Our sad world: Spiraling down into Doomsday one headline at a time in 2022

Editor’s note: Marshall Brain – futurist, inventor, NCSU professor, writer and creator of “How Stuff Works” is a contributor to WRAL TechWire. Brain takes a serious as well as entertaining look at a world of possibilities for Earth and the human race. He’s also author of “The Doomsday Book: The Science Behind Humanity’s Greatest Threats.”

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RALEIGH – Are you feeling depressed or dismayed about the state of our world in 2022? On July 1, six months will have elapsed, so the year will be half-gone. Take a quick gut check: How is America doing so far in the first half of 2022?

Ideally, we would like to be living in a society where things are getting better, not worse. Ideally, we would all be looking forward to a brighter future.

What I would like to demonstrate in this article is that Americans have good reasons to feel depressed right now. Therefore, A) if you are overtly feeling depressed, or B) if you have a background sense of dismay that you may have been unable to put your finger on, then the purpose of this article is to help you fully understand the source of these feelings.

In the first six months of 2022, has there been a day in your life where you have thought, “this aspect of our world makes me so depressed” or “this aspect of our society makes me so angry!” Have you opened a news feed on your phone, or looked at the day’s headlines on your laptop, and something stood out to you this year as either incredibly depressing or especially galling?

Here I would like to list out 26 significant events and headlines so far in 2022 that have had this effect. That’s an average of one per week in 2022. But where to start? What might be the most depressing, doomsday kind of thing we have witnessed in the first half of 2022?

Number 1 for me would be the war in Ukraine, which started in February 2022. This war has been so awful, so destructive, so premeditated, so unjust, and so hopeless. The whole idea that Russia could amass 100,000 troops and their equipment on the Ukrainian border, and then say, “Oh no, we are not going to invade Ukraine”, and then we watched as the United States and Europe did essentially nothing about the invasion militarily, is incredibly depressing. It’s depressing because thousands and thousands of Ukrainians have been senselessly murdered by Russia with this war. Millions of Ukrainians have been bombed out of their homes and livelihoods, turned into refugees, and had their lives ruined. Entire Ukrainian cities have been destroyed. Any thoughtful person with a sense of empathy cannot help but feel horror for what Russia has done, and what the Western world has allowed to happen to the people of Ukraine.

The obvious question to ask in retrospect is:” Why didn’t the United States and Europe drop 10,000 bombs and cruise missiles on the Russian troops to crush them before they invaded, or as they crossed the Ukrainian border to begin the invasion?” Ukraine had received protection guarantees in the 1990s in return for giving up its nuclear weapons. Why didn’t Ukraine receive protection?

Number 2 would be the answer to that question, which is: “if the Western world had directly attacked Russian troops as they invaded, then Russia might have retaliated by launching nuclear missiles at us, starting World War 3, and potentially destroying the entire planet with nuclear holocaust and nuclear winter.” This too is incredibly depressing because it means that Russia can do anything it wants. Russia can cause as much suffering as it wants. Russia can invade many more countries if it wants. Beyond “sanctions” and some weapons donations to Ukraine, there is little the rest of the world will do to stop Russia. If nuclear missiles mean that Russia can do whatever it wants, then it is no wonder that North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and India want nuclear missiles – the more the better. And then the nuclear bomb problem just gets worse and worse for humanity as more countries see the value of building nuclear arsenals.

Number 2a – don’t forget Russia’s announcement/demonstration of its aptly named Satan-2 hyper missile in April. Satan-2 can carry 15 warheads and can reach major European cities in 200-ish seconds. Super depressing. (Why hasn’t humanity solved the nuclear weapons problem? This is a topic for another day.)

