INDUSTRIAL CIVILISATION AND IRREVERSIBLE COLLAPSE..? Modelling - TopicsExpress



          

INDUSTRIAL CIVILISATION AND IRREVERSIBLE COLLAPSE..? 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 Users Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 06:12:29 +0000

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