Is Collapse Coming for Us? - INBELLA (2024)

You can watch the guided meditation here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/guided-for-bonus-101766060

In this Our Changing Climate climate change video essay, I dive into the worst-case climate change scenarios that could possibly lead to societal collapse. Specifically, I understand what the literature says will happen above four degrees of global warming in turns of natural disasters, as well as how that will unfold across our economic and social webs.

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Further Reading and Resources: https://ourchangingclimate.notion.site/Collapse-Resources-98ed838c2b8f437f9838ea8f82f4b239?pvs=4
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Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
3:21 – A World on Fire
6:47 – A Future of Extremes
12:53 – Collapse Under Capitalism
18:17 – All Is Not Lost
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Check out other Climate YouTubers:

Queer Brown Vegan: https://www.youtube.com/@queerbrownvegan
zentouro: https://www.youtube.com/user/zentouro
Climate Adam: https://www.youtube.com/user/ClimateAdam
Kurtis Baute: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTRM8LE1g6UXrVZKwgw5oEA
Simon Clark: https://www.youtube.com/user/SimonOxfPhys
Sarah Karver: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRwMkTu8sCwOOD6_7QYrZnw
Climate Town: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuVLG9pThvBABcYCm7pkNkA
Jack Harries: https://www.youtube.com/user/JacksGap
Beckisphere: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT39HQq5eDKonaUV8ujiBCQ
All About Climate: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs0uXl-w0672ni8pS3UDXsQ
Aime Maggie: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpIcLW8YOY1kL_6J0TzDBGA
Just Have a Think: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRBwLPbXGsI2cJe9W1zfSjQ
Ankur Shah: https://www.youtube.com/c/AnkurShah
Planet Proof: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdtF58iBRQ2C3QPeKKzxwiA
Future Proof: https://www.youtube.com/c/FutureProofTV
Climate in Colour: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Wp9EmfpV7EUSrSJAonxzw

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#collapse #anticapitalism #climatechange

At a wet bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius
the human body starts to break down. Organs turn
off, the kidneys begging to fail, and no amount
of sweat can cool you down. It’s 42 degrees across
Uttar Pradesh in India. A prolonged heatwave
bakes the cities and their surrounding
landscape in the region. The scorching air is
inescapable as blackouts roll through cities,
rendering air conditioning useless. The elders
are the first to go, and as the days stretch
on under the oppressive humidity and heat,
those who are younger’s bodies start to fail
them as well. Hyperthermia and lack of sleep
brings a slow death as people flock to bodies
of water to cool off. But even the promise of
water on skin is dashed by the heat. The lake
is now just a large hot tub, no longer providing a
cool escape. Tens of millions die in the heatwave.
As the present breaks off into a million strands
of potential futures, this is one such future we
could face. One envisioned in the first chapter
of Kim Stanley Robinson’s speculative climate
fiction book, The Ministry for the Future. Grapple
with the potential pathways of of climate change
can be a daunting task, especially when scenarios
like Stanley Robinson’s loom on the horizon. But
the path into the future isn’t linear. Millions of
potentialities spread out as the years tick onward
toward 2100. Some of these threads contain within
in them multitudes of bright futures full of joy,
healing, and deep connection with others and the
natural world. These are the futures of solarpunk,
of ecosocialism, of imagery like this [play clip].
But there are also darker threads on the fringes.
On the otherside of the spectrum of our response
to climate change. Scenarios that are easy to
ignore because they invoke too much dread, grief
and anxiety. Unfortunately, we can’t ignore them.
Understanding the risks of worst-case climate
change scenarios help us formulate responses
appropriate to the scale of the problem. If
there’s a small fire in your kitchen that
could potentially burn your house down, you’re
not going to wait and see what happens because
you’ve got to finish cooking dinner. You’re going
to grab the fire extinguisher and put it out. The
chance of climate catastrophe, is that little fire
that could grow into an inferno if we don’t pay
attention. So, today we must dive into the climate
change projections that should shake us awake with
the scale of their potential disasters. These
are the extremely high global warming scenarios,
with a small chance of happening, but if they do,
they could bring death, suffering, extinction,
and collapse. Today we must face down the reality
of the potential extremes of the climate crisis.
