What Comes After the Coming Climate Anarchy?
In 2021, global carbon dioxide emissions reached 36.3 billion tons, the highest volume ever recorded. This year, the number of international refugees will cross 30 million, also the highest figure ever. As sea levels and temperatures rise and geopolitical tensions flare, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that humanity is veering towards systemic breakdown. The superpowers will be no salvation: Locked in a “new Cold War,’ the U.S. careens between populism and incompetence, while China remains locked down at home and alienates many nations abroad.
We’re not very good at predicting the next five days, let alone five years. Our daily headlines underscore how we are overwhelmed by crises: COVID-19, natural disasters, ruptured supply chains, food shortages, international conflicts, spiking oil prices, failing states, refugee flows, and so forth. But these are not isolated incidents. They are manifestations of complexity—a global system in which the environment, economy, demographics, politics, and technology constantly collide in unpredictable ways. It was not a single event that caused the Roman and Mayan civilizations to collapse, but rather this complex collision of chain reactions…