The Holocene extinction is a bad thing, and steps should be taken to prevent it. Global warming is a bad thing, and we should take steps to prevent it or fix it.

But you're not depressed about those things. A bunch of animal species you've never heard of or seen are going extinct. You can intellectually understand that it is bad, but nobody (except maybe a literal biologist) is depressed about that to the extent that they literally lose all hope. You are depressed about something else, and this is making you fixate on the bad news.

Have you tired volunteering with any of the climate friendly pick-up-trash and plant-a-tree type of organizations near you? It can make a massive difference to your mental health. Yeah, it’s not enough, but it puts you from the side of “we’re all going to die” to “we need to do more as a species, but I’m doing my part.” It will also help you get outside and meet people. I also recommend a bit of gardening, if you like it.

Little one, your own life is the only thing you have. So what if humanity dies out in 500 years? Or 100? Or the planet is destroyed? Or an alien race comes and murders us all? This is one life experience out of millions that you've had. One planet out of trillions. One moment within infinity. The life of a species is 1 second. Old species die and new species are born every day.

You've gone too deep and it's time to zoom out and look at the galactic picture. You know when you read for too long and your eyes and head start to hurt from looking at the little words? That's where you are. Put the book down and look around you. The world is much bigger than just those words. And so is the universe. Humanity IS making progress even if it doesn't look like it to some because media amplifies the negative instead of celebrating the positive.

And the what ifs don't serve you. They don't serve any of us and they definitely don't serve Earth. Your only "job" is to love fully, live fully, experience the joys of existence, and leave this world a better place than it was before by your actions and words. Focusing on the problems & researching them to death is counterproductive & time wasted when you could be out planting trees or cleaning up rivers or showing compassion to the people you have lost hope in.

You are projecting some kind of misery that doesn't exist, I'm not sure who got you convinced of this crap but get it out of your head. Everything you are saying is irrelevant to the universe. This planet was here before us and it'll be here after us and it might be destroyed in a 1000 different natural ways it doesn't fin matter. Just live your life throw that book away and find something better

"Much more than my own life." That is just so....wrong. I wish you the best and enjoyment in your life.

I pretty much agree with you that everything is cooked, but I'm still going out having a good time. You can recover.

If it makes you feel better, the damage we’ve done will ultimately be fixed. Either we’ll fix it ourselves or, after we’ve all died and humanity is long gone, the world itself will slowly heal. One way or another, the trees will outlast us.

I can’t tell if you’re upset for humanity or for nature. A lot of people are worried about nature and it always seems short sighted. As you note, mass extinction is a part of nature. One day or another another asteroid would have come or a supervolcano would have exploded and all these species would have gone extinct anyway. Nature gives life but it takes it away just as easily. There is no perfect state that exists that we are wrecking. Our wrecking the world is very much in line with nature. We are no better or worse than what the world and the universe had in store for these species.

Now, if you are talking about what’s ideal for humans and your concern is our future, that I can understand. But keep in mind that we have reverted many crises before, and we are in the midst of dealing with this one. We are a very clever species and when finally faced with the effects of our actions as we are now, we can find solutions. Climate change effects will take decades before they can cause global collapse and we will adapt and go on. We will desalinate, we will carbon extract, we will geoengineer if we have to but humanity will be fine (+/- a few 100 million)

I’m assuming you’re fairly young. I think a historical perspective on these issues is really important. If you read environmental writings from the 60s, there was a ton of fear about all sorts of issues that never came to pass, or trends that have reversed. For example air quality in most of the US is infinitely better than it was thanks to technological progress with car emissions, and that’s despite the fact that we have way more cars on the road than we did back then. Water the clean water act had had a dramatic impact on improving water quality. There were real fears that massive populations would die of starvation from famines. In face globally food security has never been better despite the increased population. Population projections are expected to level off around 10 billion and then start declining, so some of the other doomsday scenarios aren’t going to come to pass. Now obviously global warming and a mass extinction are extremely problematic and worrying, but there are solutions to both that we can work towards. Just in the last few years I’ve seen a ton of native habitat restoration in my community for example.

>Please don't downvote me just because Im being painfully honest.

You're not being "painfully honest", Mr. iam14andthisisdeep. You're just wallowing in misery and borderline fetishizing your own sadness and self-pity, purposefully obfuscating it as being "deep and insightful" and everyone else just Doesn't Get It.

You've got a bad case of Chronic Online Syndrome.

RX: Go outside and maybe see a therapist.

Who is “we”? I’m not an oil executive purposefully burying decades worth of research into climate change.

Capitalism did that shit. That is the biggest problem on earth right now.

As others have said, you sound young, and depressed. All of your posts here have "I'm 14 and this is deep" energy. Work on finding new friends who care about more than material things, and before you say it yes there are PLENTY of them out there, and enjoy your life.

Be passionate about combating climate change, sure, but also feel free to be passionate about other things and to take pleasure in life. Your suffering does nothing to combat CO2 pollution and its consequences. The cause does not need nihilistic martyrs, but dedicated, thoughtful and energetic people.

It’s ok to care my dude! And knowing these things and recognizing them for what they are is fine and dandy. But despondency doesn’t have to be the logical conclusion of that knowledge.

Bearing witness to death (on an individual or grand scale) can be sad but doesn’t have to be depressing. It can be beautiful. Going down the path of despondency and depression is self-indulgent and centers your own melancholy above all else.

I recently read a book called ‘A heart that works’. Written by rob Delaney, about the death of his baby son, Henry. It may give you a window into grief, and to how to go about grieving. It sounds like you need to grieve what you see as being lost, otherwise this will continue to fester.

>But downvoting my words only serve to keep these issues under the rug

cool story, now what have you done personally to help SOLVE the issue instead of merely absorbing it?

I hold much the same opinion as you, but instead of being depressed about it I just shrug and say fuck it. I do what little part I can still, but generally I'm just kind of eating popcorn as the world goes crazy. I just moved out to the sticks to a big chunk of land and plan to hold out here for as long as possible. Already getting ready to get our own garden going this year etc.. Stick a fork in us, we're done IMO. I doubt we'll all die as I suspect the loss will be self limiting.. that is once enough people shuffle off things will balance out and recover to some extent. Of course we can't predict when and what tech will pop up in the next decade or two, especially that the threat becomes more and more obvious with each passing year. Expect to see some Hail Mary projects like dumping iron into the ocean, solar shades/solar blocking etc... We're going to do what we've always done - Ignore the problem until we can't then hope we can engineer our way out of it. This very much reminds me of a car racing a train to the crossing. We'll either get creamed or we'll pull it off by the skin of our teeth.

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The delusional replies to your comments... If most people really think and act that way then it's no wonder we're not making meaningful changes

I think there is a conflating of causing it to go extinct and accelerating it. Species have been going extinct "for all time". Nature kind of works that way, adapt or die. The environment was altered in such a way that they had to adapt or die, whether that be loss of habitable land, food, or predation. humanity contributed, but unless we specifically hunted them to extinction we didn't directly cause them to go extinct.