This video is made possible by my amazing
viewers who support me on Patreon. Over the
last two years, my revenue from ads and patreon
has dropped dramatically. So much so, that if this
trend continues, making videos like these will
become less and less financially viable. So I
have a quick. Our Changing Climate will always be
free for everyone regardless of how much I make,
but OCC is a one-person operation and it would
be nice to earn enough to pay for rent and my
health insurance, both of which seem to grow
yearly. So, if you’ve been a long-time viewer,
or just stumbled across the channel, thank you
for watching, and please consider supporting
Our Changing Climate on Patreon with the link
in the description. Just one dollar a month
from a small portion of my audience would be
huge for the channel and to be honest, me.
A World on Fire:
To understand what the future holds,
we must first understand the present. Today,
global temperatures hover around 1.2C of
warming above pre-industrial levels. Already
that one degree has fueled storms, droughts,
and disasters the likes of which we rarely
see. As author of The Uninhabitable Earth,
David Wallace Wells notes in a recent talk, [“the
weather impacts on the American city of Houston
which has been hit by five of what were once
called 500-year storms in five years…500 years ago
there were no Europeans in North America at all
so we’re talking about a storm that we’d expect to
hit once during that entire history and Houston’s
been hit by five of them in five years so it’s
literally millennia of extreme weather compressed
into half a decade.”] We are now living in a world
that is completely different than our ancestors
have ever experienced, and it will only continue
to transform. The gold standard of climate
science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change’s Sixth Assessment Report notes that even
with all of the climate commitments from countries
over the last 8 years since the Paris Agreement,
the world is on track for 3.2 with a high end of
3.5C of warming by 2100. 3.2 to 3.5C of warming is
already bad. It will bring unprecedented flooding,
hurricanes, drought, wildfire and extinction. The
problem is that the majority of the work has yet
to happen to fullfill many of those climate
commitments that would keep us below 3C of
warming – with many plans relying on net zero
strategies of continuing to burn fossil fuels
while waiting on the hope of a massive upscaling
of untested carbon capture technologies. Already,
many countries have failed to meet the pace
of their commitments, and there is a shocking
lack of confidence from IPCC scientists on
positive climate outcomes. Considering this,
it is just prudent and basic risk assessment to
consider the low probability, extreme catastrophe
scenarios. The scenarios where a combination of
unmitigated fossil capitalism crashes headfirst
into cascading tipping points locking in decades
of extreme warming. To be clear, the potential of
these are very low, within a 5-10% possibility,
and would mean no country takes action on climate
change during the next 75 years. But, as
Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman write
in their book Climate Shock, “if you had a 10
percent chance of having a fatal car accident,
you’d take necessary precautions. If your
finances had a 10 percent chance of suffering
a severe loss, you’d reevaluate your assets. So
if we know the world is warming and there’s a
10 percent chance this might eventually lead to
a catastrophe beyond anything we could imagine,
why aren’t we doing more about climate change
right now?” We must take extreme climate
scenarios more seriously. Not because these
pathways will be the most likely future, but
because we have to be prepared on the off-chance
that extreme warming does happen. While modeling
for below 3C scenarios seems to take up much of
the research, there is still some literature on
the potential for 3C+ scenarios. Like this recent
paper from renowned climate scientist James Hansen
or this one on the potential for a Hothouse
Earth scenario. The futures these papers lay
out are uncertain, but bleak. But the possible
worlds they evision should be more than enough
to galvanize us into action– to try as hard as
possible to make sure those worlds never exist.
