Climate Change And The Collapse Of Civilisation
Decarbonisation of primary energy generation is essential to mitigating climate change — sure, but is it the immediate problem we need to confront? The problem we need to face are the factors driving our apparent ‘collective suicide’.
After three decades of U.N. Climate Conferences, and international agreements the world is on track for 4°C warming; even though the consensus view is that global warming must not exceed 2C over pre-industrial levels — and ideally no more than 1.5C
Yet, Australian National University emeritus professor Will Steffen says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation, which may now be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated.
Professor Steffen’s assessment is that it would take 30 to 60 years to transition to net zero emissions, but if multiple tipping points have already been triggered such as Arctic sea ice, and Amazon die-back, it could be too late. The timeframe required for effective transition is longer than the timeframe leading to systemic collapse.
And other researchers conclude that climate change poses a “near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilisation,” and there’s a good chance society could collapse as soon as 2050 if…
