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Climate apocalypse

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A climate apocalypse (also called a climate dystopia and a climate-induced collapse, among other names) is a hypothetical scenario involving the global collapse of human civilization and potential human extinction as either a direct or indirect result of anthropogenic climate change and ecological breakdown. Under a global catastrophe of this scale, some or all of the Earth may be rendered uninhabitable as a result of extreme temperatures, severe weather events, an inability to grow crops, and an altered composition of the Earth's atmosphere.[1]

There is scientific consensus on climate change and consensus on the attribution of recent climate change to human activity.[2] There is also consensus in some cases that individual and political action on climate change can lessen the impact of climate change. However, there is no consensus that humanity must take dramatic steps to curtail fossil fuel consumption to avoid the collapse of civilization.[3]

Etymology and usage

The English word "apocalypse", derived from the Greek term "apokalupsis" meaning "revelation", refers to a great catastrophe that results in widespread destruction or the collapse of civilisation.[4]

There is no single agreed term used to describe an environmental and ecological collapse as either a direct or indirect result of anthropogenic climate change, however such an event has been explored in both fiction and non-fiction for many years. Jules Verne's 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole imagines climate change due to a deliberate tilting of Earth's axis.

Since World War II, there has been continual discussion of environmental destruction due to nuclear war.[5][6]

In 1962, Rachel Carson's seminal book Silent Spring documented the environmental damage caused by indiscriminate use of pesticides, one of the major causes of declining bee and pollinator populations.[7] In her opening chapter, "A Fable for Tomorrow" Carson uses apocalyptic language to describe an American town with devastated plant and wildlife as a result of human activity.

There is a Western world tradition of describing a climate apocalypse with images and descriptions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and other features of the apocalypse of the Christian faith.[8][9][10][11][12]

In July 2018, Professor Jem Bendell published the paper entitled Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. Within it, Bendell refers to the collapse of civilization due to climate change using longer terms such as "climate-induced societal collapse." In his paper, he refers explicitly to the lack of discussion around this topic in research publications, which may be one of the reasons that no standardized expression exists yet.[13]

Doomsday scenario

As compared to the year 1900, at present the global temperature of earth has risen by 1° Celsius and continues to rise rapidly. The severe rise in global temperature is causing serious threats to our environment as all the plants, animals, birds and other Abiotic components like monsoon, wind patterns etc and so on are affected by it. Climate Change plays a great role in affecting our global temperature and it is causing serious threats to our environment. If we compare today's climate with the past it is becoming worse and worse as 3°C rise is expected to occur and is occurring.Climate change needs to be controlled.[14] The Climate Apocalypse becomes certain around the time of a 3°C temperature rise.[15] Various catatrasophe begin even at 1°C rise.[15] By 3°C rise, the natural environment of earth becomes unfriendly for life and incompatible with civilization.[15]

Not less than 25% of all plant and animals species are eliminated in the worst mass extinction event since the dinosaur killing asteroid 66 million years ago.[15] Many cities become uninhabitable due to adverse weather conditions such as flooding, drought, or heat wave. Human civilization itself goes into decline as agriculture and industry halt due to changing environmental conditions.[15] The social and economic effects end government order and many states fail.[15]

In this global disaster, the situation becomes yet worse, as the 3° rise has triggered Tipping points in the climate system.[15] Many more species die due to their reliance on the recently extinct species, creating a cascade of extinction.[15] Permafrost and ice sheets melt and never refreeze, which both become major causes of temperature increase themselves.[15] With the temperature rising a bit more, 95% of species on earth are extinct.[15] Most humans die also in a world where natural agriculture is not possible and where there is nothing like contemporary government.[15] The dates of these things are uncertain, with some sources predicting that life as presently known will end in the years leading to 2050.[citation needed]

Direct effects

The Climate Apocalypse will have similar effects to the previous 5 major extinction events, including by killing more than 70% of species.[16]

In July 2019 an Australian organization, Breakthrough - National Centre for Climate Restoration, published a report about existential risk to life and civilization in Australia.[17] Vice Media,[18] USA Today,[19] and CNN[20] presented the claims of this report as a globally applicable warning of the upcoming Climate Apocalypse.

