A new academic paper warns that as the effects of global warming are progressively becoming more severe the possibilities of a worldwide societal breakdown are ‘feasible and dangerously underexplored’.
‘The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory’, published in the BioScience journal, shows how the Earth’s ‘vital signs’ have responded in an unusual way in 2023, taking the planet into ‘uncharted territory’. It also describes deeply concerning patterns of climate-related disasters.
The authors say that it is important to take a systems thinking approach to climate resilience planning and to the whole issue of the climate emergency.
“Big problems need big solutions. Therefore, we must shift our perspective on the climate emergency from being just an isolated environmental issue to a systemic, existential threat,” concludes the paper.
Climate resilience has often focussed on global heating which represents “Only one aspect of the escalating and interconnected environmental crisis that we are facing (e.g., biodiversity loss, fresh water scarcity, pandemics),” says the paper. A systems approach is necessary to understand the interlinked nature of the crisis and its widespread potential impacts, including the risk of a complete breakdown of society.
