Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?

Environmental problems have contributed to numerous collapses of civilizations in the past. Now, for the first time, a global collapse appears likely. Overpopulation, overconsumption by the rich and poor choices of technologies are major drivers; dramatic cultural change provides the main hope of averting calamity.

[1]  E. Millar ‘Too Many’ , 2015 .

[2]  L. Huseynova Why nations fail? The origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty , 2015 .

[3]  R. May THREATS TO TOMORROW'S WORLD , 2015 .

[4]  M. Marquis The Hungry Planet , 2014 .

[5]  E. Northrop Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet , 2014 .

[6]  P. Reich,et al.  Decade-long soil nitrogen constraint on the CO2 fertilization of plant biomass , 2013 .

[7]  Lisa Rosner,et al.  The Technological Fix : How People Use Technology to Create and Solve Problems , 2013 .

[8]  William E. Rees,et al.  Ecological Footprint, Concept of , 2013 .

[9]  P. Newton,et al.  Food security and climate change: on the potential to adapt global crop production by active selection to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide , 2012, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[10]  Scott Barrett,et al.  Climate negotiations under scientific uncertainty , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[11]  S. Battersby Planet-sized problem: Can we keep Earth cool? , 2012 .

[12]  K. Seto,et al.  Global forecasts of urban expansion to 2030 and direct impacts on biodiversity and carbon pools , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[13]  F. Moghaddam The omnicultural imperative , 2012 .

[14]  A. Gore Faculty of 1000 evaluation for Hormones and endocrine-disrupting chemicals: low-dose effects and nonmonotonic dose responses. , 2012 .

[15]  L. V. Beek,et al.  Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint , 2012, Nature.

[16]  S. Alexander Degrowth, Expensive Oil, and the New Economics of Energy , 2012 .

[17]  Shonali Pachauri,et al.  Demographic change and carbon dioxide emissions , 2012, The Lancet.

[18]  Paul R. Ehrlich,et al.  Solving the human predicament , 2012 .

[19]  G. Daily,et al.  Securing natural capital and expanding equity to rescale civilization , 2012, Nature.

[20]  Neo D. Martinez,et al.  Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere , 2012, Nature.

[21]  Wenyun Zuo,et al.  The Macroecology of Sustainability , 2012, PLoS biology.

[22]  John H. Matthews,et al.  The Shifting Boundaries of Sustainability Science: Are We Doomed Yet? , 2012, PLoS biology.

[23]  James A. Robinson,et al.  Why nations fail ? The origins of Power , Prosperity and Poverty , 2015 .

[24]  Laura N. Vandenberg,et al.  Hormones and endocrine-disrupting chemicals: low-dose effects and nonmonotonic dose responses. , 2012, Endocrine reviews.

[25]  Michael T. Klare,et al.  The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources , 2012 .

[26]  Peer Vries,et al.  Why the West rules – for now: the patterns of history and what they reveal about the future , 2012 .

[27]  R. Proctor Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition , 2012 .

[28]  K. Butzer,et al.  Critical perspectives on historical collapse , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[29]  B. Hayes Computation and the Human Predicament , 2012 .

[30]  I. Otto,et al.  Turn down the heat : Why a 4°c warmer world must be avoided , 2012 .

[31]  S. Carpenter,et al.  Solutions for a cultivated planet , 2011, Nature.

[32]  J. Foley Can we feed the world & sustain the planet? , 2011, Scientific American.

[33]  Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature , 2011, 1110.1365.

[34]  D. Lobell,et al.  Climate Trends and Global Crop Production Since 1980 , 2011, Science.

[35]  G. Daily,et al.  Natural Capital: Theory and Practice of Mapping Ecosystem Services , 2011 .

[36]  P. Ehrlich A personal view: environmental education—its content and delivery , 2011 .

[37]  C. Marshall,et al.  Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived? , 2011, Nature.

[38]  Alice Bows,et al.  Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world , 2011, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[39]  G. Daily,et al.  Mainstreaming natural capital into decisions: Theory and Practice of Mapping Ecosystem Services , 2011 .

[40]  Taylor H. Ricketts,et al.  Mainstreaming natural capital into decisions , 2011 .

[41]  J. R. Delong,et al.  Energetic Limits to Economic Growth , 2011 .

[42]  Susheela Singh,et al.  Unintended pregnancy: worldwide levels, trends, and outcomes. , 2010, Studies in family planning.

[43]  Paul R. Ehrlich,et al.  The culture gap and its needed closures , 2010 .

[44]  N. Oreskes,et al.  Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming , 2010 .

[45]  Victor A. Matheson,et al.  Luck or skill? An examination of the Ehrlich–Simon bet , 2010 .

[46]  C. Bradshaw,et al.  Evaluating the Relative Environmental Impact of Countries , 2010, PloS one.

