Veille 2.1

The Kenyan marine ecologist David Obura is chair of a panel of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the world’s leading natural scientists. For many decades, his speciality has been corals, but he has warned that the next generation may not see their glory because so many reefs are now “flickering out across the world”.

News and views on the coming collapse

This Contemplation is the result of my beginning to put together a different one that’s focussing upon an academic article I’ve been reading (Collapse, Environment, and Society) but that got me thinking about the academic ‘debate’ regarding what ‘societal collapse’ is, how it may–or may not–unfold for our current experiment in large, complex societies, and how things are perceived in the moment by those experiencing societal change. The ‘debate’ (centred more-or-less on the question: Do societies actually ‘collapse’ or are they ‘merely’ shifting/transforming/adapting to changing conditions?) is rather ‘academic’ in that in the grand scheme of things it’s intellectually interesting but doesn’t have much to do with the on-the-ground, real-life experiences and concerns of most humans in a society–especially if they are experiencing some of the more ‘problematic’ consequences of collapse/transformation.

A subreddit tracking apocalyptic news in a calm, logical way comforts users who believe the end The threat of nuclear war, genocide in Gaza, ChatGPT reducing human cognitive ability, another summer of record heat. Every day brings a torrent of unimaginable horror. It used to be weeks between disasters, now we’re lucky to get hours.

It’s actually pretty obvious: the climate catastrophe is escalating, climate collapse has in all probability already begun, all the while fossil fuel infrastructures are being expanded all around the world. More and more people are turning away from climate action, while more and more people, no longer only in the global South, are suffering the consequences of climate chaos.

Recent simulations using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) indicate that a tipping event of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would cause Europe to cool by several degrees. This AMOC tipping event was found under constant pre-industrial greenhouse gas forcing, while global warming likely limits this AMOC-induced cooling response. Here, we quantify the European temperature responses under different AMOC regimes and climate change scenarios. A strongly reduced AMOC state and intermediate global warming (C, Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) has a profound cooling effect on Northwestern Europe with more intense cold extremes. The largest temperature responses are found during the winter months and these responses are strongly influenced by the North Atlantic sea-ice extent. Enhanced North Atlantic storm track activity under an AMOC collapse results in substantially larger day-to-day temperature fluctuations. We conclude that the (far) future European temperatures are dependent o

Ten kinds of possible collapses examined.

A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

What are the most significant groups in this complex network of our emergent ‘collapse culture’? These groups don’t cohere into a single unified culture that understands itself as singular. Instead, the are thinly connected inside the complex of contemporary culture, a set of linked clusters. Between them, ideas do circulate, but the links between them, as I will return to, are more often established through intermixing in the heads of their proponents, however chaotically this takes place.....

Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the seventh of a series of articles on some of these signposts.

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently.

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently. Of course, anyone who writes about Limits of Growth has to do all the usual disclaimers first. This is because the combination of the words “limits” and “growth” in the title produced a lot of critical responses, on a range from straight-up hatchet jobs which misrepresented the book, to people who didn’t appear to understand the systems dynamics model that sat behind it.

Climate change is driving rising global temperatures, ecological degradation, and widespread human suffering. Yet, as a collective, humanity has failed to implement sufficient changes to mitigate these threats. This paper introduces the concept of “global narcissism” as a speculative lens to analyze the psychological barriers to climate action. By examining different levels of narcissism and their manifestations in human responses to climate change, this framework highlights key obstacles to meaningful action. While humanity is diverse, and lived experiences vary greatly, this perspective offers a way to discuss patterns of response and resistance. A central challenge lies in humanity’s difficulty in recognizing its symbiotic relationship with the non-human world. Through the metaphor of “global narcissism” this paper explores how humanity’s response to ecological crisis mirrors narcissistic defense mechanisms and suggests a collapse is taking place. This framework provides insights into how psychological int

It is said that George W. Bush Jr. decided to invade Iraq in 2003 because he had read some papers on oil depletion by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). Of course, it may be just a legend, but I don’t see it as impossible, and perhaps not even improbable. Politicians make decisions on the basis of vague ideas, often on the spur of the moment, and in many cases making terrible mistakes. But they normally understand some of the critical elements that keep alive the system. For the US, the critical resource was, and still is, crude oil. So, it is possible that Bush thought that it was necessary to compensate for the decline of the US oil production by seizing the Iraqi resources. That didn’t necessarily imply to start a war, just like filling the tank of your car doesn’t imply shooting dead the service station operator. But that’s the way some people’s minds work.

For years, climate scientists have warned us of rising temperatures, extreme weather, and ecological breakdown. Now, the very people who calculate financial risk—actuaries—are sounding the alarm. Their latest report projects a 50% collapse in global GDP within decades. That’s not a recession. That’s economic devastation on a scale we’ve never seen.

Collapse isn’t loud. It’s not a Hollywood explosion, not a sudden black hole swallowing the United States overnight. There’s no singular moment when the world collectively gasps and realizes everything has come undone. Instead, collapse is a slow, grinding process — insidious, creeping, and patient.

My childhood was perpetually filled with creative people. My parents, both musicians, often hosted gatherings of artists, writers, and performers. At each event a recurring theme emerged: the struggle of the creative mind in a world that seemed increasingly indifferent, if not hostile, to their contributions. Each person laid out what became a very clear window into how our systems exploited and marginalized the most creatively intelligent.

Climate change will set the parameters of our post-Princeton lives. The fires that devastated the Palisades earlier this month were, as our nation’s exasperated and exhausted climate scientists continue to remind us, only harbingers of the floods, tornados, and heatwaves to come. Global warming is surpassing the climate models that scientists built in the 2010s and early 2020s that already forecasted a borderline-apocalyptic future. Undoubtedly, by the time current Princeton students reach middle age, they will have witnessed a slew of societal structures sag — or collapse entirely — under the weight of extreme weather events and ever-worsening ecological decline.

Elon Musk has achieved astonishing power in Trump’s administration – and spent the weekend wielding it

Thoughts on the Collapse of Civilization

The CIO of Goldman Sachs has said that in the next year, companies at the forefront will begin to use AI agents as if they were employees — as team members with tasks to do.

The abrupt loss of many species from a system is generally attributed to a breakdown in ecological functioning. As species are sequentially knocked out, the whole community becomes unstable, and it all comes crashing down. Another mechanism that may be at play. My colleagues and I argue that despite the fact life on Earth displays such great variety, many species that live together appear to share remarkably similar thermal limits. That is to say, individuals of different species can tolerate temperatures up to similar points.

The year 2024 wasn’t just another chapter in the unfolding climate saga; it felt like the plot twist no one wanted to believe. For decades, climate scientists warned of ifs — if we pass this tipping…

L'apocalypse serait-elle devenue un sujet d'étude aussi banal que la photosynthèse ou les fractales ? Ces deux dernières décennies, le vocabulaire de la fin du monde s’est métamorphosé en un champ lexical scientifique florissant. Des concepts comme l’anthropocène ou les planetary boundaries ont proliféré dans les revues académiques. Des notions plus anciennes comme la polycrise d’Edgar Morin et le collapse ont resurgi récemment, transcendant les frontières disciplinaires, tandis que les cascading failures, les wicked problems ou les compound risks sont devenus incontournables dans l’analyse des risques.

I mapped out a likely scenario, based on a synthesis of a variety of estimates combined with a dose of interpretation. While I can't predict the future, if we continue business as usual we'll soon witness compounding destruction of our infrastructure, economy and agricultural systems. A reasonable estimate suggests cascading civilizational and social collapses by mid-century - just 25 years from now.

