Rage, rage against the dying of the light

(though wise men at their end know dark is right)

‘Joy’ by Raphaël Laventure | Tignes, France | January 2, 2026

Here I go outing myself as a ‘doomer’.

I’m ok with that though. Very soon there will be nothing but this sentiment expressed anywhere because we will be contending with the greatest threat to our survival since the Toba supervolcano in Sumatra approximately 74,000 years ago. At that point the Trump’s war on Iran, Netanyahu’s genocide, and Covid-19, will seem as trivial as the next season of Love Island.

Global and domestic political crises and competing superpowers will be mere sideshows to an extinction-level crisis, a distraction we will lament. We will long for the days when politics mattered. When we had a choice about whether to ‘care’ about what was going on ‘out there’.

The only arms race that matters right now is technology and human nature vs. Mother Earth. And unfortunately she’s got a few billion years’ experience on us and the odds stacked firmly in her favour.

All signs point to a giant unavoidable climate-sized iceberg ahead. We have 5, maybe an optimistic 10, years of ‘the good life’ left. A time we will look back and marvel on, wondering at the paradise we lived in; how much we took for granted, how lucky many of us were.

Even if every human being on the planet started doing the ‘right’ thing at this very moment; living sustainable, ethical, zero-carbon, non-consumption-focused, circular-economically driven lives, we would still not be able to avoid the reckoning that is coming. And let’s face it, there’s absolutely zero chance of a humanity-wide behavioural pivot happening now or any time soon.

Whatever we have set in motion now cannot be stopped. Sure we can spend the next 20 years frantically trying to reverse it but there will still be a highly uncomfortable, at best, and downright apocalyptic, at worst, interim period between the setting in of massively disruptive climate change and whatever technological panaceas we attempt to mount. And that’s if we can mount them before civilisation as we know it collapses, taking with it the infrastructure that will surely be required to attempt climate change mitigation at the scale required.

Before anyone reaches out to check on my mental health, I assure you I’m perfectly calm about it.

I really want to be wrong. Unfortunately I tend to be right about macro-trends and trends in general. I’m something of a closet futurist and forecaster. What I’ve not been good at is sharing these prognoses. Mostly they sit in my head, taking up space and in this case causing me a lot of anxiety, and then one by one I watch things happen exactly as I anticipated.

That’s what I’m trying to change. Because I can’t spend these remaining 5-10 good years pretending and feigning blissful ignorance, assuming that our governments will at some point (surely?) step in and take meaningful action, while impending doom festers inside me.

If I do have a legacy—though frankly the whole concept of legacy on an individual scale seems a waste of time given the aforementioned future —then let it be that. And let it be that I maybe inspired others to speak the truth, too.

So, now what?

Yes, do the right thing. Reduce your consumption. Reduce your waste. Be more mindful of your impact. For God’s sake stop using single-use anything. Lobby your local Minister for faster, greater, realer climate action. Donate to eco-charities. Any charities.

Try and be a better human. Not because it will save our current way of life in the long-term, or deter the inevitable climate shift, but because if we as a species don’t figure this out now, the generation of babies that are currently learning how to be human will be that much farther from a truly sustainable existence on Planet Earth. Whatever kernels of knowledge survive, whenever we get to the other side of what is coming, let them hold hope because we began to figure this out now.

Also, enjoy life. As much as you can. There is no point wasting the next 5-10 years in a state of permanent anxiety and fretfulness. Start living like you may not have any of the opportunities in front of you again. Don’t go nuts on the consumption front obviously (see previous paragraph). But start saying things that have been on your mind for a while. Take that risk. Start that project. Try to find a little more joy in the simple, the free, the natural.

Do perhaps start stocking a few extra bottles of your favourite wine or spirit, occasionally. Just remember when the electricity grid goes there will be no ice, so better to store drinks you can enjoy at room temperature.