La collapsologie est un courant de pensée transdisciplinaire apparu dans les années 2010 qui envisage les risques d’un effondrement de la civilisation industrielle et ses conséquences.
En France, l’étude d’un possible effondrement de la civilisation « thermo-industrielle » est initiée par l’Institut Momentum co-fondé par Yves Cochet et Agnès Sinaï. Ces derniers définissent l’effondrement comme « le processus irréversible à l’issue duquel les besoins de base (eau, alimentation, logement, habillement, énergie, etc.) ne sont plus fournis (à un coût raisonnable) à une majorité de la population par des services encadrés par la loi».
The 1972 book "The Limits to Growth" shared a somber message for humanity: the Earth's resources are finite and probably cannot support current rates of economic and population growth to the end of the 21st century, even with advanced technology. Although disparaged by economists at the time, it turns out that, 50 years later, the message still deserves our attention.
The world could lose half of its best coffee-growing land under a moderate climate change scenario. Brazil, which is the currently world’s largest coffee producer, will see its most suitable coffee-growing land decline by 79%.
Humans have amazing strengths, but also significant weaknesses. Chief among them, perhaps, is our collective difficulty in grasping the mathematical consequences of exponential growth. Alternative energy technologies have trouble preserving expectations. Human psychology and political/economic institutions turn a technically difficult predicament into a nearly hopeless trap. We are lamentably ill-equipped to appreciate the abnormality of our time and assess a more accurate picture of what long-term “normal” must look like.