A future of extremes
As David Wallace Wells writes in his widely read
piece for New York Magazine, “It is… worse than
you think.” He wrote that in 2018, and after six
years Wallace Wells notes that climate outcomes
are more promising. But the worse-case warming
scenarios still look as bad as ever. Even as more
countries map out paths to net zero economies,
the possibility that commitments fail, that fossil
fuels continue to burn at ever-growing rates,
and that capitalist production continues to
run rampant still looms. The latest report
from from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change models a pathway, that if we continue on
with fossil capitalist business-as-usual,
temperatures could reach as high as 5.7C,
with 4.4C as the the middle range. [show graph].
With each degree of warming, disaster threats
compile and cascade, potentially adding to
even more warming as we will soon see. Indeed,
there is still a lot of uncertainty around the
extent of global temperature rise over the next
century. The amount of warming all depends both on
how much and how quickly the world takes climate
action in the coming decades as well as how soon
or if natural tipping points thrust us deeper into
the climate crisis. Even substantial economic
growth could make high-emissions scenarios more
plausible. As one paper notes, “higher economic
growth rates could make RCP8.5 35% more likely.”
This uncertainty, combined with the knowledge that
fossil capitalism will fight tooth and nail to
protect its profits and extractivist interestes,
means scenarios above 4C of warming are still a
possibility. And a world above 4C of warming would
look dramatically different that it does today.
To begin, we’ll travel to the island nation
of Vanuatu. An archipelago in the pacific
ocean already battling the rising seas
caused by 1.2C of warming. Since 1993,
sea level has risen 6mm per year along the
coasts of Vanuatu. A seemingly miniscule
measurement that already has had devastating
consequence. According to the New York Times,
Vanuatu has already had to relocate six whole
villages across four of its islands, and under
a high emissions scenario this damage will rapidly
increase. Unfettered emissions and warming means
more frequent category 5 hurricanes like cyclone
Pam that hit the archipelago in 2015 destroying
17,000 buildings and displacing 65,000 people. The
IPCC notes that the possibility of “2m by 2100 and
in excess of 15 m by 2300 under the very high
GHG emissions scenario… cannot be excluded.” An
amount that would be the final nail in the coffin
for large chunks of coastal towns across Vanuatu.
Throughout the world, warming above 4C means an
accelerated pace of arctic ice melting as well
as the swelling of the ocean. If the worst case of
15 meters of sea level rise occurs, it would would
plunge vast swaths of countries like Bangladesh,
which already experiences dangerous floods,
underwater. Even in imperial core cities like
Amsterdam or New York City, low lying land will
become unlivable, forcing people to migrate to
higher ground. And if the water doesn’t reach you,
the heat will. According to the think tank
Chatham House, “heat-related mortality has
increased by nearly 54 per cent in the over-65s in
the past two decades, reaching 296,000 deaths in
2018.” In 2019 alone, with just 1.2C of warming,
“a potential 300 billion working hours were lost
due to temperature increases globally, 52 per cent
more than in 2000.” Under pathways that bring us
above 4C of warming, this number will balloon as
the heat grows more severe. At 4C, equatorial and
desert cities will become unlivable, like the
port city of Al Hudaydah in Yemen, where in a
much hotter world, the residents would experience
an estimated 301 days of temperatures intolerable
to humans. Meanwhile, one paper explains that
“around 2.7 billion persons will experience at
least 1 wk of daytime (8 h) ambient conditions
associated with uncompensable heat stress,
1.5 billion will experience a month under such
conditions, and 363.7 million will be faced with
an entire season (3 mo) of life-altering extreme
heat” In short, ambient heat and humidity will
make countless cities ghost towns for months
of the year. And yes, the imperial core will
certainly feel the effects of this heat. As David
Wallace Wells notes, “At four degrees, the deadly
European heat wave of 2003, which killed as many
as 2,000 people a day, will be a normal summer [in
Europe].” He adds that at six degrees of warming
in the United States, “summer labor of any kind
would become impossible in the lower Mississippi
Valley, and everybody in the country east of
the Rockies would be under more heat stress
than anyone, anywhere, in the world today.”