Number 3, which is intertwined with Number 1, is the subsequent worldwide inflation in food and fuel prices that the war in Ukraine has caused. And then the knock-on effects where higher diesel prices increase the price of everything else because of the trucks and trains needed for transport and distribution of goods. The average price of a gallon of gas in the United States hit $5 in June. Food prices are up significantly. There is growing potential for millions of people to starve to death globally, as Ukraine had been a major wheat exporter before the war. The UN is using the word “famine” to describe what may unfold. Plus the fact that the whole marketplace situation for oil, wheat and fertilizer benefits Russia – It is as though Russia is being rewarded through these price spikes rather than punished for its crimes.

Number 4 would be the corporations in America, like the oil companies and food companies, who are taking advantage of the situation to make obscene profits on top of the inflation. Corporations appear to be price gouging with abandon. To the point where President Biden announced in June that the oil companies are “making more money than God.” And then it appears that congress, which should be helping “We the People” in a case like this, will do nothing to tax away these ill-gotten windfall profits (see Number 26). The companies and their shareholders get to keep the money. Apparently shipping companies have done the same thing during the supply chain crisis, to the tune of $150 billion. Americans become poorer through these practices, and it is incredibly depressing that, once again, nothing will be done.

Number 5 would be the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde in May 2022, where 19 children, 2 teachers, and 10 shoppers were murdered in cold blood by deranged shooters. Any thoughtful person with a sense of empathy is thinking, “We MUST do something to solve the gun problem in America!” Especially since no other developed country has this problem with mass shootings and gun deaths to anywhere near the level seen in America. According to this article , “Across the 29 countries in the study, the U.S. accounted for almost 97% of the firearm deaths among children 4 years old or younger, and 92% of firearm deaths for those between the ages of 5 and 14.” This is a problem unique to America, and it is incredibly, amazingly depressing. Then we also know that nothing substantial will be done by congress to solve the gun problem (see Number 26), so the rampant gun deaths will continue unabated. Any thoughtful person with a sense of empathy cannot help but weep with the parents of Uvalde, and the countless other places where innocent people are being murdered with guns.

Number 6 would be the utter incompetence and cowardice of the police officers in Uvalde, with daily announcements adding to the growing mountain of incompetence on their part. The idea that Uvalde residents paid the money to hire, equip and train their police force, and then the police behave like abject cowards and stand by as children die? It is unbelievably depressing.

Number 7 would be the leaked Supreme Court brief announcing the nearly certain roll-back of Roe v. Wade and the loss of national abortion rights. Any thoughtful person with a sense of empathy understands that tens of millions of women want to have autonomy over their own bodies and their own futures. To see this right taken away in the 21^st century is incredibly depressing. It is a huge step backwards. To further know that congress could solve the problem and provide universal abortion rights through legislation, but refuses to act, is also depressing. The Women’s Health Protection Act died in the Senate in February (see Number 26).

Number 8 would be what this Supreme Court decision on abortion portends for the future, where Americans will potentially see many other rights destroyed by the Supreme Court given its new composition. Living in fear of what else the Supreme Court might dismantle is depressing.

Number 9 would be the January 6 insurrection hearings which started in June. These hearings resurface all of the depressing feelings that were triggered by watching the actual insurrection on January 6, 2021 unfold on live TV. And to then have the former president and his supporters call it “the greatest movement in American history”, and to watch the talking heads on Fox news call the hearings lies, hoaxes, witch hunts, and so on – it is all so incredibly depressing. Any thoughtful person with a sense of empathy cannot help but be depressed by the thought of tens of millions of Americans ignoring the crimes of the insurrection and instead celebrating the January 6 attack on congress. It feels like we could be witness to the end of American democracy within a few years. Watch this video from the hearings if you want to relive the January 6 attack:

Climate Change

Numbers 10 through 15 all have to do with aspects of climate change, where 2022 is shaping up to be one of humanity’s worst years on this front.

Number 10 would be the recent record heat wave in India in March, killing many people and destroying a good portion of India’s wheat crop. Then there was a record setting heatwave across the United States this past weekend. The number of heatwaves we could see as the summer of 2022 gets underway is difficult to comprehend, and depressing.

