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A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

"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."

Shortfall wrote:

"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."

If only.

extractorfan wrote:

Shortfall wrote:

"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."

If only.

How can you have a sustainable level of depletion? Surely depletion by its very nature is unsustainable, at any level.

biffvernon wrote:

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... scientists

http://networkedblogs.com/VhZ5j

A forthcoming “NASA study” that predicts medium-term collapse has gone viral on the Internet, based entirely on Nafeez Ahmed’s advance writeup for The Guardian (“NASA-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for ‘irreversible collapse’?,” March 14).

To start with we should note, just in passing, that it turns out not to be quite a “NASA study” after all. It was the work of independent researchers at the University of Maryland, using analytical tools that had previously been developed for an entirely different NASA study. It wasn’t commissioned or funded by NASA. And on top of everything else, a lot of the authorities cited to support its premises aren’t all that pleased with the authors’ interpretation of their work (“Keith Kloor, About That Popular Guardian Story on the Collapse of Industrial Civilization“; “Judging the Merits of a Media-Hyped ‘Collapse’ Study.” Discover, March 21; ).

But while corruption and ageing infrastructure play an important role, the end of cheap oil is the real elephant in the room. One study by two Nigerian scholars concluded in 2011 that "there is an imminent decline in Nigeria's oil reserve since peaking could have occurred or just about to occur...

frank_begbie wrote:So, we just reduce the population by half then things can carry on as usual.

Its all a matter of how we achieve this.

Any suggestions?

kenneal - lagger wrote:The Nigerians shouldn't worry and nor should we!! Peak oil is only temporary: just look at the US. They've now exceeded their 1971 ish peak. Haven't they???

kenneal - lagger wrote:There's a bit of a difference between the amount of fuel that an American uses, sorry wastes, and the amount that the average African uses. There's far more opportunity for an American to save. You waste twice as much as a European does and an African only uses a fraction of what we do.

kenneal - lagger wrote:There's a bit of a difference between the amount of fuel that an American uses, sorry wastes, and the amount that the average African uses. There's far more opportunity for an American to save. You waste twice as much as a European does and an African only uses a fraction of what we do.