The climate and ecological crisis poses an unprecedented challenge, with scientists playing a critical role in how society understands and responds. This study examined how 27 environmentally concerned scientists from 11 countries construct the future in the context of climate change, applying a critical discursive psychology analysis. The degree to which the future is constructed as predetermined or transformable impacts both the urgency and scope of proposed actions. ...

In this article, we’ll see why cascading disruptions of environmental and political systems are entangled and mutually reinforcing. We’ll also try to identify the next stages of global collapse, and explore the options for individuals and communities seeking to survive and to prevent as much harm and suffering as possible.

Several high-profile research papers have brought renewed attention to the potential collapse of a crucial system of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, as we discussed in part one of this two-part post. Huge uncertainties in both the timing and details of potential impacts of such a collapse remain.

A short definition of the polycrisis, including global environmental, geopolitical, and economic aspects.

In March 2022, a New York City-sized ice shelf collapsed in East Antarctica, long thought to be relatively stable against rapid change. The Conger-Glenzer ice shelf collapsed following decades of ocean-induced thinning, allowing its long-stabilizing features to transform into destabilizing ones.

The idea that the AMOC is headed to collapse is very controversial, but it is clearly weakening. If the circulation did collapse, the consequences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean would be immense—including large changes in temperature and a spike in weather-related disasters.

The Atlantic Ocean's most vital ocean current is showing troubling signs of reaching a disastrous tipping point. Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf tells Live Science what the impacts could be.

The network of Atlantic ocean currents keeping the Earth's climate stable are far closer to collapse than first estimated, scientists warn.

AMOC collapse would bring severe global climate repercussions, with Europe bearing the brunt of the consequences.

Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf explains why Amoc breakdown could be catastrophic for both humans and marine life

The collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is one of the global tipping points that will spell doom for our children's futures.

If modern societies are breaking down, is there a political movement ready to soften the collapse and begin anew? Or do we need new ideas and organisations for collective action? Might a local focus be the only meaningful approach as industrial consumer systems decline? Or is this a period that calls for greater international solidarity with those suffering the most? I think the conversations and initiatives in the Francophone world will provide us many insights on these questions, for a number of reasons, which I’ll come to in a moment.

The average size of monitored wildlife populations has shrunk by 73% since 1970.

L'apocalypse serait-elle devenue un sujet d'étude aussi banal que la photosynthèse ou les fractales ? Ces deux dernières décennies, le vocabulaire de la fin du monde s’est métamorphosé en un champ lexical scientifique florissant. Des concepts comme l’anthropocène ou les planetary boundaries ont proliféré dans les revues académiques. Des notions plus anciennes comme la polycrise d’Edgar Morin et le collapse ont resurgi récemment, transcendant les frontières disciplinaires, tandis que les cascading failures, les wicked problems ou les compound risks sont devenus incontournables dans l’analyse des risques.

As a six-year investigation into the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica wraps up, the scientists involved are pessimistic for the future of this glacier and the consequences for sea level rise

Several studies in recent years have suggested the crucial system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — could be on course for collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disrupted saltiness caused by human-induced climate change. But the new research, which is being peer-reviewed and hasn’t yet been published in a journal, uses a state-of-the-art model to estimate when it could collapse, suggesting a shutdown could happen between 2037 and 2064.

There is increasing concern that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may collapse this century with a disrupting societal impact on large parts of the world. Preliminary estimates of the probability of such an AMOC collapse have so far been based on conceptual models and statistical analyses of proxy data. Here, we provide observationally based estimates of such probabilities from reanalysis data. We first identify optimal observation regions of an AMOC collapse from a recent global climate model simulation. Salinity data near the southern boundary of the Atlantic turn out to be optimal to provide estimates of the time of the AMOC collapse in this model. Based on the reanalysis products, we next determine probability density functions of the AMOC collapse time. The collapse time is estimated between 2037-2064 (10-90% CI) with a mean of 2050 and the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2050 is estimated to be 59±17%.

When it comes to writing about climate change … or energy transition … or resource depletion … the new “it” word seems to be COLLAPSE. Collapse is everywhere. But collapse is an inherently fuzzy…

Un débat enregistré lors des premières rencontres d'Adaptation radicale, à Villeneuve d'Ascq les 17-18 et 19 Octobre 2023

The Amazon rainforest is facing a barrage of pressures that might tip it into large-scale ecosystem collapse as soon as 2050, according to new research Wednesday warning of dire consequences for the region and the world. The Amazon, which holds more than 10 percent of the world's biodiversity, helps stabilize the global climate by storing the equivalent of around two decades of emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide.

A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others. Using exceptionally complex and expensive computing systems, scientists found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of these currents, according to the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And as the planet warms, there are already indications it is heading in this direction.

Disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current could freeze Europe, scorch the tropics and increase sea level rise in the North Atlantic. The tipping point may be closer than predicted in the IPCC’s latest assessment.

The new version of the “Seneca Effect” blog on Substack is doing reasonably well, so I thought it was time to prepare a page that explains what the Seneca Effect is and what it can teach us. (image by Dall-E) During the 1st Century AD, the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca observed the start of the disintegration of the Roman Empire. It was a process that would take a few more centuries to complete, but that was already evident to those who were willing to look beyond the surface of the still powerful Empire.

Societies and political structures, like the humans they serve, appear to become more fragile as they age, according to an analysis of hundreds of pre-modern societies.

The collapse of civilization is becoming very obvious, yet most people still don't know. Here are three reasons why.

World Meteorological Organization says 2023 will be hottest year on record, leaving ‘trail of devastation and despair’

Climate Change is rapidly accelerating and will lead to the collapse of civilization in the lifetimes of most people alive today. Here's why.

Scientists warn of unlivable heat and food shortages after analyzing 35 planetary vital signs.

Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.

Even if there were no climate change, civilization would still collapse in the next few decades. Here's why.

Catastrophic climate change and the collapse of human societies By Josep Peñuelas, Sandra Nogué National Science Review, Volume 10, Issue 6, June 2023 The scientific community has focused the agend…

If you've ever seen the movie Soylent Green, you know it's not about cannibalism. It's about the banality of social collapse. It's not quick. It's a slow burn. Nobody shows any sense of urgency about anything. Everyone still watches talk shows, even if they have to pedal a bike to generate electricity for their television. Nobody under 50 remembers anything better. Here's the plot twist: It's not that corporations are using people as the main ingredient in everyone's favorite new food. It's

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region. In recent years weakening in circulation has been reported, but assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) model simulations suggest that a full collapse is unlikely within the 21st century. Tipping to an undesired state in the climate is, however, a growing concern with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Predictions based on observations rely on detecting early-warning signals, primarily an increase in variance (loss of resilience) and increased autocorrelation (critical slowing down), which have recently been reported for the AMOC. Here we provide statistical significance and data-driven estimators for the time of tipping. We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emi

A collapse would bring catastrophic climate impacts but scientists disagree over the new analysis

Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.

Just Collapse is an activist platform dedicated to socio-ecological justice in face of inevitable and irreversible global collapse. Just Collapse advocates for a Just Collapse and a Planned Collapse to avert the worst outcomes that will follow an otherwise unplanned, reactive collapse. Just Collapse recognises that there will be no justice in an unplanned collapse.

Around the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded "regime shifts" like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystem where tipping points have been passed. Around the world, more than 20% of ecosystems are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different.

