Taking Armageddon Seriously

Lucinda Williams - Are You Alright? 

Imagine the worst outcome. You wake up tomorrow and the electrical grid is not down, but entirely gone. You have no running water. Your house is rickety. Your bank accounts have been emptied. You have no access to medical services. Your children can't go to school. Your life expectancy has plummeted. 

You would have to think Armageddon has occurred. You would be right.

This is reality for many people right now.

Over 700 million people (twice the entire population of the United States) live in extreme poverty. Half of the global population (billions of people) lives on less than US$6.85 per person per day.

If we care about anything, this has to be it. 

And please don't tell me that your pet cause is more important because it will impact the world's poor. They are already impacted. 

But keep in mind: things were much worse in the past. Humanity has made incredible progress on lifting people from poverty:

We accomplished this without smashing capitalism or abolishing fossil fuels or undoing globalization. Indeed - without capitalism and oil and globalization, that curve would be much worse. There would be much more suffering.

It is fully possible to make more progress if we actually choose to make progress, rather than actively desiring to impoverish billions.