Number 10a related to these heatwaves is the fact that humanity set a new record high for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in 2022 at 421 parts per million. This is incredibly depressing because, at this point, carbon dioxide levels should be going down, not up. Humanity should be getting its collective act together. Humanity should be burning fewer fossil fuels and extracting gigatons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere so that the atmospheric CO2 level is declining. But instead, we continue heading in the wrong direction, meaning that things like heatwaves and ocean acidification will only get worse.

Number 11 would be the growing concern about the collapse of the Amazon rainforest. Once it does collapse there will be no turning back, and the side effects on the rest of the planet will be horrible. This article from March and many others like it paint a dire picture.

Number 12 would be the growing warning signs for the collapse of the Thwaites glacier, which also will be irreversible, and which will eventually cause sea levels to rise by 10 feet. Many coastal cities and all of our beaches will be lost, and there will be no turning back. The fact that there is no massive global effort underway to prevent the collapse is incredibly depressing.

Number 13 would be ocean and airborne microplastics. In May, tiny bits of airborne plastic have been found mixing into the falling snow in Antarctica – the most remote place on Earth. Single-use plastics and many other plastics should have been banned long ago, yet there appears to be no global action on a ban as plastic pollution gets worse and worse: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tX4-jy5V2Ak

Number 14 would be overfishing in the world’s oceans, and the potential for collapse of many fisheries and fish species. The headlines in 2022 are just dreadful.

Number 15 would be the growing evidence of mass extinctions occurring around the globe. Wiping out numerous marine species through overfishing is one avenue, rainforest collapse is another avenue, and then there is evidence of collapsing bird and insect populations globally as well. See the sources for more details. Add to that the huge avian flu outbreak this year.

When we look at numbers 10 through 15, we know that our home planet is being destroyed and there appears to be no political will to stop the destruction. The fossil fuel companies will keep pumping oil while also spreading misinformation,Coal use is increasing, not decreasing. There is essentially zero action on stopping fossil fuels, nor their profits (see Number 26). And there appears to be no serious international effort at all to start removing gigatons of excess CO2 back out of the atmosphere. The whole picture on the climate change and global heating fronts is incredibly depressing in 2022.

Number 16 is the strengthening drought in the American southwest. Watch this video:

A fisherman documents what is happening at Lake Mead this year. There are 80 million Americans in the Southwest, many of whom are going to run out of drinking water as this drought persists. Lake Mead will eventually become a dead pool at the current pace. Then there will be the crop failures as the irrigation water runs out. And there will also be the mass migration of tens of millions of people out of the region. To where? There will be nowhere to house them because…

There’s more

Number 17 is the horrible and depressing rise in housing and rent prices. The median average rent in America in 2022 hit $2,000 per month last week. I teach at a university working with young people every day, and I have four adult children myself. How will these young people ever afford a house? How can they afford to have more and more money drained away through rent, on top of the student debt they are carrying? Especially with corporations and wealthy investors buying up so many houses so they can rent them back to us at inflated prices. Any thoughtful person with a sense of empathy understands that the idea of landlords inflating rents with impunity, to the detriment of every American renter, is horrible for our society. There are several things congress could do, but chances are that nothing will be done and the housing problems in America will get worse and worse.

Number 18 would be the national baby formula crisis. Remember that? There are so many other crises happening in 2022 that, if you don’t have a baby yourself, you may have already forgotten that the United States ran out of baby formula in 2022 because of a near-monopoly situation in the baby formula marketplace, combined with corporate incompetence. Imagine a country filled with starving babies. How can things be more depressing than that?

Number 19 would be the ongoing crisis of the cost of healthcare in America, and the fact that these costs are ruining the finances of so many American families. This article from April contains this startling quote:

“One in three U.S. adults has medical debts, and medical debt is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. This is despite the fact that 90 percent of the U.S. population has some form of medical insurance… The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) found that Americans owe at least $195 billion of medical debt.”

