[D66] Why the Next Three Decades Will Define the Future of Human Civilization

[R.O.]

https://eand.co/three-decades-three-revolutions-or-our-civilization-will-collapse-de2758d94f63

Three Decades. Three Revolutions. Or Our Civilization Will Collapse.
Why the Next Three Decades Will Define the Future of Human Civilization
umair haque
umair haque
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Jun 22 · 8 min read

The future goes like this. The next three to five decades are going to 
be apocalyptic. Beyond anyone’s worst expectations, really. Coronavirus 
will seem like a gentle warm-up exercise. A mere drill.

The 2030s will be the decade climate change begins to hit us in severe 
ways. Flood and fire will become everyday normalities. Our cities will 
flood, countries will begin to drown, regions will go up in smoke. As a 
result, economies will be destroyed — not just shut down for three 
months at a time — but simply shattered, forever. Jobs, incomes, 
livelihoods — gone. Stability — over. Societies will implode, like 
America and Britain already are.

The 2040s will be the decade that mass extinction finally begins to hit 
us. Having ripped the bottom out of nature’s great chains, they will 
topple over, and collapse in on themselves. Who’s going to turn the soil 
when the insects are gone? Who’s going to clean the rivers when the fish 
have vanished? Who’s going to nurture the forests when the bees 
disappear? Bang! In the blink of an eye, even bigger collapses begin to 
happen. Our systems of civilization begin to fail. Fail 
catastrophically. Whole economies. Whole industries. Whole sectors. 
Entire regions. The things we take for granted now — food chains, water 
tables, air to breathe, soil to plant crops in, harvests to till, raw 
materials to extract and deplete — will all begin to simply disappear.

The 2050s will be the decade of the Final Goodbye. The earth’s great 
ecosystems will finally begin to fail, never to recover. The oceans and 
their currents. The winds. The pulse of rain and moisture. The rhythm of 
tide and spring. All these will simply keel over and die. They’ll be 
replaced by new ones, sure — but one much, much more hostile to us. 
Without those great ecosystems, our civilization can’t exist. Good luck 
having an America without a Mississippi River or a Great Lakes. Good 
luck having an India or Pakistan without rivers fed by Himalayan 
glaciers. And so on. Bang. Once we reach that tipping point, our 
civilization is finished.

So how do we not get there?

There is, to my mind, one answer.

Coexistence.

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