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<h1 class="css-twhgrd">Theoretical Physicists Say 90%
Chance of Societal Collapse Within Several Decades</h1>
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<div class="css-7ol5x1"><span class="css-fgeroe">Nafeez
Ahmed</span></div>
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<p><span>Two theoretical physicists
specializing in complex systems
conclude that global deforestation
due to human activities is on
track to trigger the “irreversible
collapse” of human civilization
within the next two to four
decades. </span></p>
<p><span>If we continue destroying and
degrading the world’s forests,
Earth will no longer be able to
sustain a large human population,
according to a <a
href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63657-6">peer-reviewed
paper</a> published this May in
Nature Scientific Reports. They
say that if the rate of
deforestation continues, "all the
forests would disappear
approximately in 100–200 years.”</span></p>
<p><span>"Clearly it is unrealistic to
imagine that the human society
would start to be affected by the
deforestation only when the last
tree would be cut down," they
write. </span></p>
<p><span>This trajectory would make
the collapse of human civilization
take place much earlier due to the
escalating impacts of
deforestation on the planetary
life-support systems necessary for
human survival—including carbon
storage, oxygen production, soil
conservation, water cycle
regulation, support for natural
and human food systems, and homes
for countless species. </span></p>
<p><span>In the absence of these
critical services, “it is highly
unlikely to imagine the survival
of many species, including ours,
on Earth without [forests]” the
study points out. “The progressive
degradation of the environment due
to deforestation would heavily
affect human society and
consequently the human collapse
would start much earlier.” </span></p>
<p><span>The paper is written by Dr
Gerardo Aquino, a research
associate at the Alan Turing
Institute in London currently
working on political, economic and
cultural complex system modelling
to predict conflicts; along with
Professor Mauro Bologna of the
Department of Electronic
Engineering at the University of
Tarapacá in Chile. </span></p>
<p><span>Both scientists are career
physicists. Aquino has previously
conducted research at the
Biological Physics Groups at
Imperial College, the Max Planck
Institute of Complex Systems and
the Mathematical Biology group at
the University of Surrey.</span></p>
<p><span>Their research models current
rates of population growth and
deforestation as a proxy for
resource consumption, to calculate
the chance of civilization
avoiding catastrophic collapse. </span></p>
<p><span>Before the development of
human civilizations, the Earth was
covered by 60 million square
kilometres of forest. As
deforestation has accelerated due
to the human footprint on the
planet, the new paper points out
that there are now less than 40
million square kilometres of
forest remaining. </span></p>
<p><span>“Calculations show that,
maintaining the actual rate of
population growth and resource
consumption, in particular forest
consumption, we have a few decades
left before an irreversible
collapse of our civilization,” the
paper concludes.</span></p>
<p><span>Tracking the current rate of
population growth against the rate
of deforestation, the authors
found that “statistically the
probability to survive without
facing a catastrophic collapse, is
very low.” Its best case scenario
is that we have a less than 10
percent chance of avoiding
collapse. The authors write: </span></p>
<p><span>“In conclusion our model
shows that a catastrophic collapse
in human population, due to
resource consumption, is the most
likely scenario of the dynamical
evolution based on current
parameters…. we conclude from a
statistical point of view that the
probability that our civilization
survives itself is less than 10
percent in the most optimistic
scenario. Calculations show that,
maintaining the actual rate of
population growth and resource
consumption, in particular forest
consumption, we have a few decades
left before an irreversible
collapse of our civilization.” </span></p>
<p><span>This verdict would seem to
indicate that there is an over 90
percent probability of a collapse
of industrial civilization, based
specifically on assessing the
impact of deforestation on the
‘carrying capacity’ of the
planet—the capacity of the planet
to support human life. </span></p>
<p><span>The model developed by these
scientists depicts human
population growth reaching a
maximum level that is undermined
by the debilitation of forests.
After this point, “a rapid
disastrous collapse in population
occurs before eventually reaching
a low population steady state or
total extinction… We call this
point in time the ‘no-return
point’ because if the
deforestation rate is not changed
before this time the human
population will not be able to
sustain itself and a disastrous
collapse or even extinction will
occur.”</span></p>
<p><span>The authors offer an
intriguing techno-utopian twist to
the study. They put forward the
idea of building a Dyson Sphere, <a
href="https://interestingengineering.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-hypothetical-sun-megastructure-the-dyson-sphere">a
hypothetical megastructure
around our sun</a> which absorbs
the bulk of its solar energy and
sends it back to earth. “Again to
be precise, the Dyson sphere does
not have to be taken literally,
but rather as an energy value,” Dr
Aquinos told me. The same energy
output could be produced in any
other manner, such as “nuclear
fusion” for instance. </span></p>
<p><span>In short, faced with the
prospect of collapse, without
changing our unsustainable levels
of population growth and
consumption the only other pathway
to survival would be an
unprecedented degree of
technological development, the
authors suggest. </span></p>
<p><span>It helps to think about the
Dyson Sphere in the context of the
‘Kardashev scale,’ a measure
proposed by Soviet astronomer
Nikolai Kardeshev in 1964 to
assess the level of a
civilization’s technological
advancement based on the amount of
energy it is able to harness. </span></p>
<p><span>The Kardashev scale suggests
that if a civilization can achieve
the technological prowess
necessary to fully harness the
energy from its own star, this
would allow it to transcend
conventional resource limits. </span></p>
<p><span>“The consumption of the
natural resources, in particular
the forests, is in competition
with our technological level,”
wrote Aquino and Bologna. Being
theoretical physicists, much of
the paper approaches these
problems on a theoretical level,
and parts of it are
speculative—what would a society
need to do to transcend resource
limits, and what would such a
society look like?</span></p>
<p><span>“Higher technological level
leads to growing population and
higher forest consumption… but
also to a more effective use of
resources. With higher
technological level we can in
principle develop technical
solutions to avoid/prevent the
ecological collapse of our planet
or, as a last chance, to rebuild a
civilization in extra-terrestrial
space.” </span></p>
<p><span>Of course, the authors
acknowledge that our engineering
capabilities are currently
insufficient to make such powerful
technology possible. </span></p>
<p><span>So alongside their model of
human-forest interactions, they
compared it to a model of
technological growth to determine
whether we have a chance of
developing such capabilities
before ecological crisis triggers
civilizational collapse.
