Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumUK Government-backed scientific model flags risk of civilisation’s collapse by 2040
This is a seriously haunting article.
by Nafeez Ahmed
New scientific models supported by the British government’s Foreign Office show that if we don’t change course, in less than three decades industrial civilisation will essentially collapse due to catastrophic food shortages, triggered by a combination of climate change, water scarcity, energy crisis, and political instability.
Thee new models are being developed at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute (GSI), through a project called the ‘Global Resource Observatory’ (GRO).
Of particular concern to the FCO’s taskforce is to determine “how large shocks in agricultural production could occur (e.g. floods, droughts, wind storms),” how these would translate into “crop reductions,” and “how society responds to high food prices or limited local availability.”
“We ran the (GG: Agent-Based) model forward to the year 2040, along a business-as-usual trajectory based on ‘do-nothing’ trends — that is, without any feedback loops that would change the underlying trend. The results show that based on plausible climate trends, and a total failure to change course, the global food supply system would face catastrophic losses, and an unprecedented epidemic of food riots. In this scenario, global society essentially collapses as food production falls permanently short of consumption.”
GRO’s System Dynamics Model takes a different approach, building on the ‘World3’ model developed by scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which famously forecast that humankind faced impending “limits to growth” due to environmental and resource constraints.
“… the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline. Given this imminent timing, a further issue this paper raises is whether the current economic difficulties of the global financial crisis are potentially related to mechanisms of breakdown in the Limits to Growth BAU [business-as-usual] scenario.”
For the first time, then, we know that in private, British and US government agencies are taking seriously longstanding scientific data showing that a business-as-usual trajectory will likely lead to civilisational collapse within a few decades — generating multiple near-term global disruptions along the way.
"...the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015..."
The question that remains is: what we are going to do about it?
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Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)We will do nothing. Isn't that obvious?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)But people still need to do things. We're human, we do things.
I'd prefer people to be thoughtful and consider their actions from a larger perspective before they act. Of course, with 7.3 billion people out there doing stuff, I accept that that's not terribly likely. Still, I prefer to encourage as many as I can towards thoughtful action rather than despair - it's far easier on the psyche, as I know from bitter experience.
AnotherDreamWeaver
(2,852 posts)It was showing at the Sebastopol Grange Hall and it was PACKED with folks. Parking lot was overflowing and folks parked out on Hwy 12. Showed a guy with a roof top garden in New York City and lots of subdivision homes and small farms. There are things we could be doing, and there are folks wanting to know how to do them.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)You can rent/buy the documentary at Vimeo, btw. I might do that today.
AnotherDreamWeaver
(2,852 posts)We had feral pigs get a lot of our crop last year. We usually sell at the Farmers Market until Thanksgiving, but ran out of nuts early. I would spend the day patching fence instead of picking up nuts. The film showed him picking chestnuts out of the burrs, but our trees are big and we pick the nuts up off the ground with tongs. He loads the pigs for market before the nut harvest. Squirrels get our filberts.
Thanks for the link.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen ...
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I used to read a lot of SF and "Canticle for Liebowitz" was a favourite, but somehow "Riddley Walker" never swam into my view. I need to rectify that oversight!
MisterP
(23,730 posts)
mackdaddy
(1,528 posts)The Dr Strangeloves of the world might decide that it would be easier to have a "Planned" nuclear exchange to get rid of the extra "useless eaters" on all sides, and the temporary nuclear winter would slow down the global warming for a while.
Of course in either just a social collapse or a war collapse one little problem is that if no-one is getting paid, they stop going to work. This is bad if you work at one of the 440 or so nuclear power reactors all over the globe. 400 plus Fukishima/Chernobyl type meltdowns would probably end us anyhow.
One of the things I have started doing is every time they have a report of a mass migration of a regional war, I do a Google search on the region and crop failure or drought. So far 100% hit rate.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)Not a spoiler - this is from the imdb summary - but interesting timing with this thread:
...
Meanwhile, villainous Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) launches a
diabolical plan to solve the problem of climate change via a worldwide killing spree.
...
(BTW, thoroughly enjoyed it but I'm not sure I was supposed to like the
bad guy's plan as well as the good guys' actions! 
)
Ghost Dog
(16,881 posts)So as to avoid the necessary socio-economic revolution.
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)... not the least of which was the lack of feedback loops being added into the model. If sudden catastrophic sea level raise were added into the equation, which I'd say us highly likely in the next 25 years, the added pressure of millions of climate refugees to already food-scarce countries like Bangladesh, could tilt the wheel even faster.
