By LUIZ CÉSAR MARQUES FILHO*
The perception that human societies are facing a process of collapse began to become widespread in the second decade of the century.
As the current decade approaches the end of its first five-year period, it is beginning to introduce contemporary societies to the traumatic experiences of socio-environmental collapse. A collapse is looming when the impacts of a series of climate disasters, agricultural losses, widespread pollution, pandemics, inequalities and violence hit societies so frequently that they become progressively incapable of ensuring a minimum level of physical, food, water and health security for their populations.
Collapse is not an event with a set date to happen, it is an ongoing process.i And given the acceleration of this process, it is safe to predict an even greater worsening of living conditions for humans and countless other species in the six years that separate us from 2030. The treaties signed in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro against climate destabilization, loss of biodiversity and desertification, as well as the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, defined in 2015, have managed to inspire the dreams of many.
Today, its credibility is zero. Fear of the future is taking over societies and this feeling has been well exploited in the elections of the last ten years by those in the most diverse countries who deny scientific evidence, use scapegoats and promise a salvific return to the past.
It is impossible to go back to the past, and in any case, there was no shortage of warnings to governments and those governed about what the future held in store for them if the same trajectory was maintained. Since the 1960s, there have been increasing warnings about the terrible consequences that pesticides and the destruction of forests would have for life on the planet. And since the mid-1970s, a scientific consensus has been forming according to which the warming recorded since the 1930s could no longer be attributed solely to the natural variability of the climate system.
Fundamental work and testimonies between 1975 and 1988, the year the IPCC was created, demonstrated this consensus and projected brutal warming for the 1990st century. Here is the text of the IPCC's First Assessment Report, published in XNUMX:ii “Based on the results of current models, we predict, in IPCC Scenario A (business-as-usual) of greenhouse gas emissions, a rate of increase in the global average temperature over the next century of about 0,3 °C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0,2 °C to 0,5 °C per decade). (…) This will result in a likely increase in the global average temperature of about 1 °C above the present value by 2025 and 3oC before the end of the next century”.
“Scenario A” (continued rising greenhouse gas emissions) was confirmed and the IPCC projection for this scenario was clearly correct. Figure 1 shows that in the three decades prior to 1990 (1961-1990), the rate of warming had been 0,14 oC per decade.
Figure 1 - Global annual mean temperature anomalies (land and sea combined) between January 1961 and December 1990, with warmings recorded relative to the 1901–2000 baseline mean and with a warming rate of 0,14 oC for decade
Between 1995, the date of the second IPCC Report, and 2023, the speed of average global warming increased by more than 50%, evolving at a rate of 0,22 C per decade, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 - Global annual mean temperature anomalies (land and sea combined) between January 1995 and December 2023, with warmings recorded relative to the 1901–2000 baseline mean and with a warming rate of 0,22 oC per decade.
Since then, throughout the second and third decades of the century, all parameters quantified by science confirm the acceleration of warming predicted by the IPCC. Figure 3 shows that average global warming has been occurring over the last 13 years at a dizzying rate of 0,33 oC per decade.
Figure 3 - Global annual mean temperature anomalies (land and sea combined) between January 1995 and December 2023, with warming relative to the 1901–2000 baseline mean and with a warming rate of 0,33 C per decade.
This means that if this rate is maintained, the average temperature of the planet will increase by 1oC every three decades!! It is true that observations of at least three decades are necessary to be able to state with certainty the emergence of a new trend in climate behavior. But there is no reason to expect a slowdown in warming from now on, given: (a) the increase in the burning of fossil fuels; (b) the increase in forest fires, deforestation and soil degradation; (c) the release of carbon through the melting of permafrost and, therefore, (d) a growing energy imbalance on the planet, now already colossal (>1 Watt per m2).
