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If you’ve been clicking around the news lately, you would definitely have noticed several worrying climate catastrophes across the globe.

Things are heating up, with floods in China and Western Europe, fires in Canada, the US, and Russia, droughts in various regions, as well as snot slime in Turkey and piles of choked fish in Florida.

Not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic that is still raging.

It is as if we are due for a societal collapse…

Well, yesterday was World Overshoot Day, which is the day humanity is expected to have used up all the planet’s biological resources regenerated in one year.

With almost half a year remaining, we have apparently already used up our quota of the Earth’s biological resources for 2021.

 

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A study in the news at present also revealed how a worldwide breakdown is, in fact, due “within a few decades” and is “very likely” according to researchers at the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University.

Sky News reports that this breakdown could arise from several shocks (some that are already happening), such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, limited resources, and population growth.

Plus, a pandemic that is far worse than COVID-19, or a combination of everything, according to the scientists.

Luckily, there are some “collapse lifeboats” in the form of countries – in other words, places best suited to survive a global collapse of society.

Out of 20 countries analysed in the report, the best places include New Zealand (pictured above), Iceland, the UK, Tasmania, and Ireland, according to the researchers.

A collapse would come from the breakdown of supply chains, international agreements, and global financial structures and will probably spread due to the highly interconnected, dependant, and energy-intensive society that has developed.

All of the countries listed as being able to maintain civilisation within their own borders are islands or island continents, where the weather is reasonably mild and temperate with decent rainfall throughout the year.

Researchers think that this could lead to relatively stable conditions in the future, as the effects of climate change are most likely to have a greater impact on the tropics and subtropics.

New Zealand is the prime spot for surviving the apocalypse:

New Zealand’s ability to produce geothermal and hydroelectric energy, its abundant agricultural land and its low population would allow it to survive relatively unscathed.

The UK, a little bit less so:

Although the UK has generally fertile soils and varied agricultural output, it does not have as much agricultural land available because of its population density, raising questions about future self-sufficiency.

Britain’s reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear energy was considered to be a risk as power sources could be “rendered at least partly inoperable” if global supply chains collapse.

But a change in manufacturing capabilities can alleviate this:

Meeting the large population’s energy demands through renewables alone would require very extensive infrastructure, they said, but the UK could increase its resilience by harnessing more energy from wind and water bodies like lagoons or barrages in the Severn Estuary.

There is some hope, as the researchers believe that the severity of the crisis could dictate our response in a way that can make “significant changes possible in the coming years and decades”.

[source:skynews]