Future

Is This the Year We Doom Civilization? We may be losing our last, best chance to limit climate change
Paul Krugman (5/14/2025)

"Everything we learn about life in space makes it clear that we're not going to get a second chance there." Bill McKibben.

Anthropocene

US government is unwilling and unable to deal with known challenges, so is engaging in distraction.

Population will continue to grow.

Fossil fuel use, necessary to support population, will continue to release carbon into the atmosphere.

The world will get warmer. Global warming will cause severe climate change.

Ice will melt. Arctic ice melt will make the North ice free and navigable. Antarctic ice will melt. Glaciers will recede. Greenland ice will melt and slow ocean circulation.

Sea levels will rise flooding coastal cities: Venice, Amsterdam, London, New York ...

Coral reefs will decline. Oceans will be more acidic and threaten shellfish.

Exhausted fisheries will not recover.

Storms and hurricanes will intensify including monsoons. Warmer oceans will intensify El Nino. Natural disasters will be increasingly more destructive.

The Northern tundra will melt and release carbon.

The Amazon rain forest will collapse and no longer generate oxygen or be a carbon sink. Wetlands will dry out impacting many species such as migratory birds.

Fires and pests will damage forests.

Reduced glacial melt and ground water depletion will cause droughts, crop reduction.

Deserts will spread to areas that formerly had good soil and grassland. Dust storms in the Gobi and Sahara deserts will cause wide spread respiratory problems.

Species will migrate to higher ground when they can. Losses in species diversity will cause ecology to collapse.

Famine in the poorest countries the result of higher grain costs and poor crop yields.

Media, Religion and government will distract people from the ongoing collapse.

Increasing areas will become uninhabitable.

Mass migration from uninhabitable areas is inevitable. Migrants will meet fortress-like borders where right wing government proliferate.

Violent Religious Extremism

Wheat yields in Canada and Russia will improve.

Mosquito born illnesses will head North: dengue fever, malaria, and others.

Human incursions into wildlife areas will bring new and deadly diseases.

Rapid transportation and increased population density will spread pandemics.

The gap between rich and poor will widen leading to extreme poverty, a few obscenely wealthy, and social instability.

Shanty towns will multiply. The wealthy will retreat to their bunkers.

More countries will acquire nuclear weapons. Non State Actors may get extreme weapons.

More intelligent machines will impact the labor market.

Wars that could end civilization may erupt over water as well as oil.

Humanity has a high probability of extinction in this century.

Right wing government could bring on a new Dark Age.

We will not get a second chance in space.

impacts of the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine, a weak global economy, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed weaknesses and hindered progress towards the Goals. ...while lack of progress is universal, it is the world’s poorest and most vulnerable who are experiencing the worst effects of these unprecedented global challenges.
[The SDG Report] points out areas that need urgent action to deliver meaningful progress for people and the planet by 2030.

Speculative biology: understanding the past and predicting our future

What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill

https://x.com/UNStats/status/1658864958594064390