When and how we might slip over the brink into catastrophe is impossible to foresee. But as the events of this summer suggest, we are already all too close to the edge of the kind of systemic failure experienced so many centuries ago by the Mayans, the ancient Puebloans, and the Viking Greenlanders. The only difference is that we may have no place else to go. Call it, if you want, Collapse 2.0.
It’s an interesting article but it’s also undermined by it’s own hyperbole. To call Canada a “failed state” because it left fires in remote areas to burn out is over the top.
The core message is valid but it misses the point of the problem which is that the people who will suffer the most from climate change are people living in poorer countries, not the rich world. The impact, although dramatic and highly undesirable, is manageable in rich world countries.
The US has a breadth of resources available to cope with it’s drought for example - there is no risk of people starving because of the drought and the US economy continues to grow despite a 20 year drought because farming is not the bedrock of the economy or most people’s lives. Of course there will be losers on the US but in general the US will likely adapt its way through this mess.
It’s people in less developed economies, and people without alternatives to farming the land or skills to adapt in the changing economy who will suffer. The societies at risk of collapse are not the rich western economies of North America, Europe, Australasia, and South East Asia. It’s the poorer economies in Africa, central Asia and India, and even South America that are vulnerable.
Those countries don’t have the wealth or resources to adapt to changing climate and they will suffer the price of the rich world’s greed and failure to act. I think the article is correct to predict collapses on societies but it’s not going to be a global collapse; it’s going to be uneven and chaotic. And because the rich world will suffer less, it is also likely the rich world will fail to do enough to stop the damage.
It’s already striking that the global ambition is to “slow” climate change. Stopping climate change is barely mooted, and reversing climate change isn’t even taken seriously as a proposition - it’s almost treated like sci-fi. But we could stop and even reverse climate change if we really wanted to. Reforestation for example, is a basic low tech part of the solution which barely gets a look in because it doesn’t fit with the way the economy is going now or our concept of land as a resource to use. Unfortunately we value our economy as is too much to even contemplate what it would mean to reverse the damage we’ve wrought on our world.
I agree. But for now, I would add. If everything continues as it is, even the richest economies eventually will fail. He mentions migration a key point to the foreseeable problems to those rich countries.