When I warned years ago that the climate crisis would be completely forgotten in a few years, I was ignored like some type of attention-seeking “boy cried wolf” conspiracist. But I meant what I said. And I still mean it, and events prove me right. Just look around, even the worst-case scenario didn’t look this bad.
Big-ticket items like nature and the planet will always take a back seat to whichever crisis du jour is consuming humanity’s attention. Our brains were designed to be slaves to their own tantrums rather than the other way around. In fact, the planet is no longer even a passenger on our attention vehicle: it was booted out long ago as others hopped on. The climate and ecological crisis have faded into the background, overtaken by the effects of overshoot: cost of living, poverty, fascism, floods, fires, wars, viruses and the a**hole living next door to us. The more this obese civilisation becomes a mental basket case the more it will misplace its most important pill: a daily dose of reality.
Humans only pay attention to the shenanigans taking place inside the Petri Dish, rather than the Petri Dish itself. Overshoot has always been invisible to civilisations, and this civilisation is no exception. We are living through the worst attention crisis as The Great Silence takes hold. Next stop: the cliff.
Yet here I am, trying to awaken people. I know it isn’t futile, because I’m not the only one awakened. Individual people can and will be awakened. But entire civilisations can only be awakened when they fall off their bed.
George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist.
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George Tsakraklides 
I know you keep attempting to help people stay awake, George. A lamplighter in a city of sleepers. A lighthouse keeper in the storm.
A key heroic trait. It’s lonely out here in the wild; we’re lone wolves.
Unfortunately, for those who have fallen out of bed, it’s too late; rising from the floor only to be collectively sleepwalking to disaster.
Thank you for this work, George.
The planet is not an existential threat to the planet. The planet will be fine, it is in an interglacial and yes, we have speeded up that warming, but the planet will be just fine (after us). If we finish poisoning the oceans, it may take 5 million years to recover, but recover it will.
However, for humans, I rank the existential risks in this order: nuclear war, then various forms of poisoning: plastics, chemicals solid and liquid, and gases polluting the atmosphere, of which there are many. The existential threat of climate I would represent as this dot “.” compared to the world-wide threat of the jerk next door, represented by this line “___________________________________________”
you may need to factor in 465+ nuclear power plants and 2000+ spent fuel ponds all which require an active grid to keep from melting down. the combined meltdown could blow off the atmosphere (mars) or boil us (Venus)
I agree that climate change is taking a backseat to the struggle over democracy itself, but it isn’t forgotten. Environmental policies are one of the reasons people are struggling for democracy. Green technology has also become cheap enough that it is competing with fossil fuels. I do worry that we won’t address climate change in time; we already see the results of our negligence on the news almost every day, or at least the news I watch.