Unfortunately, not really. It’s in
this specific context that they
conclude we have a less than 10
percent chance of doing so and
thereby averting collapse. </span></p>
<p><span>The broader implication, the
authors speculate, is that this
predicament might explain why we
haven’t been able to detect
evidence of intelligent alien life
elsewhere in the universe: the
dynamics modelled here suggest
that intelligent civilizations
tend to crash and burn due to
overconsumption of their planetary
resources, long before innovating
the capabilities necessary to
become more advanced and
enduring. </span></p>
<p><span>Digging deeper into the paper
raises a number of key issues. </span></p>
<p><span>Focusing in on its model of
human-forest interaction, the
collapse implications are
especially sobering. </span></p>
<p><span>This is because the
human-forest interaction model is
based on “deterministically”
running forward parameters for
population growth and
deforestation based on “current
conditions.” </span></p>
<p><span>The assumption is that these
rates and conditions will simply
continue at around the same level.
When we do this sort of exercise,
the model is not set-up to assess
‘what if’ probabilities: rather,
it demonstrates what would happen
on a very literal
‘business-as-usual’ scenario that
takes current trends and
extrapolates them forward in
time. </span></p>
<p><span>The verdict therefore seems
quite stark: <em>if</em> we
continue at the current rate of
deforestation, population growth
and resource consumption, collapse
would appear unavoidable within
the next two to four decades. </span></p>
<p><span>The good news is that there
is reason to believe that this
worst-case scenario, although
insightful in understanding the
truly severe risks of our current
trajectory, may not reflect more
recent expectations about these
trends. </span></p>
<p><span>According to the 2020 <em>State
of the World’s Forests</em> <a
href="http://www.fao.org/3/ca8642en/CA8642EN.pdf">report</a> published
by the United Nations Food &
Agricultural Organisation (FAO)
jointly with the UN Environment
Programme (UNEP), the rate of
global deforestation has been
declining over the last few
decades. </span></p>
<p><span>From the 1990s to the period
between 2010 and 2020, the net
loss of forest area decreased from
7.8 million hectares per year to
4.7 million hectares per year. One
reason for this is that despite
ongoing deforestation, new forests
are also being established, both
naturally and through deliberate
planning. </span></p>
<p><span>But the rate of deforestation
also appears to have declined in
real-terms. In the 1990s, the UN
report states that the rate of
deforestation was around 16
million hectares per year. Between
2015 and 2020, this had declined
to an estimated 10 million
hectares per year. </span></p>
<p><span>Yet this does not justify
complacency. In absolute terms,
the UN report shows that global
forest area still decreased
overall by a colossal 178 million
hectares between 1990 and 2020, an
area about the size of Libya. </span></p>
<p><span>We are also at grave risk of
reversing this modest slowdown.
The <a
href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/06/global-tree-cover-loss-data-2019">latest
data</a> produced from the World
Resources Institute’s Global
Forest Watch project confirms that
primary forest loss was 2.8
percent higher in 2019 than the
previous year, indicating that we
are about to see a re-acceleration
in the rate of forest loss. </span></p>
<p><span>Similarly, projected rates of
population growth are likely to be
lower than previously anticipated.
A new set of forecasts <a
href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/tl-pss_1071320.php">published</a>
by <em>The Lancet</em> suggests
that world population growth may
begin to start shrinking after
mid-century due to declining
fertility rates, contrary to
earlier major projections.</span></p>
<p><span>Unfortunately, the time-scale
for these changes could well be
too slow to substantially alter
the implications of the new <em>Nature
Scientific Reports</em> model.
As the study authors point out,
“it is hard to imagine, in absence
of very strong collective efforts,
big changes of these parameters to
occur in such time
scale”—notwithstanding the
possibility of “fluctuations
around these trends.” </span></p>
<p><span>But these slowdowns indicate
that averting such dangerous
exponential growth trends could be
feasible, especially with a more
intentional and targeted
approach. </span></p>
<p><span>Another way to avert
collapse, the authors contend, is
fundamental civilizational
transformation. </span></p>
<p><span>The underlying driver of the
current collapse trajectory is
that “consumption of the planetary
resources may be not perceived as
strongly as a mortal danger for
the human civilization”, because
it is “driven by Economy”. Such a
civilization “privileges the
interest of its components with
less or no concern for the whole
ecosystem that hosts them.” </span></p>
<p><span>In the absence of rapidly
building a Dyson Sphere, the
physicists suggest that to escape
our collapse trajectory “we may
have to redefine a different model
of society… that in some way
privileges the interest of the
ecosystem above the individual
interest of its components, but
eventually in accordance with the
overall communal interest.”</span></p>
<p><span>So the most effective way to
increase our chances of survival
is to shift focus from extreme
self-interest to a sense of
stewardship for each other, other
species, and the ecosystems in
which we find ourselves. </span></p>
<p><span>In other words, to avert
collapse we either need to become
ET, or spearhead a civilizational
paradigm shift. Which is more
probable? </span></p>
<p><span>Ultimately, that’s up to us.
If this study is remotely
accurate, humanity has perhaps
only a few more decades left to
decide.</span></p>
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