ABSTRACT: THE FEAR OF HUMAN CAUSED THIS AND HUMAN CAUSED THAT AND THE ENORMOUS PLANETARY REACH OF HUMANS THAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR HUMANS TO DESTROY OR SAVE THE PLANET ARE IMAGINATIONS FAR REVOVED FROM REALITY BUT AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE EARLY IRON AGE SCRIPTURES THAT WERE DERIVED FROM A DISTANT MEMORY OF THE LATE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE. A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE OBSESSION WITH A CLIMATE CHANGE END OF THE WORLD IS PROVIDED IN A RELATED POST: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/04/16/theend/ {Excerpt at the end of this post}

THIS POST IS A STUDY OF THE ROLE OF BIBLICAL APOCALYPSE IN ENVIRONMENTALISM AS SEEN IN THE THEORY OF HUMAN CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CLAIM BY CLIMATE SCIENTISTS AND THEIR ANTHROPOCENE PROPOSITION THAT HUMANS ARE NOW THE MANAGERS OF THE PLANET AND CARETAKERS OF NATURE SUCH THAT THEY CAN AND MUST ATTENUATE CLIMATE CHANGE BY GIVING UP FOSSIL FUELS BECAUSE THE ALTERNATIVE IS HUMAN CAUSED APOCALYPSE. THE ISSUE IN THIS NARRATIVE IS THAT HUMANS ARE VESTED WITH BIBLICAL GOD-LIKE POWERS OVER NATURE ON A PLANETARY SCALE.

IN RELIGION GOD HAS A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH ONE AND ONLY ONE OF HIS CREATIONS AND THAT CREATURE IS MAN AS REPRESENTED BY ADAM AND EVE IN SCRIPTURE. THIS SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP GIVES MAN DOMINION OVER THE BEASTS.

AND THIS DOMINION OVER THE BEASTS IS THE FOUNDATION OF PLANETARY ENVIRONMENTALISM IN WHICH MAN IS NOT PART OF NATURE BUT THE MANAGERS AND CARETAKERS OF NATURE.

PART-1: HUMAN CIVILIZATION AND THE LATE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE TOOK US TO THE EARLY IRON AGE CIVILIZATION WHERE OUR SCRIPTURES AND OUR RELIGIONS COME FROM.

In related posts on this site we describe that since the birth of human civilization early in the Holocene, LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/20/the-holocene-optimum-period-a-bibliography/ both climate and human civilization have gone though violent cycles of extreme volatility at millennial time scales. In the case of the climate we find that over the last 8,000 years, the climate has gone through more than eight violent climate cycles alternating between warming and cooling. LINK TO POST ON CLIMATE CYCLES: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/06/11/chaoticholocene/ .

We also find almost a similar number of civilization cycles where human civilization, population, wealth, innovations, technology, quality of life, and complexity of human civilization have continually changed in terms of governance, economics, technology, the formation and structure of nation states, and the relationships and warfare among nation states. It is thus that, as in the climate cycles, human civilization too has gone through many cycles of growth and prosperity followed by catastrophic demise that created centennial gaps between civilizations. The demise and gap parts of these cycles can be described in terms of the “collapse of civilization” now being claimed as a consequence of climate change. LINK TO POST ON CIVILIZATION CYCLES: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/24/collapse-of-civilization-part-2/

The last of the collapse of civilization events in our history is the LBAC or Late Bronze Age Collapse shown in the two images below.

We live in an Iron Age civilization that comes after the Late Bronze Age. The Iron Age got started about 3,000 years ago in the Early Iron Age right after the LBAC (Late Bronze Age Collapse). The Late Bronze Age (LBA) economy was based on agriculture. It was the ultimate expression of the settled agricultural civilization that got started in the Neolithic Revolution of the Holocene Climate Optimum when animal-like cave-man humans that hunted with sticks and stones came out of their caves, cleared forests, built homes, and began farming, trading, and building communities, with language, communication, and innovation. This was the birth of human civilization. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/20/the-holocene-optimum-period-a-bibliography/

In the Late Bronze Age, the world’s agricultural economies had grown into a global macro economy of agricultural wealth creation. Its control had evolved such that the farmers themselves became pawns (peasants) in a power game among groups and individuals that could raise armies to control agricultural lands. These controlled agricultural lands eventually grew into kingdoms that in turn grew into the organization of the world’s humans into nation states that we have inherited.

Human civilization matured with further developments such as language both spoken and written and artisan and engineering innovations such as pottery, copper mining, metal works, and making of tools for agriculture and warfare. The controlled agricultural lands evolved into large and powerful kingdoms ruled by the king with his army in a palatial sub-economy and worked by peasants and artisans in a rural agricultural sub-economy.

In the LBA, this agricultural macro-system had grown into a large, sophisticated, and interconnected global economy with international trade, technology exchange, and warfare similar to what we have today. The major kingdom nation states in this global economy were The Egyptian New Kingdom (where Egypt is today), the Assyrian Empire (where Syria is today), the Hittite Empire (where Turkey is today), and the Mycenaeans (where Greece is today). Trade, travel, shipping, cooperation, migration, global policy making, and warfare among these states were common much like things are today.

The America of the day was Egypt, in economic, diplomatic, and military power as well as in terms of attracting the best and brightest writers, philosophers, and artisans from around the Late Bronze Age world. Many smaller kingdoms existed such as the Biblical states in the Levant but they were vassals of the large and powerful kingdoms. This global economy was extremely successful and the powerful kingdoms and empires enjoyed enormous wealth and advances in technology, transportation, infrastructure, the arts, and in learning and knowledge. The pyramids of Egypt are a product of this civilization (both the old kingdom and the new kingdom).

COLLAPSE OF THE LATE BRONZE AGE CIVILIZATION

Then, around 1200 BC or so give or take 50 years, the archaeological and textual data show that the lights went out on the LBA. A long gap of more than 200 years of a Dark Age followed with no evidence of the great LBA global economy in the archaeological or textual record until the Early Iron Age-1 when an entirely new kind of global economy and civilization grew from the ashes of the LBAC.

The big question is “what happened?” The honest answer is that we don’t know and we will likely never know. But it is possible to construct theories that are consistent with the available archaeological, textual, and paleo-climate data. The two most popular theories are the Sea Peoples Theory (Drews 1993) and the Climate Change Theory (Finkelstein, 2013). Here we assume the climate change theory.

The paleo data show that one of the many warming events of the Holocene, known as the Minoan Warm Period had occurred in the Late Bronze Age. Global Warming at a centennial time scales had created extreme and widespread drought that had lasted for 100 to 200 years effectively destroying the agricultural economy that had created the Late Bronze Age civilization.

Yet another possibility is class warfare of some kind described as “the sea peoples” where it is thought that large numbers of peasants or perhaps fishermen with weapons came in boats from mysterious places to ruthlessly attack and destroy the palace cultures of the Late Bronze Age (Drews 1993). The truth is that we don’t really know what happened. It’s a mystery, but the climate change and drought theory is consistent with the available data. The current alarm about catastrophic climate change that is expected to bring about the collapse of civilization bears a close resemblance to what had happened in the Late Bronze Age Collapse (LBAC) – that is the climate change script of our time has close parallels with the LBAC.

In this context, it is interesting to note that religions prior to the LBAC do not contain a Judgement Day “end of the world” of any kind even though some of them have different versions of heaven and hell mostly in afterlives or in places deep under the ground. However, religions that got started in the Early Iron Age right after the Dark Ages of the LBAC do contain a catastrophic end of the world of some kind as seen in Revelation.

For example, in Matthew 24 we find this: Do you see all these things? {the city consisting of large buildings}. Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places and then the end will come. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now and never to be equaled gain. Immediately after the distress of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light the stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

We propose here that the existence of doomology in our time in the form of an obsession with collapse of civilization similar to the LBAC, but framed in terms of current events, derive from a memory of the horrors of the LBAC that has been passed down to us in the religious scriptures of the Early Iron Age.

Religions that got started before the LBAC (Hinduism is an example) and those that got started later in the Iron Age (Buddhism is an example) do not contain an end of the world scenario like Revelation and Matthew 24. That scripture and that vision is a peculiarity of the Early Iron Age. The religious scriptures of that era has left us with the vivid reality of the horrors of the LBAC.