Extreme weather events such as the October 2017 Northern California wildfires become more frequent and more extreme.[21]

The rate of temperature in the Climate Apocalypse is 10 times faster than any historic natural temperature change.[22] Because of the fast rate of change there is no time for natural adaptation or migration, and there is an expectation of mass extinction of species within a generation.[22]

A 2017 review considered research over past decades and predicted that by 2100, 74% of the regions where people now live would become environments of lethal heat illness for routine human life.[23]

A writer for The Guardian described the coming climate change as catastrophic for biodiversity and that future generations will perceive the present generation as guilty of unforgivable offenses.[24]

Indirect effects

As regions become unlivable in the Climate Apocalypse there will be unprecedented mass migration of refugees.[25]

There is an expectation of fundamental transformation in the nature of government and society in response to avert catastrophe.[26]

In trying to describe the horrors of climate change to encourage action, some activists and politicians have attempted to warn of chaos from climate refugees.[27] Many people unfamiliar with the subject dismiss the significance of massive global migration and also then believe this is the only challenge to consider.[27]

An economic scientist has described how to address low probability Climate Apocalypse scenarios.[28] One scenario is considering whether humans would go extinct in a 10 degree C temperature increase.[28][29] One prediction is a 2100 apocalyptic scenario of ~6 degree C temperature increase, where civilization in the midst of global destruction and desperation would rally to take radical measures to reduce equilibrium Climate Sensitivity.[30][31]

An economist described that while there is uncertainty in predicting the effects of climate change and many possible future scenarios, a worrying amount of data, predictions, and models describe plausible outcomes where the cost of maintaining civilization and life as we know it rises rapidly to create dismal catastrophe.[31]

Attempt to lessen apocalypse

Grist advised that although there is an expectation of a horrible Climate Apocalypse, it could be less horrible or more horrible depending when there is a coordinated response to lessen the damage.[32]

KQED reported that the scientific consensus is to take whatever action possible, wherever possible, even when there are reports of a coming Climate Apocalypse.[33]

Scientists commenting in The Atlantic said that the Representative Concentration Pathway was an important measurement to watch, and that as of 2018 this measurement predicts a worst case scenario for the world.[34]

Stratospheric aerosol injection, a hypothetical process for blocking sunlight from the earth, is proposed as a desperate technological response to reduce existential risk.[35]

Belief in the Climate Apocalypse

What belief means

The "Climate Apocalypse" is a story with multiple parts. People can believe or disbelieve different parts. The full story of the Climate Apocalypse has these parts:[36]

  1. Attribution of recent climate change to certain human activities, like increasing CO2 levels[36]
  2. Belief in the scientific consensus on climate change that causes such as CO2 levels cause global warming[36]
  3. Belief that Individual and political action on climate change can stop global warming[36]
  4. Belief that the global warming will soon cause the Climate Apocalypse[36][citation needed]
    This view has no consensus in governments, groups of scientists, and expert organizations[36][citation needed]

There is scientific consensus on these first three points, that human activity has measurable effects; and these effects cause global warming; and that humans can change their activity to reduce the effects and global warming. There is no consensus on the consequences of taking no action and proceeding as normal. In the absence of broad consensus, there are individuals and groups which warn that the consequence is the Climate Apocalypse.

Who believes

Who does not believe

In September 2019 Jonathan Franzen in the The New Yorker noted that collectively the world is behaving as if there is no belief that a Climate Apocalypse is coming.[44][45][46][47][48]

Breitbart News, a popular and controversial media source, dismissed climate apocalypse concerns in September 2019 by compiling a list of 41 past climate doomsday predictions which it claimed had all come to be incorrect.[49]

The New York Post reported the Copenhagen Consensus Center's view that climate change is one serious problem among several other serious problems, and that governments address climate change they must balance other needs.[50]

Commentary magazine claimed that fears over climate catastrophe are a marketing campaign in promotion of left-wing politics and have no basis in science.[51]

Adapting to a collapse

In July 2018, Professor Jem Bendell published the paper entitled Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. Deep Adaptation is the concept purporting that humanity needs to prepare for fundamental disruption of its current civilisation paradigms, due to climate change, with a likelihood of complete societal collapse. Unlike Climate Change Adaptation, which aims to adapt societies gradually to the effects of climate change, Deep Adaptation is premised on accepting abrupt transformation of the environment as a consideration for making decisions today.[13]

In 2019, Jem Bendell started the Deep Adaptation Forum. According to the website, the Deep Adaptation Forum is an "international online space to connect people, in all spheres of life, to foster mutual support; collaboration; and professional development in the process of facing societal collapse."[52] Bendell also created a Deep Adaptation Facebook group for discussing these topics.