The perception that human societies are facing a process of collapse began to spread in the second decade of the century. In 2012, Denis Meadows, co-author of “The Limits to Growth” (1972), told the press: “I see the collapse already happening.”iii And in 2013, a document titled “Scientific Consensus on Sustaining Life-Supporting Systems in the 522st Century,” signed by XNUMX scientists, stated:iv “The Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point. Human impacts are causing alarming levels of damage to our planet. The evidence that humans are degrading life-supporting ecological systems is overwhelming. Human quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by 2050 if we continue on our current trajectory.”.
In 2024, on the initiative of William Ripple, a group of renowned scientists reaffirms:v “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency, without a shadow of a doubt. Much of the fabric of life on Earth is at risk. We are entering a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis. For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15.000, have been sounding the alarm about the imminent dangers of climate change caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions and changes in ecosystems.”
The year 2023 was the hottest in the last 120 thousand years and 2024 surpassed the warming observed in 2023. In 2024, we live in the first of the last 100 thousand years in which the average surface temperature of the planet was 1,5 oC warmer than the pre-industrial period (1850-1900). Barring radical social changes, the 1990st century trajectory predicted by the IPCC in 1995 is now set. The rate of planetary warming since XNUMX is at least 0,22 C per decade, implying a warming of 2oC by 2050.
It is impossible to say how much damage this warming will cause to life on the planet because it has never occurred in the Quaternary (the last 2,58 million years). Two certainties, however, are clear: (a) a warming of 2oC is incompatible with organized societies and (b) this warming is just a step towards even more catastrophic warming in the second half of the century, if the current inertia of societies is maintained.
Many other socio-environmental collapses have occurred in the past. But the one we are witnessing and experiencing is absolutely unique in at least three ways. First, it is a multifactorial collapse, involving at least eleven factors acting in synergy: (i) destabilization of the climate system, with the increasing action of warming feedback loops; (ii) melting of the Earth's ice, with sea level rising at recent rates of close to 5 mm per year, causing destruction of urban infrastructure, salinization of deltas and immense impacts on coastal ecosystems.
(iii) Acceleration of the sixth mass extinction of species: (a) about 40% of assessed plant and fungal species are at risk of extinction, 46% of which are flowering plant species. Furthermore, “77% of undescribed plant species are probably threatened with extinction, and the more recently a species was described, the more likely it is to be threatened”;vi “more than 500.000 [terrestrial] species do not have sufficient habitat for long-term survival and are doomed to extinction, many within a few decades, unless their habitats are restored.”vii
(iv) Huge imbalances in hydrological cycles, with droughts, fires, torrential rains, floods, tropical storms and increasingly destructive tropical and subtropical cyclones; (v) 15 million km2 of already degraded planetary soils, with expansion of degradation (towards desertification) at a rate of 1 million km2 per year; (vi) systemic poisoning of organisms by chemical-industrial pollution, especially by pesticides and, in general, by the globalized “food” system; (vii) a greater capacity of corporations (state and private) to shape national states in their image and likeness, resulting in a blockage of global governance.
(viii) An unprecedented increase in inequalities with a corresponding regression of democracies; (ix) proliferation of wars and armed conflicts within and outside national borders, largely as a result of the eight factors mentioned above; (x) a calamitous increase in forced migrations, intra and intercontinental, as a result of the nine factors listed above, intensifying more conflicts and more xenophobia; and, finally, (xi) the emergence of the technosphere of algorithms by big techs, terribly energy-hungry, with the potential to threaten the human capacity for self-government.
Secondly, the current collapse is distinguished from previous ones by its planetary scale, since it is happening simultaneously in practically all latitudes of the planet. The current collapse is neither local nor selective. It is hitting poor countries and the increasingly numerous poor people in rich countries the hardest and most immediately, but no one is safe. Absolutely no one. Finally, there is a third equally singular factor in the ongoing socio-environmental collapse: contemporary hegemonic societies are the only ones in the entire arc of human history that have been predicting their own collapse for decades, have the science to understand its causes, have sufficient technology to avoid it, have the memory and historical reflection to learn from past mistakes and change course, but, at least until now, they prefer to accept it passively as if their fate were already written.
