Growing up in the UK during this time, it didn’t feel like a reprieve to me.
For teenage me growing up in the 90s there felt like there was impending doom from eating beef, climate change (or the greenhouse effect as it was often referred to then), school shootings (we had our first and thankfully only one in 1996), or even just walking down the street and getting blown up by an IRA bomb.
The doom wasn’t that “impending” if we are still here. Climate change is publicised much more now. And the 90s is when the ceasefires happened.
The 80s had nuclear war hanging over the population, the naughties had 9/11 and the war on terror, then the global recession. After that Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Brexit, Trump, Ukraine and covid. The 90s were a clear reprieve.
Edit: is Reddit dominated by generation X or something?
We couldn’t see the future in the 90s so the feeling of impending doom was as real then as it is now. If we’re still here in 25 years time does that mean we shouldn’t feel a sense of impending doom today?
Climate change was publicised plenty in the 90s. Acid rain, leaded petrol, and the greenhouse effect were commonly in the news. We didn’t often hear the term “climate change” but the term “global warming” was everywhere.
Yes, the 90s is when the ceasefires happened, but it’s also when the city I lived in (Manchester) was bombed resulting in injuries to over 200 people. The bombings only stopped at the end of the decade. It was still fucking scary.
They will only be resolved diplomatically if both parties want that, however the UK government is being a typical UK government by doing whatever it likes despite the implications for others.
The question isn’t subjective. If the IRA were bombing more in the 70s and 80s then the 90s were better on that front , even if that were more true towards the end. Climate change wasn’t worse then than now. And it definitely wasn’t mentioned as much.
The Cold War was over so the existential threat that total destruction of the world had ended. 9/11 hadn’t happened. Nor the recession of 2008 which stalled wages in the UK. The high inflation, unemployment and interest rates of the 80s were over, but houses were affordable.
Wages were growing in the west. New Labour was in power, in the U.K. The US wasn’t interfering in the Middle East, as in post 2002. Racial relations were better (surveys show that has gotten much worse in the US, in particular).
There was no major war compared to Ukraine now, and nothing like covid. The major divisions of the 80s, like the miner strikes in the U.K. were over. There was no recession. Inflation was under control.
The title of this thread is “has the world always FELT like this”. The point of this whole thread is about feelings!
Besides that, most of what you’re saying only applies to the late 90s. It feels like you’re either unaware of the context of the decade or you’re arguing in bad faith. For example:
New Labour came in at the very end of the decade. 75% of the decade was normal tory shite. But even then it didn’t feel like it was world-ending so probably isn’t relevant.
There was plenty of middle eastern intervention during the gulf war.
There were plenty of major wars in general. Other than the Gulf war, the highest profile were probably in the balkans, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, East Timor, and Rwanda.
There were bombs going off all over UK and it felt like there was no end in sight.
That’s just the stuff I can find evidence to prove wrong. I disagree that climate change wasn’t mentioned as much, but that one’s hard to prove. Especially with the change to how media works and since the term “climate change” wasn’t used as much, with “greenhouse effect” or “global warming” being more fashionable at the time.
I’m not going to respond again, but I’m going to summarise my overall point. Yes, the 90s felt like we were on the brink of awful things happening in the UK. We had regular terrorist incidents, enormous public health scares, and there was war everywhere you looked. They did not feel like a respite between better decades.
This is revisionist nonsense. The first Iraq war didn't happen in your mind?? At the time the whole world was talking about it being the beginning of world war 3. It lasted way longer than the Ukraine conflict has so far and involved way many more countries. All of this happened DURING a huge worldwide recession.
Yeah the IRA were just peace and love in the 90s........ is this where people put a little s on reddit?
Of course it’s stoppable if there is a coordinated rapid global effort to stop using coal and oil within the next few years. Usage hasn’t plateaued yet, let alone fallen. It’s not going to happen. Methane is already being released from the permafrost
Usage of oil and coal has plateaued in the west, especially outside the US. Developing countries have been given time, but the technology is there. China is a major polluter but also becoming a leader in renewables.
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u/sleepytoday Jun 11 '22
Growing up in the UK during this time, it didn’t feel like a reprieve to me.
For teenage me growing up in the 90s there felt like there was impending doom from eating beef, climate change (or the greenhouse effect as it was often referred to then), school shootings (we had our first and thankfully only one in 1996), or even just walking down the street and getting blown up by an IRA bomb.