The expected effects of climate change, according to organizations like the IPCC and the World Bank, are fairly terrifying.
They suggest the planet’s climate will change fast enough to cause widespread droughts and famines, the spread of insect-borne diseases, the displacement of populations, and a worsening of severe poverty.
But here’s one thing they don’t predict: mass civilizational collapse.
Most models warn that as a result of climate change, the incredibly rapid progress
humanity has been making in life expectancies and in ending extreme
poverty will stall; we could even lose decades of the progress we’ve
made. If extreme poverty gets as bad as it was in 1980 due to climate
change, that will be an immeasurable humanitarian failure, and hundreds
of millions of people will die. But the 1980s definitely did have human
civilization, and the future in this version would too.Another way of looking at it is that the predicted
effects of climate change are very bad, but not in a cinematic way. Sea
levels will rise, but not up to the Statue of Liberty’s neck (if all the
ice in the world melted, sea levels would rise to approximately the statue’s waist).
Lots of people will die, most of them low-income. It’s not surprising
that this gets less viral attention than extreme, extinction-focused
scenarios.But that isn’t to say extreme scenarios are made up from
nothing. Where do some people conclude that climate change might swallow
up civilization itself?
Also excellent: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qmHh-cshTCMT8LX0Y5wSQm8FMBhaxhQ8OlOeRLkXIF0