The inevitable question remains: is it still possible to reverse this situation? Is peace between men and with nature possible? Is another world still possible? Many of us, late and resigned creatures of globalized capitalism, seem to give in to despair or to the cult of money and individualism. But the rebels, those who, despite everything, reaffirm the vision and possibility of another world, have not yet had their last word. As early as 1968, René Dubos (1901-1982) wrote in his beautiful book, Such a human animal (So human an animal): “Despite repeated warnings about paralysis on the intellectual and ethical front, despite the evident decay and deterioration of human values, despite the widespread devastation of natural beauty and resources, as long as there are rebels among us, we have reason to hope that our society can be saved.”
The vitality of that admirable year that was 1968 resonated here, and it is clear that today the living forces of society are barely resisting the offensive of denialism, fascism and militarism. But when someone like Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, proclaims that “it is time to shift to a war mentality” (It is time to shift to a wartime mindset),viii It is more important than ever for all of us to denounce the madness of those who see war as a path to peace and to affirm civil rebellion against this warmongering, genocidal, ecocidal and suicidal civilizational matrix.
Overcoming this matrix means rejecting the arrogance and stupidity of those who deny the agony of our biosphere. It also means recognizing the limits of our science and learning from the knowledge and resilience of urban “peripherals,” indigenous peoples, quilombolas, and workers in healthy local agriculture. In short, it is up to us to participate in a great alliance with those who refuse the abyss, to defeat Brazilian and global agribusiness in the political arena. As the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) reaffirmed at the G20 meeting in November 2024: “We Are the Answer.”
Yes, those who have not lost their connection with Earth are the answer to Rachel Carson's question, posed more than 60 years ago: “The question is whether any civilization can wage a relentless war against life without destroying itself and without losing the right to call itself civilized.”
* Luiz Cesar Marques Filho He is a professor at the Department of History at Unicamp. Author, among other books, of Capitalism and environmental collapse (Unicamp).
Abridged version of the conclusion of a book on agribusiness, to be published in 2025.
Originally published on the website Other words.
Notes
i Cf. L. Marques, “Socio-environmental collapse is not an event, it is an ongoing process”. Pink Magazine, 3 Mar. 2020.
ii See JT Houghton, GJ Jenkins & JJ Ephraums (eds.), Climate Change, The IPCC Scientific Assessment, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990, p. xi: “Based on current model results, we predict: under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C per decade), this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years. This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1°C above the present value by 2025 and 3oC before the end of the next century".
<https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_full_report.pdf>.
iii See Madhusreee Mukerjee, “Apocalypse Soon: Has Civilization Passed the Environmental Point of No Return?” Scientific American magazine, 9 Dec. 2012: “I see collapse happening already”.
iv Cf. “Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity's Life Support Systems in the 21stst Century”: “Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point. Human impacts are causing alarming levels of harm to our planet. The evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life-support systems is overwhelming. Human quality of life will suffer substantial degradation by the year 2050 if we continue on our current path".
<http://consensusforaction.stanford.edu/endorse.php>.
v See William Ripple et al., “The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth”. BioScience (Oxford), 8 Oct 2024: “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis. For many years, scientists, including a group of more than 15,000, have sounded the alarm about the impending dangers of climate change driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem change".
vi Cf. “State of the World Plants and Fungi. Tackling the Nature Emergency.” Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, 2023, p. 69: “77% undescribed plant species are likely threatened with extinction, and that the most recently a species has been described, the most likely it is to be threatened".
vii Cf. S. Díaz, J. Settele, ES Brondízi (eds.), IPBES 2019, Summary for Policymakers: “more than 500,000 species have insufficient habitat for long-term survival, and are committed to extinction, many within decades, unless their habitats are restored".
viii Cf. “Europe must adopt 'wartime mindset' to stop Putin, says Nato chief”.The Guardian, 13 Dec. 2024.
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