We ran computer programs that simulate ecosystems 70,000 times and the results are very worrying.

A major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events and strengthening intersystem connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may provide poor estimates of the impact of climate and human activities on ecosystems. We conduct xperiments on four models that simulate abrupt changes in the Chilika lagoon fshery, the Easter Island community, forest dieback and lake water quality—representing ecosystems with a range of anthropogenic interactions. Collapses occur sooner under increasing levels of primary stress but additional stresses and/or the inclusion of noise in all four models bring the collapses substantially closer to today by ~38–81%. We discuss the implications for further research and the need for humanity to be vigilant for signs that ecosystems are degrading even more rapidly than previo

Une présentation que j'ai récemment réalisée en conférence auprès d'une entreprise, et que je reproduis ici, sur les grands enseignements du rapport du Group...

Knowing that the world is ending can be incredibly lonely. Here's what it's like to be collapse aware among those who are oblivious.

Professor Joseph Tainter is an American anthropologist and historian studied anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. As of 2012 he holds a professorship in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University. In this interview Professor Tainter discusses the thesis of his widely acclaimed work “The Collapse of Complex Societies”, 25 years after its publication in 1988. His book is among great classics of the study of collapse. In my view a work whose quality and relevance is comparable to Limits to Growth.

The collapse of modern societies has already begun. That is the conclusion of two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind Breaking Together. How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to harm each other and nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of our societies. So what can we do? This book describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively.

Thème de ce premier épisode, la démographie ! J'ai collecté et commenté une quinzaine de graphiques qui me semblaient pertinents (sans prétention évidemment à être exhaustifs, ou même concluants) : ...

The scientific community has focused the agenda of studies of climate change on lower-end warming and simple risk analyses, because more realistic complex asses

By replacing thousands of equations with just one, ecology modelers can more accurately assess how close fragile environments are to a disastrous “tipping point.”

The steady destruction of wildlife can suddenly tip over into total ecosystem collapse, scientists studying the greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history have found. Many scientists think the huge current losses of biodiversity are the start of a new mass extinction. But the new research shows total ecosystem collapse is “inevitable”, if the losses are not reversed, the scientists said.

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Now that humans have overshot the carrying capacity of the planet, collapse is inevitable no matter what we do.

Elizabeth Kolbert writes about this week’s summit on biodiversity, where delegates will consider ambitious new conservation targets—even though the old ones have yet to be achieved.

It’s not just indifference. It’s an active, and deadly, cavalier attitude towards the lives of others: an example other nations follow

Une note privée de la Deutsche Bank alerte ses gros clients ultra-riches des dangers d'effondrement du système industriel et financier.

Assisterons-nous au collapse de la civilisation techno-industrielle avant que des supraintelligences artificielles ne gouvernent le monde ?

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....

In Madrid, the organisation showed a great sense of purpose. But beware a divided Europe and a US still tired of paying for the continent’s security

Strong climate action could wipe $756bn from individuals’ pension funds and other investments in rich countries

As human fragility is stretched towards breaking point, should we be preparing for societal collapse? This is the existential question behind ‘deep adaptation’, a theory that is rapidly gaining adherents. Richard Swift assesses how far, if anywhere, it will take us and what better paths we could go down.

For the past few years, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008.

Previous studies show that city metrics having to do with growth, productivity and overall energy consumption scale superlinearly, attributing this to the social nature of cities. Superlinear scaling results in crises called ‘singularities’, where population and energy demand tend to infinity in a finite amount of time, which must be avoided by ever more frequent ‘resets’ or innovations that postpone the system's collapse. Here, we place the emergence of cities and planetary civilizations in the context of major evolutionary transitions. With this perspective, we hypothesize that once a planetary civilization transitions into a state that can be described as one virtually connected global city, it will face an ‘asymptotic burnout’, an ultimate crisis where the singularity-interval time scale becomes smaller than the time scale of innovation. If a civilization develops the capability to understand its own trajectory, it will have a window of time to affect a fundamental change to prioritize long-term homeosta

The world may be facing a devastating “hidden” collapse in insect species due to the twin threats of climate change and habitat loss.

The rapid collapses of two ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula over the past quarter-century were most likely triggered by the arrival of huge plumes of warm, moisture-laden air that created extreme conditions and destabilized the ice, researchers said Thursday.

The Gulf Stream has weakened substantially in the past decades, as revealed by the latest data and new studies. Weather in the United States and Europe depends strongly on this ocean current, so it’s important we understand the ongoing changes and what they mean for our weather now and in the near future.

Welcome to the Great Inflation — Or, Why We Have to Pay for the Hidden Costs of the Industrial Age

New research suggests 75% of the rainforest has become less resilient to stress since the early 2000s.

Infinite growth on a finite planet has pushed us into crisis, and this forum tackles the difficult questions and taboo topics: Bursting the fantasy of sustainability based on clean energy transition and arguing for equitable approaches to global population. Pathways forward include a deliberate contraction of the human enterprise and a planned collapse.

Trois jeunes sur quatre sont éco-anxieux, nous apprenait fin 2021 une étude du Lancet. Demain, fera-t-on face à une génération de dépressifs ? Pas forcément, nous apprennent la sociologue Dominique Méda et le psychologue Pierre-Eric Sutter, qui ont tous deux participé à l’exposition « Renaissances », visible à la Cité des sciences et de l’industrie jusqu’au 6 mars 2022. Il est possible de surmonter l’effondrement et l’éco-anxiété, à l’échelle individuelle comme collective.

Wealthy companies are using the facade of ‘nature-based solutions’ to enact a great carbon land grab

What can snowflakes teach us about the economy, civilisation and crisis? Professor Tim Garrett, atmosphere scientist at the University of Utah, has modelled how the behaviour of snowflakes and clouds can be used to predict energy consumption and GDP, bridging the gap between economic theory and the natural world. He says we can learn where we are and where we're going using the laws of thermodynamics—and would be foolish to ignore them.

The loss of its buttressing ice shelf could hasten the demise of the “Doomsday Glacier”

Habitat degradation, low genetic variation and declining fertility are setting Homo sapiens up for collapse

Aan de Britse tankstations staan er ellenlange files. De oorzaak? Te weinig truckchauffeurs om rond te rijden met tankwagens. Hoe groot is het probleem? Hoe is het zo ver kunnen komen? En wat betekent dit voor de toekomst? Frank Moreels, voorzitter van de Europese transportarbeidersbond geeft uitleg in "Laat".

analysts including Ting Lu warned in a note, predicting China’s economy will shrink this quarter. Article assez incroyable sur les pénuries d'électricité en Chine.

The Gulf Stream has weakened substantially in the past decades, as new data and studies show. Weather in the United States and Europe depends strongly on this ocean current, so it’s important we understand the ongoing changes and what they will mean for our weather in the future.

If Earth had a pulse, it might be The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – a swirl of ocean currents that carries tropical heat north towards polar waters. Over the past century this global heartbeat has eased, slowing to a speed not seen in more than a millennium. New research based on a range of indices has now bolstered views that the weakening isn't a trivial one, and critical transition is imminent.

Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points. The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current system transporting warm surface waters toward the northern Atlantic, has been suggested to exhibit two distinct modes of operation. A collapse from the currently attained strong to the weak mode would have severe impacts on the global climate system and further multi-stable Earth system components. Observations and recently suggested fingerprints of AMOC variability indicate a gradual weakening during the last decades, but estimates of the critical transition point remain uncertain.

