Another review has confirmed the general 1972 ”Limits to Growth” findings, while concluding that we have now begun to go over the cliff and will rapidly accelerate down the other side in the early 2030s. If they are right, industrial affluent consumer society will soon be over. We have had fifty years warning, but still take no notice.

In 2014 Ken Turner reassessed the findings of the original study and concluded that the world is on the track it predicted. The recent study expects that effects will impact much more quickly than was previously expected. 

It says, “The updated World3 model, recalibrated with empirical data through 2022, projects that key human development indicators—including industrial output, food production, and population growth—will peak and begin a steep decline between the mid-2020s and early 2030s. ...Resource depletion is now recognized as the primary driver of the approaching tipping point. ....”  The study predicts “ ... sharp declines in industrial output, food production, and human welfare between 2024 and 2030.” It is saying that “...the world is entering an era of managed or unmanaged degrowth.”

The term now used to refer to the predicament is “poly-crisis”. Most people seem to have little understanding of what this involves or how serious it is.  Following is an indication of its many components and their significance. (Most of the following statistics are from Julian Cribb’s summaries, for instance.)

Resources are becoming more scarce and expensive. ”...ore grades across the world started to fall significantly over the past few decades.” Average grades of copper ores being mined have halved in 25 years. 

Vital Overshoot

Biological resources are dwindling. The World Wildlife “Footprint” measure indicates that humans are using them at almost twice the rate at which nature can sustainably provide them. The world's total amount of productive land is about 12 million hectares, meaning the amount per capita is around 1.5 hectares. However the Australian per capita rate of use of productive land about 6 to 7 hectares. If we left one-third of the productive land to nature we Australian per capita use would be over six times as much as would be sustainable if shared by all people. 

Environmental damage is widespread and alarming. We are in what is being labelled the sixth extinction holocaust in the last half billion years. The average population size of wildlife has declined by a staggering 73% between 1970 and 2020. This is mainly because humans are taking so much natural habitat. Humans plus their cattle make up an incredible 99% of the large animal biomass on the planet! The rate at which species are becoming extinct is at least one thousand times as fast as it would be without the human contribution.  It is estimated that around 150 species are lost every day. not including micro-organisms.

Forests are being lost mainly because land clearing is taking place at an unacceptable rate. About 10 million ha are lost each year. Australia’s rate of land clearing is one of the worst in the world, over half a million ha per year and increasing 40% in 2025 alone. 

Oceans are being degraded at an accelerating rate, becoming more acidic and polluted, forming ocean dead zones due to fertilizer and nutrient run off, carrying high plastic loads, and expanding due to heat absorption. Climate change is reducing the Atlantic currents keeping Europe warm. 

Polar ice sheets are approaching tipping points, committing the world to several metres of irreversible sea-level rise that will affect hundreds of millions. 

Most world fisheries are being harvested beyond sustainable rates and many are collapsing. “Overfishing, pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change are decimating marine species at frightening speeds.” Catches have been declining since the 1990s. 

Fresh water is a major problem in many areas. Global sources have declined markedly, especially since 2014. Soils are being damaged and lost due to erosion, overuse of fertilizers, loss of their carbon, acidification, compaction, pollutants and non-return of nutrients. There is concern that agricultural capacity will be seriously reduced by 2050. “Soil loss and resulting food scarcity is fast becoming the biggest unseen threat to the human future.”.. 60% of the Earth’s land area is now in a precarious state of degradation.” 

 “Humans discharge as much as 220 billion tonnes of chemical emissions into the environment every year, poisoning every person and living creature.” This is one of the planetary boundaries we have exceeded.

These many factors are damaging the biological systems that maintain the conditions needed to sustain all life on earth. Scientists have identified 9 safe “Planetary Boundaries” for impacts. We have already exceeded 7 of them. 

Global Financial Collapse

More imminent than these bio-physical threats is the looming and inevitable global financial collapse. Global debt is now around three times what it was before the GFC, and is accelerating. Lenders will suddenly realise that they are never going to get their loans back, so will suddenly panic terminating credit, investment and trade and crashing banks.

And few realise how rising inequality alone can destroy whole civilisations. Luke Kemp’s Goliath's Curse documents many cases throughout history. It has produced Trump and the emergence of fascism. 

The high “living standards” we boast could not be delivered unless the economies of poor countries were not geared to the export of cheap resources to the rich countries via a development model which traps them in impossible levels of debt.  Hickel estimates the resulting net transfer of wealth from them to us at $2.5 trillion p.a.

And consider the implications for our geopolitical future. Most of the armed conflict in the world is caused by the struggle to grab resources. As they become more scarce and capitalism seeks to increase production and consumption, armed conflict will inevitably increase. 

To summarise, the CO2/climate problem is just one item in a long list. Firstly there is a long, detailed and very strong case that we are heading for a mega-collapse within at best two decades, and secondly that a just and sustainable world order cannot be achieved unless levels of consumption and affluence are dramatically reduced. There would have to be huge degrowth to far simpler lifestyles and systems. (See "The Simpler Way" document, and the video.)

Yet the rhetoric and expenditure devoted to “national security” pays not the slightest attention to any of this. Where are the think tanks assessing the prospects of collapse, the fragility and lack of resilience of our systems, the mentality at official and public levels guaranteeing refusal to think about the issue? Spending $380 billion on submarines isn’t going to help with these threats to national security. Never mind, Pat Cummins’ back should be OK for the third test.