The human predicament

28 Feb 2013 | by Roger Plenty

Roger Plenty believes there is now no alternative but radical action

To permanently support today’s population with present standards of living would require approximately another half a planet. | Photo: Photo: Chris Gladia / flickr CC.

The Royal Society published a paper this January, entitled ‘Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?’. It draws attention to the fact that all previous civilizations have collapsed, and observes that today, the world’s first global civilization is threatened with collapse from a variety of causes, such as extinctions, land degradation, spread of toxins, depletion of increasingly rare reserves (especially groundwater), resource wars and climate change.

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