City of The Burning Angels: A Prequel to Civilisational Collapse

The escalating financial cost of the climate crisis is beginning to bankrupt US disaster aid agencies while putting the final nails in the coffin of the already collapsing home insurance industry.  Approaching $300 billion and counting, the LA inferno has already become the costliest US disaster, beating Hurricane Katrina by $100 billion. With an increasingly bankrupt government unable to help its own people and an economy decimated by all these disasters, at least Americans have Trump.

These are all symptoms of a climate crisis which appears to be swiftly proceeding into the next stage, which is the breakdown of institutions and the unravelling of global society – essentially a societal collapse.  I would call this stage 3 of civilisational overshoot.

Stage 1 was the rise in emissions and ecological apocalypse, which accelerated in the past 200 years but began thousands of years ago.  Stage 2 included the first major impacts of the climate crisis and overshoot on developed societies, and this began around 2020.  It has so far included a pandemic, disruption of global supply chains, global conflicts, global fascism, bread basket failures and a sharp cost-of-living crisis manifesting itself as persistent global inflation. Other long term impacts such as microplastics, sterility, a burnout and mental health epidemic affecting the young in particular also began to peak at this time, although they had been in the works for decades.

If you think Stage 2 will also last 200 years, you will be disappointed.  Overshoot and the climate crisis are strongly exponential events.  This means that we are probably already half-way or less through a short, 15 to 25-year Stage 2 where strong elements of our previous “normal” life still remain at large: liveable temperatures, country borders, running water, electricity, affordable food, government services etc.  All these elements are still largely present, though every single item on the list just mentioned is currently going through an extreme transformation event.  Each and every one of these elements represents a social tipping point. 

What comes next is Stage 3, which is the result of the crossing of these tipping points.  It will be characterized by a rapid, self-accelerating race to the bottom in every aspect of human society and natural environment.  I will not go into the details of what this includes, as it is difficult for all of us, not leaving myself out, to imagine what life will be like without amenities and a possible global nuclear war.  Obviously many of us will die prematurely before we can upload it all on TikTok.

Yes, there is a stage 4 where things are possibly more stable, even though the climate deterioration continues unabated.  This is because so much of civilisation has collapsed that there is not much left to destroy.   Civilisation is much smaller and has consolidated itself.  Some people who have lived up to stage 4 may actually feel some sense of stability as the changes have slowed down and disaster in all areas has been normalised, despite the fact that life as a whole is of very low quality.  

But for now, we are about to enter the worst of Stage 2: a blame game between politicians, between people and power, different countries, rich and poor, and between the rich themselves as they fight over the last scraps of available necrocapitalist revenue they can squeeze out of us.

Or…we could all revolt against this system while there is still time? Probably not. Because WE ARE the system.

This article has been brought to you by McDonalds: Our mission is to make delicious feel-good moments easy for everyone as we enter societal collapse. This is how we uniquely feed and foster communities of human sheep.

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist.

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