Re-framing the threat of global warming: an empirical causal loop diagram of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse

Abstract

There is increasing concern that climate change poses an existential risk to humanity. Understanding these worst-case scenarios is essential for good risk management. However, our knowledge of the causal pathways through which climate change could cause societal collapse is underdeveloped. This paper aims to identify and structure an empirical evidence base of the climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse pathway. We first review the societal collapse and existential risk literature and define a set of determinants of societal collapse. We develop an original methodology, using these determinants as societal collapse proxies, to identify an empirical evidence base of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse in contemporary society and then structure it using a novel-format causal loop diagram (CLD) defined at global scale and national granularity. The resulting evidence base varies in temporal and spatial distribution of study and in the type of data-driven methods used. The resulting CLD documents the spread of the evidence base, using line thickness and colour to depict density and type of data-driven method respectively. It enables exploration of how the effects of climate change may undermine agricultural systems and disrupt food supply, which can lead to economic shocks, socio-political instability as well as starvation, migration and conflict. Suggestions are made for future work that could build on this paper to further develop our qualitative understanding of, and quantitative complex systems modelling capabilities for analysing, the causal pathways between climate change and societal collapse.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Testing role of green financing on climate change mitigation: Evidences from G7 and E7 countries

“…The main variables involved in the development of a green economy must be given equal priority. This study focuses on public procurement as one of the key influences of the green economy (Richards et al 2021 ). A basic alteration of public expenditure, given the previous literature, would appear to have a major effect on economic and environmental depletion.…”

From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency

“…Planetary heating threatens the collapse of human civilisation and ecosystems worldwide (Trisos et al, 2020;Richards et al, 2021), a situation so severe that over 11,000 scientists have declared "clearly and unequivocally" that the Earth faces a climate emergency (Ripple et al, 2020). Alongside the climate crisis, the destruction of nature is causing an equally severe ecological emergency that threatens the extinction of a million species and undermines the conditions for human life (Diaz et al, 2019;IPBES, 2019).…”

Transition Discourse, Food, and Computing within Limits

“…When I was three, about 320 ppm. Now, the reading is about 415 ppm, and global warming in excess of 3 ℃ by 2100 seems likely [56]. While I can examine the curve's numbers, I don't know how to genuinely place its troubling trajectory into my stories of the outdoors.…”

“…I am aware that the impacts of expected sea-level rise, including the forced migration of hundreds of millions of households by the end of the century, will likely be far more serious in comparison to this example[25,56]. Also, although anticipatory and simulated, in essence this example is common: Indigenous Peoples have witnessed the destruction of countless ecosystems over more than two centuries.…”