These memories of the LBAC instilled in our consciousness by the religious scriptures of the Early Iron Age create a sense of dread in an eerie anticipation of the collapse of civilization. Some evidence of this behavior in Late Iron Age humans is a pattern in environmentalism that relates to realities in Revelation. The greater oddity in this pattern of environmentalism is that it is seen only in the West where these scriptures have shaped human thought.

No doomology of this genre as in Catastrophic human caused climate change or the Population Bomb or the theory that the collapse of complex societies caused by complexity, has ever been found to originate in societies that had no exposure to these Early Iron Age scriptures. There has been no environmentalism alarm from India or China or Indonesia or anywhere else that mirrors the Early Iron Age scriptures.

WE CONCLUDE THAT THE FEAR OF HUMAN CAUSED THIS AND HUMAN CAUSED THAT AND THE ENORMOUS PLANETARY REACH OF HUMANS THAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR HUMANS TO DESTROY OR SAVE THE PLANET ARE IMAGINATIONS FAR REVOVED FROM REALITY BUT AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE EARLY IRON AGE SCRIPTURES THAT WERE DERIVED FROM A DISTANT MEMORY OF THE LBAC.

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE OBSESSION WITH A CLIMATE CHANGE END OF THE WORLD IS PROVIDED IN A RELATED POST: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/04/16/theend/ {Excerpt at the end of this post}

RELEVANT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cassegård, Carl, and Håkan Thörn. “Toward a postapocalyptic environmentalism? Responses to loss and visions of the future in climate activism.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 1.4 (2018): 561-578. The environmental movement has stood out compared to other movements through its future-oriented pessimism: dreams of a better or utopian future have been less important as a mobilizing tool than fear of future catastrophes. Apocalyptic images of future catastrophes still dominate much of environmentalist discourse. Melting polar caps, draughts, hurricanes, floods, and growing chaos are regularly invoked by activists as well as establishment figures. This apocalyptic discourse has, however, also been challenged—not only by a future-oriented optimism gaining ground among established environmental organizations, but also by the rise of what we call a postapocalyptic environmentalism based on the experience of irreversible or unavoidable loss. This discourse, often referring to the Global South, where communities are destroyed and populations displaced because of environmental destruction, is neither nourished by a strong sense of hope, nor of a future disaster, but a sense that the catastrophe is already ongoing. Taking our point of departure in the “environmentalist classics” by Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner, we delineate the contours of apocalyptic discourses in environmentalism and discuss how disillusionment with the institutions of climate governance has fed into increasing criticism of the apocalyptic imagery. We then turn to exploring the notion of postapocalyptic politics by focusing on how postapocalyptic narratives—including the utopias they bring into play, their relation to time–space, and how they construct collective identity—are deployed in political mobilizations. We focus on two cases of climate activism—the Dark Mountain project and the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature—and argue that mobilizations based on accepting loss are possible through what we call the paradox of hope and the paradox of justice.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie, and Jacqueline S. Palmer. “The discourse of “environmentalist hysteria”.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 81.1 (1995): 1-19. Environmentalism challenges not only social and political but also psychological orthodoxies by offering new opportunities for interpreting the relation of self to society and to the earth. The ego originates in discourse as an object of contemplation, only later to become a “subject position,” a category within which the self can discover a new “I am” in a broader social world. Taking as a starting point the accusation that environmentalists like Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, and Lois Gibbs are trying to “stir up environmentalist hysteria” and are themselves “hysterical,” this paper explores some of the shared features of the discourses of hysteria and critical ecology, with the aim of mapping current and future directions for environmentalist thought and action.

Maier, Harry O. “Green millennialism: American evangelicals, environmentalism and the Book of Revelation.” Ecological hermeneutics: Biblical, historical and theological perspectives (2010): 246-65. LINK TO LYNN WHITE: https://www.cmu.ca/faculty/gmatties/lynnwhiterootsofcrisis.pdf

Huggan, Graham. “From Arctic Dreams to Nightmares (and back again): Apocalyptic Thought and Planetary Consciousness in Three Contemporary American Environmentalist Texts.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 23.1 (2016): 71-91.

