The Earth is in a death spiral. It will take radical action to save us
George Monbiot

Climate breakdown could be rapid and unpredictable. We can no longer tinker around the edges and hope minor changes will avert collapse
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It was a moment of the kind that changes lives. At a press conference held by climate activists Extinction Rebellion last week, two of us journalists pressed the organisers on whether their aims were realistic. They have called, for example, for UK carbon emissions to be reduced to net zero by 2025. Wouldn’t it be better, we asked, to pursue some intermediate aims?

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?” We had no answer.

Softer aims might be politically realistic, but they are physically unrealistic. Only shifts commensurate with the scale of our existential crises have any prospect of averting them. Hopeless realism, tinkering at the edges of the problem, got us into this mess. It will not get us out.

Public figures talk and act as if environmental change will be linear and gradual. But the Earth’s systems are highly complex, and complex systems do not respond to pressure in linear ways. When these systems interact (because the world’s atmosphere, oceans, land surface and lifeforms do not sit placidly within the boxes that make study more convenient), their reactions to change become highly unpredictable. Small perturbations can ramify wildly. Tipping points are likely to remain invisible until we have passed them. We could see changes of state so abrupt and profound that no continuity can be safely assumed.

Only one of the many life support systems on which we depend – soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity – need fail for everything to slide. For example, when Arctic sea ice melts beyond a certain point, the positive feedbacks this triggers (such as darker water absorbing more heat, melting permafrost releasing methane, shifts in the polar vortex) could render runaway climate breakdown unstoppable. When the Younger Dryas period ended 11,600 years ago, temperatures rose 10C within a decade.

I don’t believe such a collapse is yet inevitable, or that a commensurate response is either technically or economically impossible. When the US joined the second world war in 1941, it replaced a civilian economy with a military economy within months. As Jack Doyle records in his book Taken for a Ride, “In one year, General Motors developed, tooled and completely built from scratch 1,000 Avenger and 1,000 Wildcat aircraft … Barely a year after Pontiac received a navy contract to build anti-shipping missiles, the company began delivering the completed product to carrier squadrons around the world.” And this was before advanced information technology made everything faster.


The problem is political. A fascinating analysis by the social science professor Kevin MacKay contends that oligarchy has been a more fundamental cause of the collapse of civilisations than social complexity or energy demand. Control by oligarchs, he argues, thwarts rational decision-making, because the short-term interests of the elite are radically different to the long-term interests of society. This explains why past civilisations have collapsed “despite possessing the cultural and technological know-how needed to resolve their crises”. Economic elites, which benefit from social dysfunction, block the necessary solutions.

The oligarchic control of wealth, politics, media and public discourse explains the comprehensive institutional failure now pushing us towards disaster. Think of Donald Trump and his cabinet of multi-millionaires; the influence of the Koch brothers in funding rightwing organisations; the Murdoch empire and its massive contribution to climate science denial; or the oil and motor companies whose lobbying prevents a faster shift to new technologies.

It is not just governments that have failed to respond, though they have failed spectacularly. Public sector broadcasters have systematically shut down environmental coverage, while allowing the opaquely funded lobbyists that masquerade as thinktanks to shape public discourse and deny what we face. Academics, afraid to upset their funders and colleagues, have bitten their lips.

Even the bodies that claim to be addressing our predicament remain locked within destructive frameworks. ...

A young woman called Lizia Woolf stepped forward. She hadn’t spoken before, but the passion, grief and fury of her response was utterly compelling. “What is it that you are asking me as a 20-year-old to face and to accept about my future and my life? … This is an emergency. We are facing extinction. When you ask questions like that, what is it you want me to feel?” We had no answer.

For example, when Arctic sea ice melts beyond a certain point, the positive feedbacks this triggers (such as darker water absorbing more heat, melting permafrost releasing methane, shifts in the polar vortex) could render runaway climate breakdown unstoppable.

When the Younger Dryas period ended 11,600 years ago, temperatures rose 10C within a decade.

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 7^th, 2019 at 5:47pm:



Did she give a time frame on this extinction? What was the source? Vanity Fair? Gamers Monthly? Ocasio-Cortez?

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 7^th, 2019 at 5:47pm:


or not.

Laugh till you cry wrote on May 7^th, 2019 at 5:47pm:


But we just had someone tell us that this Climate Change AGW thing was 10 times faster than non-agw climate variation.

So now,according to some, about 1C of warming in 150 odd years is now faster than 10C in 10 years?

renewable energy definitely stops fossil fuels from being burnt and their poisons being put in the air and land.

lee wrote on May 17^th, 2019 at 12:29pm:


lee evidently hasn't heard of batteries. lee has earned another shilling fee from his masters.

Well more and more of the energy for making batteries is from renewable power...

What about all the other toxins that come from burning fossil fuels, plus the left overs like ash.

Or is smog, black lung ,Asthma just good for us as well

DonDeeHippy wrote on May 18^th, 2019 at 6:41am:

When did you last see smog in Australia  or Europe or North America? 1964?


China, India, Egypt, Indonesia? Last week?

DonDeeHippy wrote on May 19^th, 2019 at 7:16am:


Does burning pre-fossil fuel poison us and our land?

DonDeeHippy wrote on May 19^th, 2019 at 1:11pm:


Yes burning wood, even in some unenlightened place like Australia.


DonDeeHippy wrote on May 19^th, 2019 at 1:11pm:



Actually in poor countries, except tropical forest areas because it grow back so quickly, they use dung fires, usually because the wood is already gone. And that is really deadly.

DonDeeHippy wrote on May 20^th, 2019 at 7:44am:


Does it provide enough electricity to cook their tea? You don't seem to mention that. Or do they still use dung fires for their food and warmth?

Invest in televisions for the third world. Whilst they are still hungry and poor, they will at least be distracted by tv shows. Then they won't breed as much.

UnSubRocky wrote on May 25^th, 2019 at 2:48am:

What if they only watch porn ?

DonDeeHippy wrote on May 25^th, 2019 at 8:31am:


They will probably masturbate more often and breed less.

DonDeeHippy wrote on May 25^th, 2019 at 5:27pm:



So then no pollution in Australian cities. got it.

Earth in death spiral

give money immediately and lots of it, because a select few will halt the death spiral if you pay and pay and pay

meanwhile, fill it to the hilt with a few billion more pointless meat on the hoofers.  That's what a deathly spiralling world needs -- more useless eaters to pay more and more and more

UnSubRocky wrote on May 25^th, 2019 at 2:36pm:

Hehe every time I've watched porn with my partner we did more than masturbate.