Narratives of climate change

Social critique of literature

Various academic publications describe how political discourse, the media, and scientific studies address the idea of a rapidly approaching Climate Apocalypse.[53]

People in various cultures at various times have told stores about climate change.[54] Among all cultures and times which tell these stories, patterns in the stories which repeat include questioning whether humans caused the change, the relationship between short-term local experiences and longer term global records, people of common cultures producing images of climate change which align with others in their culture but not with those outside their culture, designating certain classes of institutions like laboratories as being reliable sources of information, and the modification of reliable reports to create a more desirable narrative of how the information ought to lead to a particular community changing their behavior.[54] Discussion of climate change is unusual for having attracted unusually diverse participation of communities which strongly present their own view. Those communities include citizens engaged in public participation, academic sectors, any non-academic professional sector asserting knowledge, participants in popular culture, advocates for Indigenous peoples, anyone negotiating the powers of capitalism, those practicing a religion, and anyone responding to public opinion.[54] Sources of information about climate change tell various categories of stories, including personal experiences, community experiences, scientific models, economic forecasts, and prophecies of apocalypse.[54]

Some researchers have speculated that society cannot comprehend an accurate end of the world prediction, and instead, more governments would be willing to respond productively to prevent catastrophe if the to reports which framed the matter as a smaller problem than it actually is.[55] Somehow talking about Doomsday can have a broad effect in society of making many people feel that if the situation is truly horrible, then there must be good plans to prevent it so no further action is needed.[56]

As the Climate Apocalypse comes closer, the media presents many imagined apocalypse scenarios in a way that conflates them all.[57]

Contemporary narratives

Political conversations about the Climate Apocalypse tend to describe how preventing it in the future would bring zero value for today, therefore the value of doing something today is zero.[58] The lack of response in the context of the evidence of coming doom may be an indication that human society lacks an ability to understand a threat of this magnitude without some radical change in perspective.[59]

Esquire described how since 1990 climate scientists have communicated urgent warnings while simultaneously experiencing the media converting their statements into sensational entertainment.[60]

A 2013 report described how incorporating the concept of preventing catastrophe into public policy seems unprecedented and challenging to accomplish.[61]

In popular culture

Climate fiction is a popular media genre which frequently features stories of the Climate Apocalypse. Examples include Ismael, a 1992 philosophical novel,[62] and Mad Max: Fury Road, a 2015 action film.[63][64][65]

Concern over the climate Apocalypse has been the subject of articles of satirical news features. One theme is popular revolt against power brokers. Another is the desire of youth to have a livable environment in adulthood.[66][67] Another are fantasies about the romance and adventure of people experiencing the chaos of ecological and societal collapse.[68][69]

See also

Directly related
Background

References

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  59. ^ Stoekl, Allan (2013). ""After the Sublime," after the Apocalypse: Two Versions of Sustainability in Light of Climate Change". Diacritics. 41 (3): 40–57. doi:10.1353/dia.2013.0013.
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  62. ^ Veldman, Robin Globus (2012). "Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse: How Imagining the End Facilitates Moral Reasoning Among Environmental Activists". Ethics and the Environment. 17 (1): 1–23. doi:10.2979/ethicsenviro.17.1.1. ISSN 1085-6633. JSTOR 10.2979/ethicsenviro.17.1.1.
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  66. ^ "Nation Perplexed By 16-Year-Old Who Doesn't Want World To End". The Onion. 23 September 2019.
  67. ^ Huntley, Alex (24 September 2019). "Report: Self-entitled Generation Z wants to live past the age of 40". The Beaverton.
  68. ^ Tumino, Adam (24 September 2019). "Opinion, Satire: Embrace the climate change apocalypse". The Daily Eastern News.
  69. ^ Montgomery, Scott (29 September 2015). "4 fun ways to describe the looming climate apocalypse". CBC.ca. =Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

Further consideration

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