I would like to share this ominous article I read the other day. In the article the author, Jem Bendell, analyzes recent studies on climate change and concludes that Earth is heading to a major catastrophe. According to the author there’s no way to avert global warming and we should instead work on ways to adapt to the new society that will rise after the near-term collapse of civilization due to global warming. This is what Bendell calls deep adaptation.

The author’s conclusions from the studies mentioned sound pretty reasonable to me. I will let you decide but I wanted to list a few facts and predictions from some of the papers mentioned in the article:

  • Since records began in 1850, seventeen of the eighteen hottest years have occurred since 2000.
  • Two thirds of Arctic ice cover are gone since 1980.
  • Less ice means less resilience to future warming and storms.
  • Less ice to reflect Sun rays means more warming (estimated in 25% of the temperature increase due to CO2 during the past 30 years).
  • 1-2% decrease in crop yields per decade over past century.
  • Prediction: reduction of production of rice, wheat and corn by 36.25%, 18.26% and 45.10% respectively, by the end of the century, in China.
  • Prediction: reduction of 6-23% and 15-25% of production of wheat in India during 2050s and 2080s, respectively.
  • The loss of coral and the acidification of seas is predicted to reduce fisheries productivity by over half.
  • The World Bank reported in 2018 that countries needed to prepare for over 100 million internally displaced people due to the effects of climate change.

Yikes.

You can read more on Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy.