Humans have been speculating over the demise of humankind for a long time. We write songs about the end of the world as we know it and build religions on our eschatological hopes.
In the midst of an escalating global climate crisis, one that impacts everything from the health of individuals to the viability of entire ecosystems and their resources, potential global catastrophes are so under explored.
According to a report published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it's high time we start taking worst-case scenarios seriously and come up with a solid game plan for what would happen if our current way of life collapses.
Every mass extinction event has been affected by climate change. It has helped the fall of empires. The report's lead author is a researcher with the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk.
Disasters are not limited to the effects of high temperatures. Financial crises, conflict, and new disease outbreak could cause other disasters and impede recovery from disasters such as nuclear war.
Extreme weather should be included in the old cavalry of pestilence, war, and famine.
Recent history has shown us a glimpse of what the future might look like. The structures of global civilization are relatively undamaged.
The structures that allow us to weather storms will eventually fall.
Around 30 million people in the Sahara and Gulf Coast are affected by average annual temperatures of 29 degrees.
Two nuclear powers and seven maximum containment laboratories housing the most dangerous pathogens will be affected by these temperatures by 2070. There is a high chance of disastrous effects.
We can't imagine such outcomes, that's the problem. The warnings have been around for a long time.
The director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said that the planet is a more sophisticated and fragile organisms. Disaster can be avoided if we do the math of it.
The scientists say that is the problem. Good risk management involves guarding against scenarios that would have the most dire effect.
We could push that rise back a bit longer. The perfect combination of behavior change, policy action, and innovation could help keep the temperature from rising too high.
We can expect to be 1.5 degrees warmer by 2052 if things continue as they are now.
There is a small chance that the atmosphere will be around 500 parts per million of carbon dioxide. We hit 400 parts per million as of May. It's a gamble that some of our children might need to contend with, with rates rising by a few parts per million every year or so.
The focus of the intergovernmental body's research isn't enough to deal with such outliers.
If more optimistic plans fail, we could be missing a golden opportunity to be better informed.
Kemp says that facing a future of accelerated climate change while remaining blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk-management.
The piece was published in the journal PNAS.
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