UK Govt backed scientific model shows...

[raspberry-blower]

...that there is a real risk of a collapse of "Western civilisation" by 2040. The date seems to have been moved forward then.

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New scientific models supported by the British government’s Foreign Office show that if we don’t change course, in less than three decades industrial civilisation will essentially collapse due to catastrophic food shortages, triggered by a combination of climate change, water scarcity, energy crisis, and political instability.

Before you panic, the good news is that the scientists behind the model don’t believe it’s predictive. The model does not account for the reality that people will react to escalating crises by changing behavior and policies.

But even so, it’s a sobering wake-up call, which shows that business-as-usual guarantees the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it: our current way of life is not sustainable.

This is not really news to any regular visitor to this forum - it's more interesting to see that this has been funded partly by the UK Government.

Last year, Dr. Graham Turner updated his CSIRO research at the University of Melbourne, concluding that:

“… the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline. Given this imminent timing, a further issue this paper raises is whether the current economic difficulties of the global financial crisis are potentially related to mechanisms of breakdown in the Limits to Growth BAU [business-as-usual] scenario.”

For the first time, then, we know that in private, British and US government agencies are taking seriously longstanding scientific data showing that a business-as-usual trajectory will likely lead to civilisational collapse within a few decades — generating multiple near-term global disruptions along the way.

The question that remains is: what we are going to do about it?

Answer - probably far too little far too late.
The alarm was raised in 1972 by TLTG yet instead of heading them, the Anglo-Saxon business model went down the completely opposite trajectory. (Other business models proved almost as destructive)
The short of it is that the world chose to listen to clueless economists - such as Julian Simon - who could not even accurately explain what money is - rather than the scientists.

Nafeez Ahmed:
UK Government backed scientific model flags risk of collapse of civilisation by 2040