I've never really bought into Higgie's theory that we're entering a
new dark age, but here's an article on a Nasa study that says
that Higgie might be right:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... scientists
Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible
collapse'?
Natural and social scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm'
of crises could unravel global system
This NASA Earth Observatory released on
This Nasa Earth Observatory image shows a storm system circling around
an area of extreme low pressure in 2010, which many scientists
attribute to climate change. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has
highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could
collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation
and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or
controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling
historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is
actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe
civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting
centuries - have been quite common."
The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And
Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa
Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National
Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of
natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has
been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal,
Ecological Economics.
It finds that according to the historical record even advanced,
complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions
about the sustainability of modern civilisation:
> "The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more)
> advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many
> advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that
> advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can
> be both fragile and impermanent."
By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of
collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors
which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the
risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water,
Agriculture, and Energy.
These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two
crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the
strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic
stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or
"Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central
role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such
cases over "the last five thousand years."
Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly
to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in
industrialised countries responsible for both:
> "... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout
> society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of
> the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a
> small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above
> subsistence levels."
The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve
these challenges by increasing efficiency:
> "Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use,
> but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption
> and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy
> effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the
> increased efficiency of resource use."
Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two
centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource
throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.
Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his
colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the
reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to
avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:
> ".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time,
> but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very
> small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much,
> resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the
> collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L
> collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss
> of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."
Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource
exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline
of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving,
but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the
Elites."
In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered
from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until
much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business
as usual' despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they
argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur
by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory
(most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)."
Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns
that:
> "While some members of society might raise the alarm that the
> system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore
> advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it,
> Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes,
> could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support
> of doing nothing."
However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by
no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and
structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a
more stable civilisation.
The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to
ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce
resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources
and reducing population growth:
> "Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if
> the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a
> sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a
> reasonably equitable fashion."
The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to
governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise
that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and
structural changes are required immediately.
Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more
empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and the UK Government Office of
Science for instance - have warned that the convergence of food, water
and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen
years. But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very
conservative.
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy
Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of
Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on
Twitter @nafeezahmed