Focus collapse

And why when we do see it, we fail to act.

The climate and nature crisis threatens all aspects of British life, from national security to the food supply. Despite the scale of the risks now facing the UK, there has been no comprehensive national emergency briefing delivered to the public by the Government.

Cet article rapporte la difficulté du secteur manufacturier en Grande Bretagne à faire face à l’augmentation du cout de l'énergie. Dans l'ombre de cet article apparait ce qui sera la réalité à un moment donné, sans pétrole bon marché, l'industrie manufacturière ne peut pas fonctionner dans les conditions actuelles. Le contrat social sera rompu et il faudra réinventer une manière de vivre ensemble. La situation en Grande Bretagne est peut-être exacerbée par le Brexit et la situation insulaire mais elle est l'avant-poste de ce qui attend une bonne part du monde industrialisé, à moins de relancer le charbon avec toutes les conséquences sur le dérèglement climatique et la santé des personnes que nous connaissons.

Four months into US oil blockade, Cubans see island drained as state electric company fights to provide even a few hours of power a day Ruaridh Nicoll in Havana - The doctor called from the darkness, a shadowy figure sitting on the stoop of his apartment building. “I want to tell you we’ve been four days without light,” he said. “And without electricity, water is also a problem. And there are mosquitoes everywhere.”

While the term “Anthropocene” is well established across scientific disciplines and social spheres, interpretations are diverse. Taking account of the 2024 rejection by a geological commission to accept the Anthropocene as a geological epoch and the related scientific debate, here we offer a future-oriented perspective from the viewpoint of Earth system science. We describe different pathways in the Anthropocene up to the year 3,000, systematically characterizing them according to impacts and causes. We discuss the enormous global consequences of anthropogenic pressures on the Earth system and quantify the corresponding long-term commitment to change. Regarding the causes, we conservatively explore best-case and middle-of-the road emission scenarios, in combination with climate sensitivities drawn from within the IPCC likely range. We also discuss implications for Earth system resilience that could result in what we call worst case scenarios for Anthropocene outcomes. We conclude that, beyond the slow pace of

We must confront two stark realities about the end of our era. First, the collapse of our industrial civilization is already underway, manifesting as a slow, agonizing process of structural decay, economic exhaustion, and ecological overshoot. Second, this descent is terminal. We have permanently exhausted the physical prerequisites for any future technological reboot.

A Letter to the Newly Awake. I know exactly where you are sitting right now. You are staring at a chart of North Atlantic sea surface temperatures, watching a red line spike into uncharted, terrifying territory. Yet another horrible data point proving what you already know. You feel a familiar, hollow drop in your stomach as you register the biophysical reality: the planet’s systems are unraveling.

The fragility of the global food system fills me with dread – and the war with Iran has exposed just how close to collapse it is

Le philosophe de l'environnement Rupert Read dit à Ella Whelan la panéliste Moral Maze pourquoi nous ne pourrons peut-être plus profiter du même niveau de vie pour le bien de la planète et des générations futures.

Ten million people left without power in latest of outages that sparked violent protest last weekend

I know it’s almost impossible to turn your eyes away from the Trump show, but that’s the point. His antics, ever-grosser and more preposterous, are designed to keep him in our minds, to crowd out other issues. His insatiable craving for attention is a global-threat multiplier. You can’t help wondering whether there’s anything he wouldn’t do to dominate the headlines.

Ecosystem destruction will increase food shortages, disorder and mass migration, with effects already being felt

Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security - A national security assessment

We are living in a time of polycrisis. If you feel trapped – you’re not alone. I hadn’t fully grasped how the idea of a better future sustained me – now I, like many others, find it difficult to be productive

The global collapse arrives piecemeal. Germany is going first.

I always say that models are not predictions; they are qualitative illustrations of what the future could be. But as the future gets closer to the present, models can start being seen as predictive tools. It is the weather/climate dichotomy, so aptly exploited to confuse matters by politically minded people in the discussion about climate. Right now, we are getting close to the point that we could forecast a collapse in the same way as we can forecast the trajectory of a tropical storm. So, you remember how “The Limits to Growth” generated a long term forecast in 1972. Here it is

Doomscrolling, an addictive habit, can be destructive if not managed – the way an alcoholic, say, manages drinking herself to death. It must be done with care, with binges considered for the long haul. “Overindulging…may be detrimental to your mental health,” warns the doomscrolling subreddit r/Collapse. “Anxiety and depression are common reactions when studying collapse…If you are considering suicide….” (If you are considering suicide: this may end up one of the mantras of the era of modern civilizational crack-up.)

The reality of coming to terms with the end of industrial civilisation

 Luke is a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and has spent the past five years studying the collapse of civilisations throughout history. He joins me to explain his research, detailing the difference between complex, collective civilisations and what he calls “Goliaths”, massive centralising forces by which a small group of individuals extract wealth from the rest through domination and the threat of violence. Today, he says, we live in a global Goliath. In this astounding conversation, Luke takes us from the Ancient times to the modern day, revealing the root causes of collapse and paralleling them what we’re living through today. He explains the egalitarian nature of our species, and shines new light on what a future could look like free from today’s global Goliath. He reminds us all that we tend to view collapse through the eyes of the 1%, those who have the most to lose, and gives startling accounts of how populations bounced back after thei

For the first 300,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change.