Years ago, when I was but wee naïve young tyke skipping merrily through the flowered fields of my youth, I believed that people would have no choice but to accept climate change when their communities were inundated with rising water.

I was wrong.

The town revolted. Like many local residents, Wanda Thornton, the town’s representative on the Accomack County board of supervisors, accepts that the sea is rising, but is skeptical that climate change and its effects have anything to do with the erosion of the beach. As a result, “I’m just not convinced that it requires the drastic change that some people think it does,” she said.

This one article didn’t convince me that I was mistaken; no, I realized that quite a while ago as well. But rarely do you see it laid out so starkly and so head-slappingly.

The plain truth is that a vast number of people will be standing in the skyscrapers of former NYC looking down at the surging tides swamping Fifth Avenue and be utterly unconvinced that climate change had anything at all to do with it.

Yes, the Great Filter is ahead of us I can confidently say.

Why is dystopian fiction so popular now, especially among teenagers and young adults?

Seems obvious, really.

The popularity of that sort of fiction is always concentrated in the portion of society that is likely to be most affected by the worsening – real or imagined — of the world that lies in their future.

Right now, the future light cone for the millennials and younger doesn’t look that bright. Median wages are decreasing along with job prospects. Inequality is off the charts. Their elders are doing fuck-all about potentially civilization-ending quandaries like climate change and resource depletion. More importantly, all of that seems to be getting worse instead of better.

In the 1950s, the dystopianism was aimed at an older audience as they mostly held the fears about the nuclear-tipped precariousness of the world and the resulting paranoia, hence all the films such Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and the mutant creature features —  all monsters therein mutated of course by radiation – such as Them!

Contemporary dystopian novels and cinema now concern themselves with severely restricted choices in a world of limited resources (The Hunger Games), utter society-mandated conformity (Divergent) and a combination of all three (Uglies).

This is no mistake. When a culture sings, everyone joins the tune. They can’t help it.

Criticizing readers and movie watchers – especially young ones – for consuming fiction that helps them deal with emotionally and to some extent understand intellectually the milieu into which they’ve been thrown without choice adds unnecessary insult to already-grievous injury.

After all, this dystopian fiction would not even exist if the current stewards of the world that these young people will inherit had not utterly and inexcusably botched the job.

About the release of celebrity nudes,  I’ve seen increasing calls for censoring the internet.

First of all, this won’t help.

Second, when the left and the right agree on something, it’s nearly always utterly flawed as it’s usually something big businesses want, or it’s desired by other interests inimical to the public good.

While the person or persons who hacked the phones and cloud accounts of the celebrities who had their private data stolen should be prosecuted, the call to censor the internet plays into the hands of the many, many groups who already wish to do so anyway.

Which will make it worse for everyone and not actually help with the problem.

It’s funny that we repeat the same mistakes over and over again as most people seem driven by momentary passions and propaganda. Not that I am some paragon of logic and deliberation, but I at least prefer a real fix rather than the symbolic gesture that lets all your friends know that you are the bien pensant  rubber stamper that they’re expecting.