A new study has revealed the top five countries that would survive the collapse of global civilisation. New Zealand (already home to a wealth of billionaire preppers) takes the top spot, with the other five entrants being Iceland, Ireland, Australia and the UK.

Study citing ‘perilous state’ of industrial civilisation ranks temperate islands top for resilience. New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.

La France est le deuxième pays qui croit le plus en une prophétie collapsologique, derrière l’Italie (71 %) mais devant le Royaume-Uni (56 %) et les États-Unis (52 %), selon les données d’une étude. Popularisée notamment par l’ouvrage de Jared Diamond, (“Effondrement : comment les sociétés décident de leur disparition ou de leur survie”), cette théorie « repose sur l’hypothèse selon laquelle le changement climatique, la diminution des ressources et l’extinction des espèces conduisent le monde à sa destruction à un rythme alarmant ».

Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, has made headlines in recent days after she authored a report that appeared to show a controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civilization was – apparently – right on time. Coming amid a cascade of alarming environmental events, Herrington’s work predicted the collapse could come around 2040 if current trends held.

The Boiling Planet. The Pandemic. The Dying Planet. The Collapse. The Fascism. None of This is Remotely Normal.

A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.

In 2018, a climate paper by Jem Bendell went viral, being downloaded over a million times. It helped to launch a worldwide movement of people seeking to reduce harm in the face of societal disruption and collapse. In this interview for Facing Future TV, Jem explains the concept of Deep Adaptation, how he developed the idea, what it means in practice, what he says to critics, and what his new book on the topic is about.

Le 12 mars 2019, j'ai eu le plaisir de me prêter au jeu d'un « Café Collapse » organisé à Grenoble, aux côtés de Vincent Mignerot. Le thème était la « collapsologie politique », la transposition dans le champ politique des questions liées à la problématique des risques d'effondrement.

The shocking collapse of a 12-storey building in the Miami area last week has raised questions as to the role played by the climate crisis, and whether the severe vulnerability of south Florida to the rising seas may lead to the destabilization of further buildings in the future.

Deep adaptation’ refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world. This is the first book to show how professionals across different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives.

The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race. Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to prevent widespread biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, the global body has warned at the launch of the decade on ecosystem restoration, an urgent call for the large-scale revival of nature in farmlands, forests and other ecosystems.

While the climate crisis has dominated the airwaves for a while now, the biodiversity crisis is at least as serious. Actually, these are multiple, interconnected crises, stemming from age old systemic failings. In 2019, scientific body IPBES brought to the fore the urgent need for “transformative change” to prevent biodiversity collapse, which would be disastrous for people and planet. As one example, the global coronavirus pandemic has tragically highlighted the risks of ecosystem loss for global public health. In a bid to find an answer to this crisis, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is discussing a Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) - effectively how to ‘save’ nature.

A new study has found that if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed urgently, a third of endemic species on land and half in the sea will become extinct, causing a collapse of biodiversity. According to the study, 92% of all endemic species on land and 95% of those in the ocean will decrease in numbers or even disappear under current emissions levels, which will increase global temperatures by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.

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A public letter signed by over 250 scientists and scholars from 30 countries, calls on policy makers to engage more with the growing risk of societal disruption and collapse due to damage to the climate and environment. The letter invites focus on how to slow, prepare for, and help those already suffering from, such disruptions. The signatories are specialists in a range of subject areas that relate to this challenge, who commonly believe it is time to listen to all the scholarship on humanity’s predicament.

Letter: Scientists and academics including Prof Gesa Weyhenmeyer and Prof Will Steffen argue that we must discuss the threat of societal disruption in order to prepare for it

Dennis Meadows: The notion that there is some kind of fairly attractive sustainable society ahead of us if we can only find it is now a fantasy. The global population, its use of materials, its generation of wastes has grown so far above the sustainable capacity of the planet that there is nothing ahead [of the kind] that the sustainable utopia people are talking about.

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

Deforestation and rampant resource use is likely to trigger the 'irreversible collapse' of human civilization unless we rapidly change course.

Australia’s top climate scientist 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.

Les études convergent pour nous annoncer la forte probabilité de l'effondrement de nos sociétés . Pierre-Éric Sutter, psychologue, et Loïc Steffan, économiste, analysent les mécanismes de la prise de conscience, chez ceux qui rejettent l'idée de collapse et chez ceux qui l'acceptent. La peur, manifestation de l'instinct de survie, nous pousse à créer une nouvelle vision du monde, durable, solidaire, résilente et capable de succéder à nos sociétés industrielles. Les auteurs nous décrivent les voies qui conduisent de la peur à une nouvelle sagesse : celle, extérieure, de l'action et du changement de mode de vie et celle, intérieure, de la méditation philosophique et de la recherche de sens.

j’ai dû me ranger à la vision de Denis Meadows, chercheur américain du réputé Massachussets Institute of Technology (le MIT), pour qui, justement : « Il est trop tard pour le développement durable » 1 . Dès lors, je me suis rendu compte, non sans effroi dans un premier temps, découragement dans un deuxième et... enthousiasme dans un troisième et quatrième temps, qu’il était (grand) temps de commencer à co-construire, dans mon environnement direct, ce que Pablo Servigne et Raphaël Stevens nomment une « petite communauté résiliente locale », seule structure capable selon ces auteurs d’absorber les chocs inimaginables qui nous attendent

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

According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

Université d'été Trans-Mutation 2019 - Mutation ou effondrement Conférence intégrale de Paul Jorion

Le 12 mars 2019, j'ai eu le plaisir de me prêter au jeu d'un « Café Collapse » organisé à Grenoble, aux côtés de Vincent Mignerot. Le thème était la « collapsologie politique », la transposition dans le champ politique des questions liées à la problématique des risques d'effondrement.

Studying the demise of historic civilisations can tell us about the risk we face today, says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening.

One of the most fascinating interpretations of the collapse of civilization is Joseph Tainter’s idea that it is due to “diminishing returns.” It is a well-known concept in economics that Tainter adapts to the historical cycle of civilizations, focusing on the control structures designed to keep together the whole system, the bureaucracy for instance...

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In this lecture given at Dartmouth College in the Spring of 1977, Donella Meadows uses two examples of socioecological systems to convey concepts of overshoo...

Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.

Radical Transformation is a story about industrial civilization’s impending collapse, and about the possibilities of averting this fate. Human communities first emerged as egalitarian, democratic groups that existed in symbiotic relationship with their environments. Increasing complexity led to the emergence of oligarchy, in which societies became captive to the logic of domination, exploitation, and ecological destruction. The challenge facing us today is to build a movement that will radically transform civilization and once more align our evolutionary trajectory in the direction of democracy, equality, and ecological sustainability.

Documentaire France4 pour lequel j'ai été interviewé, sur le thème de l'effondrement. Réalisation Benjamin Crotty, diffusion le 17 juin 2016.

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The Kenyan marine ecologist David Obura is chair of a panel of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the world’s leading natural scientists. For many decades, his speciality has been corals, but he has warned that the next generation may not see their glory because so many reefs are now “flickering out across the world”.

