have lost too much time on the environmental collapse and we're probably going to end up in a society where you'd best not depart visibly from a narrow set of norms.

The odds favor a pretty miserable future. I challenge you to prove me wrong.