The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists unveil the 2018 Doomsday Clock on January 25, 2018 in Washington, DC. Citing growing nuclear risks and unchecked climate dangers. Photo / Getty Images
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists unveil the 2018 Doomsday Clock on January 25, 2018 in Washington, DC. Citing growing nuclear risks and unchecked climate dangers. Photo / Getty Images
Remember the Doomsday Clock? It's still going, it's two minutes to midnight if you're interested. The closest it's been set to midnight by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists since 1953.
Nuclear annihilation remains a possibility then. Good to know.
But it's climate change Armageddon that's become the more popular doomsday scenario. If you read the climate change stories, you'll know that the years we have left to act are steadily counting down.
David Attenborough, speaking to this month's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland, says we have to act immediately or it's the end of civilisation.
Sir David Attenborough, at this month's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland. Photo / Getty Images
I know where Attenborough's coming from. I've read the books (probably too many), I keep up with the latest predictions for what each one-degree increase in global temperature will mean.
Still, global warming is hardly the only problem we face. From die back of insects to water aquifers being run down, from out of control debt to speculative bubbles in real estate, from overpopulation to the refugee crisis, from soil depletion to collapsing fish stocks, everything's coming to a head.
Our global economic system could be compared to a complex living organism, one that's showing all the signs of entering into a period of terminal decline.
Ruins of a building in a desert environment. If you read the climate change stories, you'll know the years we have left to act are steadily counting down, says Vaughan Gunson. Photo / Getty Images
To maybe understand this, think about the way we experience ageing and dying. Everything — eyes, ears, hearts, brains, colons, immune systems — declines together. Then something important gives out completely and we die.
Whatever gets us in the end, it's inevitable that something else would've been just around the corner.
The fact that everything goes at roughly the same time is because there's no evolutionary advantage to the eyes outlasting the heart, or the brain outlasting the colon.
From an organism's perspective, there's no reason to divert energy into keeping one part going if another part is going to conk out.
That's where we're at with our global economic system. We shouldn't be wasting political energy and real-world energy trying to prop up one aspect of the system and expect to resurrect the geriatric patient from its deathbed.
Capitalism, or whatever euphemism you want to use, is coming up against the limits of what the planet can support.
Economic growth, and a lot else with it, is going to end. We can accept that and manage the process through existing and emerging political institutions, or we can hit the wall and pick up the pieces afterwards.
Now, there's nothing in what I've outlined which points the way to what exactly we have to do, but it's about being in a headspace of acceptance.
The danger — all too evident around the world — is that we get stuck in anger and denial. Never the best place to make decisions about anything. Certainly not electing politicians.
We need to accept that massive societal change is going to occur, one way or another. It's going to be scary some of it, but some of that change might lead us to more equitable and sustainable ways of living.
We might even still call it civilisation. Though one that takes into account the rhythms and cycles of the natural world better than this one does.