News and views on the coming collapse

This Contemplation is the result of my beginning to put together a different one that’s focussing upon an academic article I’ve been reading (Collapse, Environment, and Society) but that got me thinking about the academic ‘debate’ regarding what ‘societal collapse’ is, how it may–or may not–unfold for our current experiment in large, complex societies, and how things are perceived in the moment by those experiencing societal change. The ‘debate’ (centred more-or-less on the question: Do societies actually ‘collapse’ or are they ‘merely’ shifting/transforming/adapting to changing conditions?) is rather ‘academic’ in that in the grand scheme of things it’s intellectually interesting but doesn’t have much to do with the on-the-ground, real-life experiences and concerns of most humans in a society–especially if they are experiencing some of the more ‘problematic’ consequences of collapse/transformation.

A subreddit tracking apocalyptic news in a calm, logical way comforts users who believe the end The threat of nuclear war, genocide in Gaza, ChatGPT reducing human cognitive ability, another summer of record heat. Every day brings a torrent of unimaginable horror. It used to be weeks between disasters, now we’re lucky to get hours.

It’s actually pretty obvious: the climate catastrophe is escalating, climate collapse has in all probability already begun, all the while fossil fuel infrastructures are being expanded all around the world. More and more people are turning away from climate action, while more and more people, no longer only in the global South, are suffering the consequences of climate chaos.

Recent simulations using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) indicate that a tipping event of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would cause Europe to cool by several degrees. This AMOC tipping event was found under constant pre-industrial greenhouse gas forcing, while global warming likely limits this AMOC-induced cooling response. Here, we quantify the European temperature responses under different AMOC regimes and climate change scenarios. A strongly reduced AMOC state and intermediate global warming (C, Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) has a profound cooling effect on Northwestern Europe with more intense cold extremes. The largest temperature responses are found during the winter months and these responses are strongly influenced by the North Atlantic sea-ice extent. Enhanced North Atlantic storm track activity under an AMOC collapse results in substantially larger day-to-day temperature fluctuations. We conclude that the (far) future European temperatures are dependent o

Ten kinds of possible collapses examined.

A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

What are the most significant groups in this complex network of our emergent ‘collapse culture’? These groups don’t cohere into a single unified culture that understands itself as singular. Instead, the are thinly connected inside the complex of contemporary culture, a set of linked clusters. Between them, ideas do circulate, but the links between them, as I will return to, are more often established through intermixing in the heads of their proponents, however chaotically this takes place.....

Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the seventh of a series of articles on some of these signposts.

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently.

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently. Of course, anyone who writes about Limits of Growth has to do all the usual disclaimers first. This is because the combination of the words “limits” and “growth” in the title produced a lot of critical responses, on a range from straight-up hatchet jobs which misrepresented the book, to people who didn’t appear to understand the systems dynamics model that sat behind it.

Climate change is driving rising global temperatures, ecological degradation, and widespread human suffering. Yet, as a collective, humanity has failed to implement sufficient changes to mitigate these threats. This paper introduces the concept of “global narcissism” as a speculative lens to analyze the psychological barriers to climate action. By examining different levels of narcissism and their manifestations in human responses to climate change, this framework highlights key obstacles to meaningful action. While humanity is diverse, and lived experiences vary greatly, this perspective offers a way to discuss patterns of response and resistance. A central challenge lies in humanity’s difficulty in recognizing its symbiotic relationship with the non-human world. Through the metaphor of “global narcissism” this paper explores how humanity’s response to ecological crisis mirrors narcissistic defense mechanisms and suggests a collapse is taking place. This framework provides insights into how psychological int

It is said that George W. Bush Jr. decided to invade Iraq in 2003 because he had read some papers on oil depletion by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). Of course, it may be just a legend, but I don’t see it as impossible, and perhaps not even improbable. Politicians make decisions on the basis of vague ideas, often on the spur of the moment, and in many cases making terrible mistakes. But they normally understand some of the critical elements that keep alive the system. For the US, the critical resource was, and still is, crude oil. So, it is possible that Bush thought that it was necessary to compensate for the decline of the US oil production by seizing the Iraqi resources. That didn’t necessarily imply to start a war, just like filling the tank of your car doesn’t imply shooting dead the service station operator. But that’s the way some people’s minds work.

For years, climate scientists have warned us of rising temperatures, extreme weather, and ecological breakdown. Now, the very people who calculate financial risk—actuaries—are sounding the alarm. Their latest report projects a 50% collapse in global GDP within decades. That’s not a recession. That’s economic devastation on a scale we’ve never seen.

Collapse isn’t loud. It’s not a Hollywood explosion, not a sudden black hole swallowing the United States overnight. There’s no singular moment when the world collectively gasps and realizes everything has come undone. Instead, collapse is a slow, grinding process — insidious, creeping, and patient.

My childhood was perpetually filled with creative people. My parents, both musicians, often hosted gatherings of artists, writers, and performers. At each event a recurring theme emerged: the struggle of the creative mind in a world that seemed increasingly indifferent, if not hostile, to their contributions. Each person laid out what became a very clear window into how our systems exploited and marginalized the most creatively intelligent.

Climate change will set the parameters of our post-Princeton lives. The fires that devastated the Palisades earlier this month were, as our nation’s exasperated and exhausted climate scientists continue to remind us, only harbingers of the floods, tornados, and heatwaves to come. Global warming is surpassing the climate models that scientists built in the 2010s and early 2020s that already forecasted a borderline-apocalyptic future. Undoubtedly, by the time current Princeton students reach middle age, they will have witnessed a slew of societal structures sag — or collapse entirely — under the weight of extreme weather events and ever-worsening ecological decline.

Elon Musk has achieved astonishing power in Trump’s administration – and spent the weekend wielding it

Thoughts on the Collapse of Civilization

The CIO of Goldman Sachs has said that in the next year, companies at the forefront will begin to use AI agents as if they were employees — as team members with tasks to do.

The abrupt loss of many species from a system is generally attributed to a breakdown in ecological functioning. As species are sequentially knocked out, the whole community becomes unstable, and it all comes crashing down. Another mechanism that may be at play. My colleagues and I argue that despite the fact life on Earth displays such great variety, many species that live together appear to share remarkably similar thermal limits. That is to say, individuals of different species can tolerate temperatures up to similar points.

The year 2024 wasn’t just another chapter in the unfolding climate saga; it felt like the plot twist no one wanted to believe. For decades, climate scientists warned of ifs — if we pass this tipping…

L'apocalypse serait-elle devenue un sujet d'étude aussi banal que la photosynthèse ou les fractales ? Ces deux dernières décennies, le vocabulaire de la fin du monde s’est métamorphosé en un champ lexical scientifique florissant. Des concepts comme l’anthropocène ou les planetary boundaries ont proliféré dans les revues académiques. Des notions plus anciennes comme la polycrise d’Edgar Morin et le collapse ont resurgi récemment, transcendant les frontières disciplinaires, tandis que les cascading failures, les wicked problems ou les compound risks sont devenus incontournables dans l’analyse des risques.

I mapped out a likely scenario, based on a synthesis of a variety of estimates combined with a dose of interpretation. While I can't predict the future, if we continue business as usual we'll soon witness compounding destruction of our infrastructure, economy and agricultural systems. A reasonable estimate suggests cascading civilizational and social collapses by mid-century - just 25 years from now.

The climate and ecological crisis poses an unprecedented challenge, with scientists playing a critical role in how society understands and responds. This study examined how 27 environmentally concerned scientists from 11 countries construct the future in the context of climate change, applying a critical discursive psychology analysis. The degree to which the future is constructed as predetermined or transformable impacts both the urgency and scope of proposed actions. ...

In this article, we’ll see why cascading disruptions of environmental and political systems are entangled and mutually reinforcing. We’ll also try to identify the next stages of global collapse, and explore the options for individuals and communities seeking to survive and to prevent as much harm and suffering as possible.

Several high-profile research papers have brought renewed attention to the potential collapse of a crucial system of ocean currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, as we discussed in part one of this two-part post. Huge uncertainties in both the timing and details of potential impacts of such a collapse remain.

A short definition of the polycrisis, including global environmental, geopolitical, and economic aspects.

In March 2022, a New York City-sized ice shelf collapsed in East Antarctica, long thought to be relatively stable against rapid change. The Conger-Glenzer ice shelf collapsed following decades of ocean-induced thinning, allowing its long-stabilizing features to transform into destabilizing ones.

The idea that the AMOC is headed to collapse is very controversial, but it is clearly weakening. If the circulation did collapse, the consequences on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean would be immense—including large changes in temperature and a spike in weather-related disasters.

The Atlantic Ocean's most vital ocean current is showing troubling signs of reaching a disastrous tipping point. Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf tells Live Science what the impacts could be.

The network of Atlantic ocean currents keeping the Earth's climate stable are far closer to collapse than first estimated, scientists warn.

AMOC collapse would bring severe global climate repercussions, with Europe bearing the brunt of the consequences.

Oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf explains why Amoc breakdown could be catastrophic for both humans and marine life

The collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is one of the global tipping points that will spell doom for our children's futures.

If modern societies are breaking down, is there a political movement ready to soften the collapse and begin anew? Or do we need new ideas and organisations for collective action? Might a local focus be the only meaningful approach as industrial consumer systems decline? Or is this a period that calls for greater international solidarity with those suffering the most? I think the conversations and initiatives in the Francophone world will provide us many insights on these questions, for a number of reasons, which I’ll come to in a moment.

The average size of monitored wildlife populations has shrunk by 73% since 1970.

L'apocalypse serait-elle devenue un sujet d'étude aussi banal que la photosynthèse ou les fractales ? Ces deux dernières décennies, le vocabulaire de la fin du monde s’est métamorphosé en un champ lexical scientifique florissant. Des concepts comme l’anthropocène ou les planetary boundaries ont proliféré dans les revues académiques. Des notions plus anciennes comme la polycrise d’Edgar Morin et le collapse ont resurgi récemment, transcendant les frontières disciplinaires, tandis que les cascading failures, les wicked problems ou les compound risks sont devenus incontournables dans l’analyse des risques.

As a six-year investigation into the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica wraps up, the scientists involved are pessimistic for the future of this glacier and the consequences for sea level rise

Several studies in recent years have suggested the crucial system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — could be on course for collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disrupted saltiness caused by human-induced climate change. But the new research, which is being peer-reviewed and hasn’t yet been published in a journal, uses a state-of-the-art model to estimate when it could collapse, suggesting a shutdown could happen between 2037 and 2064.

There is increasing concern that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may collapse this century with a disrupting societal impact on large parts of the world. Preliminary estimates of the probability of such an AMOC collapse have so far been based on conceptual models and statistical analyses of proxy data. Here, we provide observationally based estimates of such probabilities from reanalysis data. We first identify optimal observation regions of an AMOC collapse from a recent global climate model simulation. Salinity data near the southern boundary of the Atlantic turn out to be optimal to provide estimates of the time of the AMOC collapse in this model. Based on the reanalysis products, we next determine probability density functions of the AMOC collapse time. The collapse time is estimated between 2037-2064 (10-90% CI) with a mean of 2050 and the probability of an AMOC collapse before the year 2050 is estimated to be 59±17%.

When it comes to writing about climate change … or energy transition … or resource depletion … the new “it” word seems to be COLLAPSE. Collapse is everywhere. But collapse is an inherently fuzzy…

Un débat enregistré lors des premières rencontres d'Adaptation radicale, à Villeneuve d'Ascq les 17-18 et 19 Octobre 2023

The Amazon rainforest is facing a barrage of pressures that might tip it into large-scale ecosystem collapse as soon as 2050, according to new research Wednesday warning of dire consequences for the region and the world. The Amazon, which holds more than 10 percent of the world's biodiversity, helps stabilize the global climate by storing the equivalent of around two decades of emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide.

A crucial system of ocean currents may already be on course to collapse, according to a new report, with alarming implications for sea level rise and global weather — leading temperatures to plunge dramatically in some regions and rise in others. Using exceptionally complex and expensive computing systems, scientists found a new way to detect an early warning signal for the collapse of these currents, according to the study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. And as the planet warms, there are already indications it is heading in this direction.

Disruption of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current could freeze Europe, scorch the tropics and increase sea level rise in the North Atlantic. The tipping point may be closer than predicted in the IPCC’s latest assessment.

The new version of the “Seneca Effect” blog on Substack is doing reasonably well, so I thought it was time to prepare a page that explains what the Seneca Effect is and what it can teach us. (image by Dall-E) During the 1st Century AD, the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca observed the start of the disintegration of the Roman Empire. It was a process that would take a few more centuries to complete, but that was already evident to those who were willing to look beyond the surface of the still powerful Empire.

Societies and political structures, like the humans they serve, appear to become more fragile as they age, according to an analysis of hundreds of pre-modern societies.

The collapse of civilization is becoming very obvious, yet most people still don't know. Here are three reasons why.

World Meteorological Organization says 2023 will be hottest year on record, leaving ‘trail of devastation and despair’

Climate Change is rapidly accelerating and will lead to the collapse of civilization in the lifetimes of most people alive today. Here's why.

Scientists warn of unlivable heat and food shortages after analyzing 35 planetary vital signs.

Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory. For several decades, scientists have consistently warned of a future marked by extreme climatic conditions because of escalating global temperatures caused by ongoing human activities that release harmful greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, time is up. We are seeing the manifestation of those predictions as an alarming and unprecedented succession of climate records are broken, causing profoundly distressing scenes of suffering to unfold. We are entering an unfamiliar domain regarding our climate crisis, a situation no one has ever witnessed firsthand in the history of humanity.

Even if there were no climate change, civilization would still collapse in the next few decades. Here's why.

Catastrophic climate change and the collapse of human societies By Josep Peñuelas, Sandra Nogué National Science Review, Volume 10, Issue 6, June 2023 The scientific community has focused the agend…

If you've ever seen the movie Soylent Green, you know it's not about cannibalism. It's about the banality of social collapse. It's not quick. It's a slow burn. Nobody shows any sense of urgency about anything. Everyone still watches talk shows, even if they have to pedal a bike to generate electricity for their television. Nobody under 50 remembers anything better. Here's the plot twist: It's not that corporations are using people as the main ingredient in everyone's favorite new food. It's

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region. In recent years weakening in circulation has been reported, but assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) model simulations suggest that a full collapse is unlikely within the 21st century. Tipping to an undesired state in the climate is, however, a growing concern with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Predictions based on observations rely on detecting early-warning signals, primarily an increase in variance (loss of resilience) and increased autocorrelation (critical slowing down), which have recently been reported for the AMOC. Here we provide statistical significance and data-driven estimators for the time of tipping. We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emi

A collapse would bring catastrophic climate impacts but scientists disagree over the new analysis

Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.

Just Collapse is an activist platform dedicated to socio-ecological justice in face of inevitable and irreversible global collapse. Just Collapse advocates for a Just Collapse and a Planned Collapse to avert the worst outcomes that will follow an otherwise unplanned, reactive collapse. Just Collapse recognises that there will be no justice in an unplanned collapse.

Around the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded "regime shifts" like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystem where tipping points have been passed. Around the world, more than 20% of ecosystems are in danger of shifting or collapsing into something different.

We ran computer programs that simulate ecosystems 70,000 times and the results are very worrying.

A major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events and strengthening intersystem connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may provide poor estimates of the impact of climate and human activities on ecosystems. We conduct xperiments on four models that simulate abrupt changes in the Chilika lagoon fshery, the Easter Island community, forest dieback and lake water quality—representing ecosystems with a range of anthropogenic interactions. Collapses occur sooner under increasing levels of primary stress but additional stresses and/or the inclusion of noise in all four models bring the collapses substantially closer to today by ~38–81%. We discuss the implications for further research and the need for humanity to be vigilant for signs that ecosystems are degrading even more rapidly than previo

Une présentation que j'ai récemment réalisée en conférence auprès d'une entreprise, et que je reproduis ici, sur les grands enseignements du rapport du Group...

Knowing that the world is ending can be incredibly lonely. Here's what it's like to be collapse aware among those who are oblivious.

Professor Joseph Tainter is an American anthropologist and historian studied anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Northwestern University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. As of 2012 he holds a professorship in the Department of Environment and Society at Utah State University. In this interview Professor Tainter discusses the thesis of his widely acclaimed work “The Collapse of Complex Societies”, 25 years after its publication in 1988. His book is among great classics of the study of collapse. In my view a work whose quality and relevance is comparable to Limits to Growth.

The collapse of modern societies has already begun. That is the conclusion of two years of research by the interdisciplinary team behind Breaking Together. How did it come to this? Because monetary systems caused us to harm each other and nature to such an extent it broke the foundations of our societies. So what can we do? This book describes people allowing the full pain of our predicament to liberate them into living more courageously and creatively.

Thème de ce premier épisode, la démographie ! J'ai collecté et commenté une quinzaine de graphiques qui me semblaient pertinents (sans prétention évidemment à être exhaustifs, ou même concluants) : ...

The scientific community has focused the agenda of studies of climate change on lower-end warming and simple risk analyses, because more realistic complex asses

By replacing thousands of equations with just one, ecology modelers can more accurately assess how close fragile environments are to a disastrous “tipping point.”

The steady destruction of wildlife can suddenly tip over into total ecosystem collapse, scientists studying the greatest mass extinction in Earth’s history have found. Many scientists think the huge current losses of biodiversity are the start of a new mass extinction. But the new research shows total ecosystem collapse is “inevitable”, if the losses are not reversed, the scientists said.

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Now that humans have overshot the carrying capacity of the planet, collapse is inevitable no matter what we do.

Elizabeth Kolbert writes about this week’s summit on biodiversity, where delegates will consider ambitious new conservation targets—even though the old ones have yet to be achieved.

It’s not just indifference. It’s an active, and deadly, cavalier attitude towards the lives of others: an example other nations follow

Une note privée de la Deutsche Bank alerte ses gros clients ultra-riches des dangers d'effondrement du système industriel et financier.

Assisterons-nous au collapse de la civilisation techno-industrielle avant que des supraintelligences artificielles ne gouvernent le monde ?

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....

In Madrid, the organisation showed a great sense of purpose. But beware a divided Europe and a US still tired of paying for the continent’s security

Strong climate action could wipe $756bn from individuals’ pension funds and other investments in rich countries

As human fragility is stretched towards breaking point, should we be preparing for societal collapse? This is the existential question behind ‘deep adaptation’, a theory that is rapidly gaining adherents. Richard Swift assesses how far, if anywhere, it will take us and what better paths we could go down.

For the past few years, scientists have been frantically sounding an alarm that governments refuse to hear: the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008.

Previous studies show that city metrics having to do with growth, productivity and overall energy consumption scale superlinearly, attributing this to the social nature of cities. Superlinear scaling results in crises called ‘singularities’, where population and energy demand tend to infinity in a finite amount of time, which must be avoided by ever more frequent ‘resets’ or innovations that postpone the system's collapse. Here, we place the emergence of cities and planetary civilizations in the context of major evolutionary transitions. With this perspective, we hypothesize that once a planetary civilization transitions into a state that can be described as one virtually connected global city, it will face an ‘asymptotic burnout’, an ultimate crisis where the singularity-interval time scale becomes smaller than the time scale of innovation. If a civilization develops the capability to understand its own trajectory, it will have a window of time to affect a fundamental change to prioritize long-term homeosta

The world may be facing a devastating “hidden” collapse in insect species due to the twin threats of climate change and habitat loss.

The rapid collapses of two ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula over the past quarter-century were most likely triggered by the arrival of huge plumes of warm, moisture-laden air that created extreme conditions and destabilized the ice, researchers said Thursday.

The Gulf Stream has weakened substantially in the past decades, as revealed by the latest data and new studies. Weather in the United States and Europe depends strongly on this ocean current, so it’s important we understand the ongoing changes and what they mean for our weather now and in the near future.

Welcome to the Great Inflation — Or, Why We Have to Pay for the Hidden Costs of the Industrial Age

New research suggests 75% of the rainforest has become less resilient to stress since the early 2000s.

Infinite growth on a finite planet has pushed us into crisis, and this forum tackles the difficult questions and taboo topics: Bursting the fantasy of sustainability based on clean energy transition and arguing for equitable approaches to global population. Pathways forward include a deliberate contraction of the human enterprise and a planned collapse.

Trois jeunes sur quatre sont éco-anxieux, nous apprenait fin 2021 une étude du Lancet. Demain, fera-t-on face à une génération de dépressifs ? Pas forcément, nous apprennent la sociologue Dominique Méda et le psychologue Pierre-Eric Sutter, qui ont tous deux participé à l’exposition « Renaissances », visible à la Cité des sciences et de l’industrie jusqu’au 6 mars 2022. Il est possible de surmonter l’effondrement et l’éco-anxiété, à l’échelle individuelle comme collective.

Wealthy companies are using the facade of ‘nature-based solutions’ to enact a great carbon land grab

What can snowflakes teach us about the economy, civilisation and crisis? Professor Tim Garrett, atmosphere scientist at the University of Utah, has modelled how the behaviour of snowflakes and clouds can be used to predict energy consumption and GDP, bridging the gap between economic theory and the natural world. He says we can learn where we are and where we're going using the laws of thermodynamics—and would be foolish to ignore them.

The loss of its buttressing ice shelf could hasten the demise of the “Doomsday Glacier”

Habitat degradation, low genetic variation and declining fertility are setting Homo sapiens up for collapse

Aan de Britse tankstations staan er ellenlange files. De oorzaak? Te weinig truckchauffeurs om rond te rijden met tankwagens. Hoe groot is het probleem? Hoe is het zo ver kunnen komen? En wat betekent dit voor de toekomst? Frank Moreels, voorzitter van de Europese transportarbeidersbond geeft uitleg in "Laat".

analysts including Ting Lu warned in a note, predicting China’s economy will shrink this quarter. Article assez incroyable sur les pénuries d'électricité en Chine.

The Gulf Stream has weakened substantially in the past decades, as new data and studies show. Weather in the United States and Europe depends strongly on this ocean current, so it’s important we understand the ongoing changes and what they will mean for our weather in the future.

If Earth had a pulse, it might be The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – a swirl of ocean currents that carries tropical heat north towards polar waters. Over the past century this global heartbeat has eased, slowing to a speed not seen in more than a millennium. New research based on a range of indices has now bolstered views that the weakening isn't a trivial one, and critical transition is imminent.

Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points. The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current system transporting warm surface waters toward the northern Atlantic, has been suggested to exhibit two distinct modes of operation. A collapse from the currently attained strong to the weak mode would have severe impacts on the global climate system and further multi-stable Earth system components. Observations and recently suggested fingerprints of AMOC variability indicate a gradual weakening during the last decades, but estimates of the critical transition point remain uncertain.

A new study has revealed the top five countries that would survive the collapse of global civilisation. New Zealand (already home to a wealth of billionaire preppers) takes the top spot, with the other five entrants being Iceland, Ireland, Australia and the UK.

Study citing ‘perilous state’ of industrial civilisation ranks temperate islands top for resilience. New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.

La France est le deuxième pays qui croit le plus en une prophétie collapsologique, derrière l’Italie (71 %) mais devant le Royaume-Uni (56 %) et les États-Unis (52 %), selon les données d’une étude. Popularisée notamment par l’ouvrage de Jared Diamond, (“Effondrement : comment les sociétés décident de leur disparition ou de leur survie”), cette théorie « repose sur l’hypothèse selon laquelle le changement climatique, la diminution des ressources et l’extinction des espèces conduisent le monde à sa destruction à un rythme alarmant ».

Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, has made headlines in recent days after she authored a report that appeared to show a controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civilization was – apparently – right on time. Coming amid a cascade of alarming environmental events, Herrington’s work predicted the collapse could come around 2040 if current trends held.

The Boiling Planet. The Pandemic. The Dying Planet. The Collapse. The Fascism. None of This is Remotely Normal.

A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule.

In 2018, a climate paper by Jem Bendell went viral, being downloaded over a million times. It helped to launch a worldwide movement of people seeking to reduce harm in the face of societal disruption and collapse. In this interview for Facing Future TV, Jem explains the concept of Deep Adaptation, how he developed the idea, what it means in practice, what he says to critics, and what his new book on the topic is about.

Le 12 mars 2019, j'ai eu le plaisir de me prêter au jeu d'un « Café Collapse » organisé à Grenoble, aux côtés de Vincent Mignerot. Le thème était la « collapsologie politique », la transposition dans le champ politique des questions liées à la problématique des risques d'effondrement.

The shocking collapse of a 12-storey building in the Miami area last week has raised questions as to the role played by the climate crisis, and whether the severe vulnerability of south Florida to the rising seas may lead to the destabilization of further buildings in the future.

Deep adaptation’ refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world. This is the first book to show how professionals across different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives.

The world must rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate, says the UN, and the revival of ecosystems must be met with all the ambition of the space race. Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to prevent widespread biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, the global body has warned at the launch of the decade on ecosystem restoration, an urgent call for the large-scale revival of nature in farmlands, forests and other ecosystems.

While the climate crisis has dominated the airwaves for a while now, the biodiversity crisis is at least as serious. Actually, these are multiple, interconnected crises, stemming from age old systemic failings. In 2019, scientific body IPBES brought to the fore the urgent need for “transformative change” to prevent biodiversity collapse, which would be disastrous for people and planet. As one example, the global coronavirus pandemic has tragically highlighted the risks of ecosystem loss for global public health. In a bid to find an answer to this crisis, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is discussing a Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) - effectively how to ‘save’ nature.

A new study has found that if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed urgently, a third of endemic species on land and half in the sea will become extinct, causing a collapse of biodiversity. According to the study, 92% of all endemic species on land and 95% of those in the ocean will decrease in numbers or even disappear under current emissions levels, which will increase global temperatures by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.

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A public letter signed by over 250 scientists and scholars from 30 countries, calls on policy makers to engage more with the growing risk of societal disruption and collapse due to damage to the climate and environment. The letter invites focus on how to slow, prepare for, and help those already suffering from, such disruptions. The signatories are specialists in a range of subject areas that relate to this challenge, who commonly believe it is time to listen to all the scholarship on humanity’s predicament.

Letter: Scientists and academics including Prof Gesa Weyhenmeyer and Prof Will Steffen argue that we must discuss the threat of societal disruption in order to prepare for it

Dennis Meadows: The notion that there is some kind of fairly attractive sustainable society ahead of us if we can only find it is now a fantasy. The global population, its use of materials, its generation of wastes has grown so far above the sustainable capacity of the planet that there is nothing ahead [of the kind] that the sustainable utopia people are talking about.

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

Deforestation and rampant resource use is likely to trigger the 'irreversible collapse' of human civilization unless we rapidly change course.

Australia’s top climate scientist 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.

Les études convergent pour nous annoncer la forte probabilité de l'effondrement de nos sociétés . Pierre-Éric Sutter, psychologue, et Loïc Steffan, économiste, analysent les mécanismes de la prise de conscience, chez ceux qui rejettent l'idée de collapse et chez ceux qui l'acceptent. La peur, manifestation de l'instinct de survie, nous pousse à créer une nouvelle vision du monde, durable, solidaire, résilente et capable de succéder à nos sociétés industrielles. Les auteurs nous décrivent les voies qui conduisent de la peur à une nouvelle sagesse : celle, extérieure, de l'action et du changement de mode de vie et celle, intérieure, de la méditation philosophique et de la recherche de sens.

j’ai dû me ranger à la vision de Denis Meadows, chercheur américain du réputé Massachussets Institute of Technology (le MIT), pour qui, justement : « Il est trop tard pour le développement durable » 1 . Dès lors, je me suis rendu compte, non sans effroi dans un premier temps, découragement dans un deuxième et... enthousiasme dans un troisième et quatrième temps, qu’il était (grand) temps de commencer à co-construire, dans mon environnement direct, ce que Pablo Servigne et Raphaël Stevens nomment une « petite communauté résiliente locale », seule structure capable selon ces auteurs d’absorber les chocs inimaginables qui nous attendent

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

According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

Université d'été Trans-Mutation 2019 - Mutation ou effondrement Conférence intégrale de Paul Jorion

Le 12 mars 2019, j'ai eu le plaisir de me prêter au jeu d'un « Café Collapse » organisé à Grenoble, aux côtés de Vincent Mignerot. Le thème était la « collapsologie politique », la transposition dans le champ politique des questions liées à la problématique des risques d'effondrement.

Studying the demise of historic civilisations can tell us about the risk we face today, says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening.

One of the most fascinating interpretations of the collapse of civilization is Joseph Tainter’s idea that it is due to “diminishing returns.” It is a well-known concept in economics that Tainter adapts to the historical cycle of civilizations, focusing on the control structures designed to keep together the whole system, the bureaucracy for instance...

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In this lecture given at Dartmouth College in the Spring of 1977, Donella Meadows uses two examples of socioecological systems to convey concepts of overshoo...

Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.

Radical Transformation is a story about industrial civilization’s impending collapse, and about the possibilities of averting this fate. Human communities first emerged as egalitarian, democratic groups that existed in symbiotic relationship with their environments. Increasing complexity led to the emergence of oligarchy, in which societies became captive to the logic of domination, exploitation, and ecological destruction. The challenge facing us today is to build a movement that will radically transform civilization and once more align our evolutionary trajectory in the direction of democracy, equality, and ecological sustainability.

Documentaire France4 pour lequel j'ai été interviewé, sur le thème de l'effondrement. Réalisation Benjamin Crotty, diffusion le 17 juin 2016.

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