It is ironic but not at all surprising that, for a civilisation which prides itself in having taken care of its most basic needs a very long time ago, its demise will come down to the one, most basic thermodynamic need which is common to all organisms, regardless of level of intelligence: Food.
Civilisations may survive without technology or organised society, but they cannot last more than a few days without food. Crops won’t grow on scorched land, and farmers won’t survive in lethal temperatures. Countries most likely to be among the first to starve as a function of water stress vs food production capacity vs population include the UK, France, China and India – that is, 4 out of the 7 largest economies on the planet. This of course means civilisational decline on a global scale.
Food inflation is caused by a surge in demand in relation to supply. The scarcer our foods and the bigger the population, the easier it is for prices to suddenly spiral out of control to the point where money soon becomes meaningless and absurd, which is what it has always been. The climate crisis is destroying both our ability to grow food, as well as the civilisational infrastructure needed for resilience. Weather events will incapacitate key decision centres in iconic central business districts of the word’s capitals, so many of which are at sea level. Cannibalism often appears spontaneously in overpopulated species, as they begin to compete with themselves for resources. But in humans, it takes the form of pre-emptive strike: war and fascism are largely based on perceived as opposed to real threat, another unfortunate side effect of overactive paranoia disorders. As nations starve, local and global war over disappearing water and land resources which are vital to food production seems inevitable. In our interconnected world, hunger and war will find humans wherever they are, whoever they voted for. Even if they have food, the lack of health services, internet, and electricity within a fragmented social and technological fabric will decrease life expectancy and further increase conflict.
Before the food collapse will come a food nutritional quality collapse. As hunger goes global, many humans will have no choice but switch to eating low nutritional content toxic foods. Even “healthy” food will not be able to avoid the contamination with microplastics and forever chemicals which has already infiltrated the food chain. This will bring about a spiralling health crisis, including a mental health crisis which the world is ill-prepared for.
But food isn’t simply fuel. Food is the summation of Earth’s biomass. Every life form, including humans, is ultimately an item of food for another being whether raw, cooked, or disintegrated. Vanishing ecosystems means fewer life forms, which means less food, which in turn means even fewer life forms. This is a self-degenerative process which humans began tens of thousands of years ago, and which has been accelerating since then. This means that our gentle roll down the biodiversity hill over thousands of years has now sped up into a free-fall from a cliff so steep that, in geological timescales, this mass extinction could soon begin to run out of life forms to make extinct. The biome is collapsing so quickly it feels like an apocalyptic Netflix binge which skipped straight to the last episode. You didn’t even finish your popcorn and the world ended. Oops.
Extinction events are in fact speeding up so much, we are barely catching glimpses of a disappearing world as we jump-skip what feels like one-way time travel through the destruction of the Creation. The fact that humanity cannot even cognitively process its own destruction shows just how much we had been overestimating our intelligence. And the fact that the rapid decomposition of the planet’s biome is perceptible over just a few years of the miniscule duration of a single human lifetime, is indicative of just how cataclysmic these events are. We already live on a planet which is hardly reminiscent of the rich, biodiverse jungle that Earth once was. And we are rapidly heading towards an Earth which will bear absolutely no resemblance to either its past or its present. As the entire ecosystem is pushed outside the habitable temperature zone, this planet can easily become a barren landscape of just a few species of plants and microorganisms here and there, who have managed to adapt. As a much less adaptable higher life form, humans would be way outside of their habitable range in this new, lethal, and toxic environment.
No technology will be able to help us. As long as we create technology primarily to extract resources and annihilate each other, the belief that technology will come to our rescue and help us solve our existential crises is a product of a highly delusional thought process. And even if everyone went vegan tomorrow, 8 billion people still need to eat. This means petrol, electricity, pesticides and herbicides, marketing and advertising. With the necro-economy still intact, the autodestruct sequence of climate change will only accelerate. The threat is The Thing: a sentient form of necrocapitalism, an algorithm-enhanced incarnation of profit which has taken over our world. The only way to control it at this stage is to assassinate it.
George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons
George Tsakraklides 
Really strong post and writing. Hardly debatable to any extent – Lyle Lewis’s 2023 book “ Racing to Extinction” would provide a lot of more basic backup to your vivid points.
However, a “Thing” cannot be “assassinated.” The “Thing” is everywhere, and thus it has become us, and the only way it is stopped (unlike the movies) is when we are stopped.
Love Lyle
I wish you would unblock me from twitter. I follow you. I support you. I agree with you. but you blocked me
What’s your handle?
We keep trying to find answers to why humans continually destroy. One definition of insanity is “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.”- Albert Einstein. I no longer am insane.
love
b2e
indeed. Glad to hear from you Brian!