America is the only developed country in the world that has this problem, and America spends significantly more on health care per capita than other developed countries because of the dysfunctional nature of our healthcare system. This video helps to explain the problem:

Number 20 would be the record high number of drug overdose deaths in the United States. The CDC in May announced that 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year. 107,000 dead people. 71,000 of the deaths involved fentanyl, a synthetic opioid which gets mixed improperly or added inexplicably to other street drugs. 107,000 is an incredible number – more than twice the number of gun deaths (see Number 5). There are several possible solutions, but many are being hampered. Some people have trouble being sympathetic to drug users who die while taking illegal drugs. But this number of needless deaths requires a society like ours to seek solutions. Any thoughtful person with a sense of empathy cannot help but be deeply depressed by the senseless and needless loss of 107,000 lives in a year. In addition, illegal drug use has a lot to do with the homeless problem in America.

Number 21 is America’s homeless problem, which in certain cities has become debilitating, and which gets more attention in the headlines as high housing costs (Number 17), high medical costs (Number 19) and inflation (Number 3) make more people vulnerable. Thousands of homeless people in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle are camped out in tents on city sidewalks and parks. They may leave needles, feces, trash, etc. around their encampments, and there is usually a marked increase in crime as well. This article from January says:

“In San Francisco, nearly 1 percent of the city’s population of 875,000 are homeless. Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the Tenderloin district last December, after it became littered with human excrement and used syringes. ‘Too many people are sprawled out all over our streets,’ Breed said, adding that homelessness ‘has destroyed our city.’”

It is never good, and always depressing, when something destroys a city. Perhaps we can learn from Finland, which appears to have completely solved homelessness.

Number 22 is a global problem best exemplified by Sri Lanka’s economic collapse in 2022. Sri Lanka is likely to be the first of many. Because of the food and fuel price increases described in Number 3, combined with the debt load on Sri Lanka, combined with corruption, combined with economic problems previously created by the pandemic, there is no way for Sri Lanka’s economy to weather the confluence. Therefore, the Sri Lanka economy is collapsing. “Something must be done” or millions of people in Sri Lanka could starve to death due to lack of money. The bigger issue is that many developing countries are experiencing the same pressures, and chances are that their economies could soon be collapsing in the same way. This video can help you understand what is happening:

As the video points out, Pakistan may be the next domino to fall, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

Number 23 is voting rights in the United States. Voting restrictions, along with measures with the potential for voting theft, are being enacted across the country. Last year a group of 100 scholars gathered to announce the incredible danger of all these efforts. This article from February summarizes:

“In Arizona, conservative lawmakers and activists spent millions of dollars on a discredited “forensic audit” of every ballot cast in the state’s largest county. In Pennsylvania and Georgia, GOP legislators and candidates for office have called for their own Arizona-style reviews. There are at least 21 candidates for secretary of state across the nation who have challenged the 2020 election result.”

The national effort to address all of these problems was embodied in The Freedom to Vote Act and The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. You may recall that in January these voting rights bills died in the Senate (see Number 26), leaving open the possibility for the collapse of democracy in the United States within a few years.

Number 24 is the problem of low wages, paycheck-to-paycheck survival, and food insecurity in the United States in these inflationary times. Many headlines have identified the problem, like this one: “those making less than $50,000 — which is nearly 40% of Americans — have been hit the hardest, with nearly 80% saying they live paycheck to paycheck.” Or this one: “At least once a week during dinner, Cathy Smith and her husband, Robert, are confronted with the same choice: Don’t let the kids have seconds or forgo a meal themselves.”

