A new study funded by NASA is foreshadowing an ominous doomsday scenario that that may come to pass in the next few decades. The study hints at the possibility of an "irreversible collapse" of modern civilization.
While doomsday conspiracies are dime a dozen, it isn't everyday that such a scenario crops up from a study funded by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The team that conducted the study was led by Safa Motesharri, an applied mathematician from the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center. The study will be published in the Ecological Economics journal.
Most people would be quick to dismiss the idea of the collapse of the current global civilization. However, history has shown that no matter how large and powerful a civilization becomes, a total collapse is plausible, if not inevitable.
"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent," said the study.
The current structure of today's civilization is rooted on numerous unsustainable practices that is straining the planet's resources to the breaking point. Moreover, almost every country in the world is also marred with complicated problems such as the widening gap between the rich and the poor as well as a never before seen increase in the demand for natural resources. If left unchecked, Motesharri says that modern industrial society could collapse in a matter of decades.
"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."
With technology increasing at a breakneck pace, a large number of problems including global warming, overconsumption of resources and pollution have yet to be solved. Moreover, science can do little to alleviate the effects of socio-economic problems.
"While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."
While the news sounds grim, scientists and academics have been advocating a number of solutions to either postpone or solve the looming problems inundating our civilization.
"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."