The subtitle of Fieldnotes from a Catastrophe (henceforth Fieldnotes ) is A Frontline Report on Climate Change , thereby situating the text within the tradition of “hands-on” investigative journalism for which Kolbert, currently a staff writer for The New Yorker , has become well known. Despite this opening gesture to the “field,” the text turns out to be an eclectic mix of first- and second-hand reportage taken from a wide variety of locations and featuring an equally generous selection of expert voices, most of these with some connection to the climate science field. These scientists––biologists, geophysicists, climate modelers, glaciologists, geochemists––appear at times to have been selected for their doom-laden views; these are then filtered through Kolbert’s melancholic narration, which puts popular-scientific explanation into the service of a miserabilist rather than sensationalist interpretation of current climate events. Not that the text is without its own fair share of apocalyptic alarmism, from the opening scene, in which Kolbert charts the dramatic effects of an ice-stream in Greenland that has doubled in speed since the 1990s, to the epilogue in post-Katrina New Orleans, the “perpetually sinking” city whose disastrous buffeting in 2005––presumably as Kolbert’s book was in progress––merely holds out the promise of future mega-storms to come (198–99). Meanwhile, much of the material that comes in between relentlessly accumulates hypotheses of future catastrophe, each of them couched in the vivid language of environmental apocalypse: entire ecosystems at the point of collapse; whole cities threatened with inundation; the specter of climate-change refugees “numbering in the millions” (188)––all of these examples and more point to the fact that, while it “may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, … that is [exactly] what we are now in the process of doing” (189). Still, the idea of apocalypse as singular event is undermined in the text, not only by the plurality of possible apocalyptic futures, but also by a catastrophist approach to history in which disasters––especially natural disasters––are embedded in the past. In image after image in Fieldnotes , the past is identified in terms of environmental catastrophe: buried in the Greenland ice, to take just one prominent example, “there is nuclear fallout from early atomic tests, volcanic ash from Krakatau, lead pollution from ancient Roman smelters, and dust blown in from Mongolia on ice age winds” (50). The overall effect is to gesture towards what Stefan Skrimshire calls the “Eternal Return” of apocalypse––the process by which apocalypse, far from being a single defining event, is caught up in a historical pattern of recurring cycles of global crisis, and the “normalization” of catastrophe serves to confirm the “persistence of cyclical time” (“Eternal Return” 232; Buell, “Short History”). Hence, I would argue, the melancholic tone of the text, which is moved repeatedly to mourn that which it seems powerless to alter; and which, in so doing, ironically confirms the very political inertia it seeks to denounce.

Ortega Breton, H., and Phil Hammond. “Eco-apocalypse: environmentalism, political alienation, and therapeutic agency.” Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2016. 105-116.

For some analysts, today’s representations of apocalypse are simply the latest version of a “pervasive sense of doom” that has characterized human civilization for millennia. 2 For others, in the context of current environmental problems, a sense of impending disaster expresses a scientifically supported assessment of today’s “risk society.” Anthony Giddens argues that “Doomsday is no longer a religious concept, a day of spiritual reckoning, but a possibility imminent in our society and economy.”
3 Our argument is that the current fascination with the end of the world is best understood neither as a near-timeless feature of human culture nor as a reasoned response to objective environmental problems. Rather it is driven by unconscious fantasy; the symbolic expression of an alienation from political subjectivity, characteristic of a historically specific period in the life of post–Cold War societies. With the script of the real apocalypse already written through scientific projections, how do environmental discourse and popular culture represent people? We will first consider recent critiques of the use of apocalypticism in environmental discourse, then examine elite uses of eco-apocalypse in political discourse, and finally discuss two films that envisage a world destroyed by catastrophic climate change: The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and The Age of Stupid (2009).