[47]  B. Alcott Impact caps: why population, affluence and technology strategies should be abandoned. , 2010 .

[48]  S. Robinson,et al.  Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People , 2010, Science.

[49]  Partha Dasgupta,et al.  Nature's role in sustaining economic development , 2010, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[50]  Rambouillet The Hungry Planet , 2010 .

[51]  When a billion Chinese jump , 2010 .

[52]  I. Morris Why the West rules--for now : the patterns of history, and what they reveal about the future , 2010 .

[53]  Tim Jackson,et al.  Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet , 2011 .

[54]  F. Chapin,et al.  Planetary boundaries: Exploring the safe operating space for humanity , 2009 .

[55]  A. Turner,et al.  Population priorities: the challenge of continued rapid population growth , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[56]  A. Turner,et al.  Population ageing: what should we worry about? , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[57]  Elinor Ostrom,et al.  A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change , 2009 .

[58]  M. Mann,et al.  Defining dangerous anthropogenic interference , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[59]  Enrique Fatas,et al.  Globalization and human cooperation , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[60]  S. Solomon,et al.  Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[61]  Thomas Dietz,et al.  Human Footprints on the Global Environment: Threats to Sustainability , 2009 .

[62]  Michael Meyer The Year that Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall , 2009 .

[63]  S. Levin Games, groups, and the global good , 2009 .

[64]  C. Hall,et al.  Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil : In the 1970s a rising world population and the finite resources available to support it were hot topics. Interest faded-but it's time to take another look , 2009 .

[65]  P. McAnany,et al.  Questioning collapse : human resilience, ecological vulnerability, and the aftermath of empire , 2009 .

[66]  M. Potts Where next? , 2009, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[67]  How to Feed the World in 2050 , 2009 .

[68]  H. Schellnhuber Global warming: Stop worrying, start panicking? , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[69]  Carl Folke,et al.  Navigating the transition to ecosystem-based management of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[70]  Jianguo Liu,et al.  Ecological and socioeconomic effects of China's policies for ecosystem services , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[71]  S. Thacker,et al.  Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative , 2008, Emerging Infectious Diseases.

[72]  P. Victor,et al.  Managing without growth , 2008 .

[73]  James K. Galbraith,et al.  The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too , 2008 .

[74]  Charles A. S. Hall,et al.  Peak Oil, EROI, Investments and the Economy in an Uncertain Future , 2008 .

[75]  Michael T. Klare,et al.  Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy , 2008 .

[76]  Jianguo Liu,et al.  Environmental impacts of divorce , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[77]  William E Rees,et al.  Are We Consuming Too Much—for What? , 2007, Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology.

[78]  Elinor Ostrom,et al.  Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems , 2007, Science.

[79]  David R. Montgomery,et al.  Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations , 2007 .

[80]  J. Harte Human population as a dynamic factor in environmental degradation , 2007 .

[81]  Daniel T Blumstein,et al.  The Failure of Environmental Education (and How We Can Fix It) , 2007, PLoS biology.

[82]  R. Turco,et al.  Consequences of Regional-Scale Nuclear Conflicts , 2007, Science.

[83]  C. Field,et al.  Global scale climate–crop yield relationships and the impacts of recent warming , 2007, Environmental Research Letters.

[84]  D. Braaten,et al.  Risk of rising sea level to population and land area , 2007 .

[85]  Scott Barrett,et al.  Why Cooperate?: The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods , 2007 .

[86]  Richard Heinberg Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines , 2007 .

[87]  Susheela Singh,et al.  Women with an Unmet Need for Contraception in Developing Countries and Their Reasons for Not Using a Method , 2007 .

[88]  T. Homer-Dixon The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization , 2006 .

[89]  Joseph A. Tainter,et al.  Archaeology of overshoot and collapse , 2006 .

[90]  James E. Martin Agent for change , 2006 .

[91]  J. Harte,et al.  Missing feedbacks, asymmetric uncertainties, and the underestimation of future warming , 2006 .

[92]  Ivana Chlapcová Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty-making , 2006 .

[93]  R. May Address of the President, Lord May of Oxford OM AC FRS, given at the Anniversary Meeting on 30 November 2005Threats to tomorrow's world , 2006, Notes and Records of the Royal Society.

[94]  J. Diamond Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed , 2005 .

[95]  Randall Harris Does the Dose Make the Poison? , 2005, Science.

[96]  D. Kennedy Twilight for the Enlightenment? , 2005, Science.

[97]  P. Wallman Impacts of Sea Level Rise on the Coastal Zone of Bangladesh , 2005 .

[98]  A. Shvidenko Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Synthesis , 2005 .

[99]  F. Talbot,et al.  One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption and the Human Future , 2005 .

