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The Goddess is said to be benevolent and merciful, but she may get angry and become cruel and ruthless. We are used to discussing major events that may destroy civilization, or even the whole humankind. Most are related to global warming: tipping points, “hothouse Earth,” famines, tsunamis, and all the rest. Then, there are other human-made disasters, including the nuclear holocaust and homemade exterminations that can be carried out with simple tools such as machetes. Recently, it became fashionable to cite artificial intelligence as a threat to human beings.

In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster” (1). Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not novel. Guterres has made similar remarks on previous occasions, as have other public figures, including Sir David Attenborough, who warned in 2018 that inaction on climate change could lead to “the collapse of our civilizations” (2). In their article, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021”—which now has more than 14,700 signatories from 158 countries—William J. Ripple and colleagues state that climate change could “cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable”

Examination of trees alive at the time shows three years of severe drought that may have caused crop failures and famine

Mainstream energy analysts then and now assume that technology will continue to overcome resource limits in the immediate future, which is all that really seems to matter. Much of what is left of the peak oil discussion focuses on “peak demand”—i.e., the question of when electric cars will become so plentiful that we’ll no longer need so much gasoline. Nevertheless, those who’ve engaged with the oil depletion literature have tended to come away with a few useful insights....

There's no time for complacency, according to Dr. Peter Carter, founder of the Climate Emergency Institute

Climate change is not a uniquely modern threat. From the Ancestral Puebloans to the Mayans, many ancient civilizations crumbled due to climate change.

Greer’s assumption of slow collapse is built on shaky ground because industrial civilization differs from all past civilizations in four crucial ways. 

Scientists disagree on the timeline of collapse and whether it's imminent. But can we afford to be wrong? And what comes after?

The climate change analysis was written by a former fossil fuel executive and backed by the former chief of Australia's military.