Peeples, Jennifer, et al. “Industrial apocalyptic: Neoliberalism, coal, and the burlesque frame.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 17.2 (2014): 227-254. Rhetorical scholarship and cultural commentary have demonstrated that environmentalist voices are consistently associated with apocalyptic rhetoric. However, this association deflects attention from the apocalyptic rhetoric that comes from industry and countermovements to environmentalism. This essay seeks to remedy that oversight by proposing the concept of “industrial apocalyptic” as a significant rhetorical form in environmental controversy. Based on analysis of the rhetoric of the U.S. coal industry, we find that these industrial apocalyptic narratives rely on a burlesque frame to disrupt the categories of establishment and outsider and thus thwart environmental regulation. Ultimately, we argue that industrial apocalyptic co-opts environmentalist appeals for radical change in the service of blocking such change and naturalizes neoliberal ideology as the commonsense discourse of the center.

Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, written in the Early Iron Age, are accounts of the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

APOCALYPSE IMAGES

LBAC IMAGES

Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, written in the Early Iron Age, are accounts of the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

RELATED POST: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/04/16/theend/

1. Sixth Mass Extinction: A Sixth mass extinction could destroy life as we know it. Alarming declines in the number of insects, vertebrates and plant species around the world have raised fears that we are in the midst of a sixth major extinction that could cause a collapse of the natural ecosystems we rely upon to survive. Urgent international action is needed to halt this potentially catastrophic decline in biodiversity, according to Professor Georgina Mace, head of the Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research at University College London, UK. While Prof. Mace believes that we’re only on the brink of this extinction, she says the threat is so severe that biodiversity loss needs to be addressed on a global scale in a similar way to climate change. The evidence from all of the recent studies … indicates it is increasing. We’re losing biodiversity more quickly than we did in the past. ‘If you look at extinction rates, which is hard because you need to be sure something is really extinct, they are probably 100-1,000 times higher than in pre-human times. ‘Another way of measuring (biodiversity) is to look at the abundance of life rather than numbers of species. For vertebrates (birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals) there is a fairly good estimate that more than 50% of the vertebrate abundance has been lost in the past 50 years. The information for invertebrates and plants is less good, but there is some evidence to suggest insects are declining just as quickly, if not more so. One recent paper showed the mass of insects is falling by 2.5% a year. For methodological reasons, this is likely to be an over-estimate, but there can be little doubt that certain insect groups are undergoing very significant declines. ‘Then we are also losing the interactions between these species.’ [LINK]
2. Sixth mass extinction is here. There is no longer any doubt: We are entering a mass extinction that threatens humanity’s existence. That is the bad news at the center of a new study by a group of scientists including Paul Ehrlich, the Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing. “[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,” Ehrlich said. Although most well known for his positions on human population, Ehrlich has done extensive work on extinctions going back to his 1981 book, Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. He has long tied his work on coevolution, on racial, gender and economic justice, and on nuclear winter with the issue of wildlife populations and species loss. There is general agreement among scientists that extinction rates have reached levels unparalleled since the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago. However, some have challenged the theory, believing earlier estimates rested on assumptions that overestimated the crisis. [LINK]
3. A Cosmic Climate Change Scenario: Alien apocalypse: Can any civilization make it through climate change? [LINK] :  Every civilization that may have arisen in the cosmos lasts only a few centuries before it falls to the inevitable climate change that civilization triggers. Astrobiology is the study of life and its possibilities in a planetary context including ‘exo-civilizations’ or what we usually call aliens. Discussions about climate change rarely take place in this broader context — one that considers the probability that this is not the first time in cosmic history that a planet and its biosphere have evolved into something like what we’ve created on Earth. If we’re not the universe’s first civilization that means there are likely to be rules for how the fate of a young civilization like our own progresses. As a civilization’s population grows, it uses more and more of its planet’s resources. By consuming the planet’s resources, the civilization changes the planet’s conditions. In short, civilizations and planets don’t evolve separately from one another; they evolve interdependently, and the fate of our own civilization depends on how we use Earth’s resources. In order to illustrate how civilization-planet systems co-evolve, Frank and his collaborators developed a mathematical model to show ways in which a technologically advanced population and its planet might develop together. By thinking of civilizations and planets — even alien ones — as a whole, researchers can better predict what might be required for the human project of civilization to survive. The point is to recognize that driving climate change may be something generic. The laws of physics demand that any young population, building an energy-intensive civilization like ours, is going to have feedback on its planet. Seeing climate change in this cosmic context may give us better insight into what’s happening to us now and how to deal with it.
4. Sir David Attenborough believes we are ­running out of time to save the planet unless urgent action is taken to tackle the global warming he fears is destroying Earth. In his starkest warning yet about our future existence, the veteran broadcaster has joined other experts in calling for an end to the use of fossil fuels that pump choking carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. We have pumped so much carbon dioxide into our atmosphere that our world is now 1C hotter than it was in pre-industrial times. “Climate change can wipe out an entire species, 8% of species are now at threat of extinction solely due to climate change. “With the loss of even the smallest organisms we destabilise and risk collapsing the world’s ecosystems, the networks that support the whole of life on Earth. “We stand at a unique point in our planet’s history. One where we must all share ­responsibility for the future of life on Earth. We are running out of time but there is still hope. If we better understand the threat we face, the more likely it is we can avoid such a catastrophic future. Former director at the NASA Goddard ­Institute for Space Studies, Dr James Hansen, warned about climate change dangers in 1988. But he says leaders ignored the evidence and precious time was lost. Dr Hansen adds: “It would’ve been easy to solve the problem if we started to make fossil fuels more expensive and develop ­technologies to replace them. The graceful polar bear is one of the thousands of species which faces extinction thanks to careless regard for the environment. But we didn’t do that. And now there are consequences. It is an uphill battle today, with US president Donald Trump dismissing global warming as “a hoax”. Harvard professor of science Naomi Oreskes says: “Organisations who had the most to lose were fossil fuel companies, making huge profits. They undertook a concerted campaign to confuse the science and message. The cycle of denial has worked. And even today, the US president has said [climate change] is not true. One of the most obvious places climate change is taking hold is at the poles, where ice is melting at an alarming rate and threatening the existence of wildlife such as polar bears. University of Leeds climate scientist Professor Andrew ­Shepherd says: “It’s too much for Earth’s ice to withstand. Things are worse than we’d expected. The Greenland ice sheet has lost four trillion tons of ice and it’s losing five times as much ice today as it was 25 years ago. Last year UN experts gave us 12 years to stop a climate change ­catastrophe. At the current rate the planet would heat up 1.5C by 2040. Any hotter would bring bad storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts. [DAILY MIRROR]  
5. THE FIVE WAYS THE HUMAN RACE COULD BE WIPED OUT BY GLOBAL WARMING: The deadly possible effects of global warming have been laid bare in a new book that reveals how disease, starvation and rising tides could kill off human beings. ‘FALTER: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?’ lists the lethal, and unexpected, ways that humans could become extinct – within a few generations Melting ice caps could bring back disease locked in permafrost – killing swathes of people. Natural disasters could be triggered by collapsing ice caps – with 65ft waves wiping out any coastal life in its path – repeating what happened 8,000 years ago Cereal crops – the cornerstone of human sustenance – could dry out because of global warming with plants unable to grow in parched new lands.
6. THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak sooner than you think. By David Wallace-Wells. It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough. Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century. The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.
7. George Monbiot video (above): Climate change is eating the planet. We have to go straight to the heart of capitalism and overthrow it to save the planet from climate breakdown and ecological breakdown.
8. Climate Change Can Lead To The Extinction Of 50% Of The Animal And Plant Species By The End Of The Century. March 16, 2018 ·
9. The end of coffee: As temperatures rise and droughts intensify, good coffee will become increasingly difficult to grow and expensive to buy.  TIME Magazine, June 21, 2018.
10. “The scientists are unanimous on this. We have no more than 12 years to take incredibly bold action on this crisis,” O’Rourke said. “Can we make it? I don’t know. It’s up to every one of us. Do you want to make it?”  Posted Mar 15, 2019 by Michael L. Brown
11. The End of the World Is Coming, and You Are Responsible. New climate-change narratives ordain humans with godly powers to undo and repair the planet. Is it science, or a new religion? By Sean Cooper
12. ‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,’ Ocasio-Cortez says.