Number 25 is the rise we are seeing in white nationalism, white supremacy, racism and hate crimes in the United States. Over the weekend there was an amazing series of headlines like this:

“Police arrest 31 Patriot Front extremists near Idaho Pride event on riot charges”

Patriot Front is yet another white nationalist group, similar to Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. The latter two being in the news in 2022 because members of their leadership have been indicted on sedition charges. The bad news is that these groups exist and seem to be proliferating. The good news is that the Patriot Front’s efforts to disrupt the event were thwarted this time, with Idaho police arresting them before they could do damage. The Buffalo shooting from Number 5 is another example of a hate crime this year.

Number 25a is the fact that the Idaho police who performed the arrests are now receiving death threats. Incredibly depressing.

Number 26 has to do with the number of worthwhile endeavors that have been dying in the United States Senate of late, primarily due to the composition of the U.S. Senate. In 2022 we saw the voting rights bills die, the Women’s Health Protection Action act die, and gun control significantly watered down (if anything eventually passes at all). Why can we say with some level of certainty that the United States will never get any serious reforms on things like gun control, climate change, abortion rights, health care, housing, voting rights, wages, windfall profits, a wealth tax, and many of the myriad other serious problems facing this nation as mentioned above? It is because the U.S. Senate has immense power, and it does not accurately represent the voters of this country. California, with nearly 40 million voters, gets two senators. Meanwhile Wyoming, mostly rural, with a population less than one million people, also gets 2 senators. The 20 least-populated states in the union, with a total population of less than that of California, get 40 senators, while the 40 million people in California get 2 senators. The chance of this imbalance being corrected is approximately zero. This is depressing because we will see more and more worthwhile legislation dying in the Senate because of the imbalance.

Conclusion

Imagine that you were to wake up one morning and with a burst of energy you say, “I’m not going to take it anymore! I am going to take it to the streets and protest!” There are now so many vital, important problems to protest that it is debilitating to think about them all. Just by working through the above list, all of which happened in the first six months of 2022, you would be protesting:

The war in Ukraine with all of its murder, destruction and refugees
The potential for Russia to start World War 3 and the global political power this threat gives Russia
Incredible inflation caused by Russia’s invasion
Obscene corporate price gouging without any action by congress to stop it
The horrific and continuing massacres and gun deaths which are unique to America due to anemic gun laws from congress
The incompetence and cowardice of the Uvalde police officers
The likely roll-back of Roe v. Wade and the loss of national abortion rights
The potential for the Supreme Court to roll back many other long-standing rights
The January 6 insurrection and the interminably long wait for justice
Record heatwaves around the globe due primarily to carbon dioxide pollution from fossil fuels
The growing potential for rainforest collapse
The growing potential for the Thwaites Glacier to collapse and then the subsequent rise of sea levels by 10 feet
Increasing plastic pollution and microplastic pollution with no serious global action to curtail the problem
Overfishing leading to fishery collapse
Mass extinctions
The drought situation in the American Southwest and the doomsday scenarios it could soon unleash
The horrible rise in housing and rent prices
The national baby formula crisis of 2022
The rising cost of healthcare in America, causing a huge number of medical bankruptcies and rising medical debt, with no end in sight
107,000 drug overdose deaths with no clear action to solve the problem
The homeless crisis in America, where it is destroying some large U.S. cities
The economic collapse of Sri Lanka, with many other collapses likely to come soon in the developing world
The loss of fundamental voting rights and the dismantling of American democratic processes with no action from congress to fix the problems
Low wages in the United States and the inability of many Americans to make ends meet, exacerbated by high inflation due to the Russian war in Ukraine this year
White nationalism, white supremacy, hate crimes and racism
The ability of a skewed U.S. Senate to block the important legislation to substantially improve any of these things.

This is depressing. The combination of all 26 feels like a doomsday scenario unfolding in the form of a thousand cuts. So many things are going wrong that it is impossible to keep them all straight. Trying to think about them all at once is debilitating. Yet think about them we must.

Will things get better in the second half of 2022? Or will the downward spiral continue?

If you would like to leave a comment, then ask yourself: which of these 26 seems most important to you? What would you like to add to the list? Or do you have any areas of optimism that you would like to share?