This is the future we could face if business as
usual continues on. One where farmworkers must
literally work in a global sauna to put food
on the plates of those sitting in the comfort
of their air conditioned dining room. But that
meal will also be at risk as the world reaches
4C of warming. Permanent extreme droughts will
be the norm by the end of the century in Europe
causing worse-than-dust-bowl like conditions.
Increased rainfall will mean frequent floods
in Central Africa and South Asia, and the damage
of hurricanes like Maria or Cyclone Daniel will
become commonplace. Not to mention, the IPCC notes
that a world warmed past 4C will cause substantial
species loss–further accelerating the sixth mass
extinction. Keep in mind, this just until the end
of the century. If fossil fueled capitalism
manages to make it through these disasters
gripping to the seat of power and production, then
global temperatures could continue to rise past
that gruesome benchmark of 4C. So, with all of
this possibly on the horizon, it is just prudent
risk assessment to act decisively to cut fossil
fuel emissions and build strong and resilient
economies. Because as much as extreme temperature
pathways will fuel instabilities throughout
the natural world, it will also catalyze
conflict, political tension and social unrest.
Collapse under Capitalism
Our current global capitalist
economy is not built to survive a world that’s 4C
warmer. For over 10,000 years, global temperatures
have remained relatively steady, allowing humans
to flourish through agricultural ingenuity and
explode in population under the capitalist mode of
production. But as capital has ushered in an era
of extreme production and fossil fuel extraction
it is also digging its own grave. The extraction
growing the wealth of the few is assuring the
destruction of the many. A world built on the
accumulation of profit is ill equipped for
the coming storm of extreme temperature. As
we glimpsed in a future of extremes, weather, heat
and sea level rise won’t cascade into just natural
disasters, climate change will be the catalyst
of conflict, migration and instability across
the world. As we have already seen, with drought
and extreme weather comes food instability. Our
current food system is already fragile. It fails
hundreds of millions of people as they struggle to
buy food which has been heavily commodified within
a global market. Prolonged droughts or frequent
floods that could be common under pathways over
4C would push that food system over the edge. Our
capitalist food system is not about getting the
most food into the most hands, but about selling
the most food to get the best profit margins.
And when unimaginable crop loss is introduced
into that equation, famine is inevitable.
Indeed, for “the top four maize-producing
regions (accounting for 87% of maize production),
the likelihood of production losses greater
than 10% jumps from 7% annually under a 2 °C
temperature rise to 86% under 4 °C (56)” In short,
a warmer world will mean it will be much harder
to grow and harvest food. We will lose our ability
to grow the very stuff of life. And famine
presses down on us from one side, intense
heat and humidity will quite literally cook
our brain capacity and increase our propensity
for violence. Today, the pressures of a warmer
planet have already exacerbated tensions, like
in the in the case of the Syrian Civil War or more
broadly the Arab Spring. Conflicts whose tensions
were heightened, as some researchers have claimed,
by climate change fueled drought and instability.
As Wallace-Wells writes pulling on evidence from
researchers Marshall Burke and Solomon Hsiang,
“for every half-degree of warming…societies will
see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the
likelihood of armed conflict…A planet five degrees
warmer would have at least half again as many wars
as we do today.” And these wars alongside the
increased intensity and frequency of hurricanes,
wildfires and droughts will force millions out
of their homes, driving a vicious feedback loop
of migration and conflict. A study from the World
Bank estimates that if we don’t take major action
on climate change, by 2050 216 million people
will be on the move in their own country. And
as the researchers are quick to note, these are
conservative numbers. Because as IPCC notes, the
percentage of people exposed to life-threatening
heat stress is projected to rise from “today’s
30% to 48-76%”. That’s just from heat and humidity
alone. Natural disasters, increases in pandemics,
and species extinctions will only grow as
the planet heats– forcing more migration
locally and internationally. Partly, the this
migration is driven capitalism’s penchant for
protecting profits, not people. Indeed,
for multinationals and free-market hawks,
disasters can be an opportunity to build luxury
hotels on recently destroyed beaches or push
through privatization of public goods in what
is known as disaster capitalism. And within
this context of instability, fossil capitalism
will fight tooth and nail to maintain power.