[100]  Thomas Dietz,et al.  Tracking the Anthropogenic Drivers of Ecological Impacts , 2004, Ambio.

[101]  Richard York,et al.  Cross-national meat and fish consumption: exploring the effects of modernization and ecological context , 2004 .

[102]  Kenneth C. Freeman,et al.  The Hunt for Dark Matter in Galaxies , 2003, Science.

[103]  E. Ostrom,et al.  The Struggle to Govern the Commons , 2003, Science.

[104]  Scott Barrett,et al.  Environment and Statecraft: The Strategy of Environmental Treaty‐making , 2003 .

[105]  D. Pirages,et al.  Ecological Security: An Evolutionary Perspective on Globalization , 2003 .

[106]  G. Daily,et al.  Effects of household dynamics on resource consumption and biodiversity , 2003, Nature.

[107]  Thomas Dietz,et al.  Rethinking the Environmental Impacts of Population , Affluence and Technology ’ , 2003 .

[108]  K. Boulding The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth , 2013 .

[109]  M. Klare Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict , 2005 .

[110]  P. Dasgupta,et al.  Human Well-Being and the Natural Environment , 2002 .

[111]  R. Leach,et al.  The worldwide obesity epidemic. , 2001, Obesity research.

[112]  Simon A. Levin,et al.  Encyclopedia of Biodiversity , 2000 .

[113]  H. Kendall World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity , 2000 .

[114]  Paul R. Ehrlich,et al.  Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect , 2000 .

[115]  G. Daily,et al.  Population diversity: its extent and extinction. , 1997, Science.

[116]  Gene Bazan Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth , 1997 .

[117]  G. Daily,et al.  Impacts of development and global change on the epidemiological environment , 1996, Environment and Development Economics.

[118]  Dianne Dumanoski,et al.  Our Stolen Future , 1996 .

[119]  T. Lovejoy The quantification of biodiversity: an esoteric quest or a vital component of sustainable development? , 1994, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[120]  T. Homer-Dixon Environmental Scarcities and Violent Conflict: Evidence from Cases , 1994 .

[121]  N. Myers Environmental refugees in a globally warmed world , 1993 .

[122]  John P. Holdren,et al.  Population and the energy problem , 1991 .

[123]  G. Daily,et al.  An exploratory model of the impact of rapid climate change on the world food situation , 1990, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[124]  J. Tainter,et al.  The Collapse of Complex Societies , 1988 .

[125]  K. Thompson Cognitive and Analytical Psychology Howard Gardner .Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York, Basic Books, 1983. , 1985 .

[126]  MallinRJ,et al.  Enough already? , 1985, Journal of the American Dental Association.

[127]  R. Cialdini Influence: Science and Practice , 1984 .

[128]  P. Raven,et al.  Long-term biological consequences of nuclear war. , 1983, Science.

[129]  N. Myers,et al.  The Sinking Ark , 1981 .

[130]  P. Ehrlich,et al.  Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species , 1981 .

[131]  Paul R. Ehrlich,et al.  The Population Bomb Revisited , 1979 .

[132]  P. Ehrlich,et al.  Human population and the global environment. , 1974, American scientist.

[133]  H. Daly Toward A Steady-State Economy , 1973 .

[134]  N. Georgescu-Roegen The Entropy Law and the Economic Process , 1973 .

[135]  P. Ehrlich,et al.  IMPACT OF POPULATION GROWTH , 1971, Science.

[136]  P. Ehrlich,et al.  Population, Resources, Environment. Issues in Human Ecology , 1971 .

[137]  L. Brown Seeds of Change: The Green Revolution and Development in the 1970's , 1971 .

[138]  J. Bardach,et al.  Harvest of the Sea. , 1970 .

[139]  O. Frankel Genetic dangers in the green revolution. , 1970 .

[140]  J. Ryther Photosynthesis and fish production in the sea. , 1969, Science.

[141]  ALVIN M. WEINBERG Nuclear Energy and the Agro-Industrial Complex , 1969, Nature.

[142]  N. Pirie Food Resources: Conventional And Novel , 1969 .

[143]  Marjorie V. Batey,et al.  AUTHORS. IN PROFILE , 1969 .

[144]  Herman E. Daly,et al.  On Economics as a Life Science , 1968, Journal of Political Economy.

[145]  P. Ehrlich The Population Bomb. , 1962, Canadian Medical Association journal.

[146]  E. John Russell The Challenge of Man's Future: An Inquiry Concerning the Condition of Man During the Years that Lie Ahead , 1955 .

[147]  H. Brown The challenge of man's future : an inquiry concerning the condition of man during the years that lie ahead , 1955 .

[148]  W. Vogt Road to Survival , 1948 .

[149]  F. Osborn Our Plundered Planet , 1948 .