13. It is absolutely time to panic about climate change. Author David Wallace-Wells on the dystopian hellscape that awaits us. “It is, I promise, worse than you think.” That was was the first line of David Wallace-Wells’s horrifying 2017 essay in New York magazine about climate change. It was an attempt to paint a very real picture of our not-too-distant future, a future filled with famines, political chaos, economic collapse, fierce resource competition, and a sun that cooks us.
14. It’s The End of the World, Again: Climate Change and The Collapse of Civilizations. Anthropogenic, or human-induced, climate change and the growing crisis caused by our dependence on unsustainable energy practices should be focal points for any discussion about the future for our species.The man-made climate change crisis we face today is similar in scale to many natural climactic events that led to the fall of our mightiest civilizations. From the dawn of man, how we deal with climate change and utilize our resources has always defined our history and it will define our future.
15. The Problem With Putting a Price on the End of the World: Economists have workable policy ideas for addressing climate change. But what if they’re politically impossible? Climate change is a threat like no other. Fatal heat waves, droughts, wildfires and severe hurricanes are all becoming more common, and they are almost certain to accelerate. Avoiding horrific damage, as a United Nations panel of scientists recently concluded, will require changes in human behavior that have “no documented historic precedent.”
16. The majority of C02 emitted from burning a single tonne of coal or oil today will be absorbed over a few centuries by the oceans and vegetation, the remaining 25% will still be affecting the climate in 1,000 years. It will then require thousands and thousands more years for its complete absorption through the natural climate cycle. As Archer puts it, “the climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel C02 to the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge, longer than time capsules, longer than nuclear waste”.
17. The Copenhagen Diagnosis: According to THE Copenhagen Diagnosis, regardless of when a peak in global emissions finally occurs, the global temperature cannot be expected to stop rising until several centuries later, due to the extremely long life cycle of C02. The carbon that we are releasing into the atmosphere today is in the process of ‘programming’ a potential 2-5 meters of sea level rise by around the year 2300 and “even a thousand years after reaching a zero-emission society, temperatures will remain elevated.
18. Proof that climate change causes collapse of civilizations:  Vikings arrived and thrived in Greenland during the medieval warm period and when the Little Ice Age began in the early 14th century, it became increasingly difficult to farm. By the middle of the 16th century, the changing climate had contributed to the collapse of the Viking civilization on Greenland.
19. Proof that climate change causes collapse of civilizations: Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, was home to the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires. Summers in Ancient Mesopotamia were hot and dry while winters were cooler and wetter with rainfall sufficient enough to allow for rich agricultural economy. Climate changes gradually reduced rainfall and caused the collapse of civilization in Mesopotamia.
20. Proof that climate change causes collapse of civilizations:  The Khmer Empire flourished between 802- 1431 CE. Its capital of Angkor Wat was one of the most ancient hydraulic cities, with a sophisticated system for irrigation to ensure optimal water reserves for the population’s growing needs. In the 14th and 15th centuries, climate change caused decades of severe drought struck, interspersed with violent monsoon floods, bringing about political and social unrest which eventually led to the collapse of the Khmer civilization.
21. Proof that climate change causes collapse of civilizations:  Classic Maya civilization city states flourished during the classical period, starting in the 4th century CE. Between 660 and 900 CE, a drying trend led to agricultural decline, increased warfare, and less trade. A drought lasting between 1020- 1100 CE occurred in the midst of the population collapse, which marked the definitive end of the Classic Mayan culture and a collapse of the Mayan civilization.
22. Proof that climate change causes collapse of civilizations:  The Indus Valley Civilization existed between 3300-1700 BCE, developed sophisticated infrastructure and urban planning, and the population is estimated to have reached over 5 million. A 200-year drought that began around 2000 BCE made agriculture unsustainable, and cities were gradually abandoned.The civilisations affected could not anticipate the change in their natural environment.
23. The global nature of the climate change risk we face today bodes ill for humanity. If our civilisation collapses on this planet, there is currently no alternative location where humanity may thrive. However, scientific and technological developments have made us more aware both of the risk we face, and of our influence on it. As a result, for the first time in history, we are in a position to reduce and possibly avoid the risk of civilisation collapse due to climate change. Global governance is a process of cooperative leadership that brings together national governments, multilateral public agencies, and civil society to achieve commonly accepted goals. It provides strategic direction to address global challenges.