As I discuss in my video on fossil fascism,
this could look like the rise to power of a
series of fossil fascist strongmen like Trump
or the ex-president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro,
who use racist ultranationalist rhetoric as
a sheild against attacks on fossil fuels. Or
it could look like the rise of eco-fascism, which
seeks to protect national environments and racial
purity by cutting carbon and preserving land. In
the process, shoring up the borders and assuring
the continued flow and wealth and capital to
that nation. The instability and chaos that are
inevitable at 4C could be the fuel used boost this
right-wing extremism onto the global stage once
again. It is, after all, in times of great shock,
as Naomi Klein explains in The Shock Doctrine,
when people are most vulnerable and susceptible to
violent regimes of austerity and authoritarianism.
All of these natural and societal vectors
push on each other in a dynamic cascade of
collapse. We can see here in a flowchart from
a paper on worst-case climate scenarios just
how interconnected these forces are.
It’s not just natural tipping points,
like the melting of permafrost which releases
even more greenhouse gases into the air,
or the mass die-off of the amazon rainforest, but
also economic and social tipping points that will
plunge us deeper into collapse if we continue
down the road of extreme global temperatures.
If one domino falls, it could tip off a chain of
destruction that ripples across the globe. And
the higher global temperatures tick, the more
likely it is for the dominoes to fall. So, we
must prevent that cascade of potential disaster.
We must prevent this future from happening, and
thankfully, we’re already
making strides to do just that.
Not all is lost:
Take a deep breath in and
breathe it out. Wherever you are, feel the ground
beneath you. These catastrophic scenarios are
a lot to take in. But take heart that these are
just potential futures. They have not yet come to
pass. Remember that these pathways are some of the
worst-case scenarios. There is a 5-10% chance that
these futures happen. We have a very real chance
of stopping them. So, instead of sinking deep into
despair about these catastrophic futures, use
them to galvanize you into action. Because of
recent climate commitments, China and the US’s
mobilization of renewable capacity, and the fact
that now in 90% of the world it is cheaper to
install renewables that fossil fuel plants,
the current models chart out 2.7C to 3.4C of
warming by the end of the century. This is still
bad, but certainly a not-as-bad scenario. But of
course, a lot can happen between now and the end
of the century. We can do a lot better than 2.7C,
but it will require immense pressure from below,
in the form of mass movements like we saw in
2019, combined with all sorts of tactics like
non-reformist reforms, blockades, and (when
appropriate), attacking the fossil capital
directly through sabotage. We need to force a
rapid downscaling of production and fossil fuel
extraction. Because the faster we abolish fossil
fuels, the brighter our future will be. Turning a
blind eye, ignoring these scenarios doesn’t make
them magically disappear. They are looming on the
horizon and we need to face them down in order to
rationally plan for the coming catastrophe. If we
use these futures as kindling, to ignite passion
and love for all the we have on this world,
our future could be a bright one. But
if we sink into complacency or despair,
letting others handle this global crisis, the
future of warming could be a whole lot darker.
Because preventing a catastrophic future
requires the passion, the organizing and
commitment of all people, everywhere to build
a just, more sustainable, and ethical planet.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, or anxious by
the possibilities of extreme climate change and
collapse, one thing that has helped me immensely
over the years to feel and sit with my emotions
is meditation. So, I made a guided meditation for
collapse for all my supporters over on Patreon.
My wonderful Patreon supports have been keeping
this channel and myself afloat for the last seven
years. Recently, my revenue has been slipping
because of a combination of demonetization and
and sponsorships, and my Patreon supporters have
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rent and ever-increasing healthcare
premiums. So, I’m turning to you,
the wonderful people who watch my videos
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please consider supporting the channel on
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Just pledging a dollar a month is huge for
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much to those who already support me on Patreon,
you’re the reason I’m able to make videos like
this. Thanks again, and I’ll see you next month.