"World One concluded that there would be an end to civilization by 2040."
-- Adriana Rosekrans
You probably have the picture in mind: A hazy smoke-filled sky, litter coating the streets. Starvation, fear. It's the type of picture painted in dystopian novels, it scares you but it's okay because it’s not real. Right? A real life apocalypse is closer than you might have thought. In 1973, a team of MIT researchers developed a program nicknamed “World One” that predicted when climate change would reach irreversible damage. This program based its predictions off of their current quality of life, population growth, pollution levels, and other statistics. World One concluded that there would be an end to civilization by 2040.
It made another prediction, this time for 2020. World One predicted that by 2020, the quality of life would drop dramatically. While this date seemed far-fetched 45 years ago, it’s looking more probable as we approach 2020.
Since 2020 was the first milestone envisioned by World One, it confirms the fear of global collapse in 2040. ABC news Australia reported that "At around 2020, the condition of the planet becomes highly critical. If we do nothing about it, the quality of life goes down to zero. Pollution becomes so serious it will start to kill people, which in turn will cause the population to diminish, lower than it was in the 1900. At this stage, around 2040 to 2050, civilized life as we know it on this planet will cease to exist."
Since the 19th century, our earth has warmed to one degree Celsius and now The New York Times reports that the Earth is at risk of heating up to two degrees Celsius—which doesn't seem like much to the common citizen. What is the damage of just one more degree? The Times states, “That much warming could expose tens of millions more people worldwide to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding. Half a degree may mean the difference between a world with coral reefs and Arctic summer sea ice and a world without them.”
The Intergovernmental panel on climate change says that half a degree could make small island nations especially vulnerable to sea level rise and could affect up to 32 to 80 million people worldwide. In other parts of the world lack of water would be the issue. The Mediterranean region is reported to see a “particularly strong increases in dryness in a 2°C world compared to a 1.5°C world” and about 37% of world population will be affected by extreme heat, compared to the 14% now. “Global crop yields are expected to be lower under 2°C of warming compared to 1.5°C, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America.” which would mean extreme famine and hunger. Species could also lose almost half their range. One degree warmer could flip the world around as we know it.
The world’s natural resources are also in crisis, especially since the world’s population is assumed to grow to 9 billion by 2050. Matt Young, a writer for news.com.au says, “With the world’s population set to hit 9 billion by 2050, demands on the Earth to meet food and water supplies could be stretched so tightly humankind will implode on itself; causing civil wars, relentless terrorism and heightened weather events that will leave the world in tatters.”
ABC News Australia also reported that the “intensity and frequency of extreme weather events” including flooding, droughts and wildfires, paired with the spread of agricultural pests and disease, will leave food supply in uncharted territory. “This is further exacerbated by the growing issue of water scarcity, which is accelerating at such a pace that two-thirds of the world’s population could live under water stress conditions by 2025 [....] food prices and increasing political instability are likely to magnify the impacts of food production shocks, causing a cascade of economic, social and political impacts across the globe.”
People living in the poorest communities will be the affected the most which will divide the social economic structure even more. Poverty, starvation, and lack of shelter will work its way up and start to affect everyone but the 1%. Because the people in public office at the moment are, essentially, the one percent, there has been very little attention given to this issue, and not much is being done about it.
President Donald Trump has commented on it briefly. “I think something’s happening. Something’s changing and it will change back again,” Trump said in a recent New York Times article. The writer, Lisa Friedman, responded to this comment with a fact check, “Climate change will not reverse itself. Long-term average global temperatures have moved in one direction in the past 115 years: upward. The rise of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the start of the Industrial Revolution has already led to more intense wildfire seasons and the melting of Arctic sea ice.”
Having a president who does not believe there is anything that needs to be done about climate change could be extremely dangerous. David Roberts, a writer for Vox commented on the issue with politicians in office not believing climate change, writing, “...front-line, hardcore denialism of the ‘it’s a hoax’ variety has largely receded to the base. Republican leaders and spokespeople have moved back to the next line of defense: Yes, the climate is changing, but we don’t know to what extent humans are responsible.”
“Human responsibility is the whole point,” Roberts continues.“It is the heart of the matter. That is precisely what the much-discussed scientific consensus is a consensus about. Denying it — or muddying it up, saying ‘many scientists would debate the percentage [that] is contributable to man versus normal fluctuations’ — is what we mean when we talk about denialism.”
Trump has taken many steps back when it comes to climate change. He took the U.S out of Paris international climate agreement, he cut back the US Environmental Protection Agency, and is on record saying that global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese to attack US manufacturing.
Climate change is often talked about in a desperate way, a hands shaking shoulders yelling “wake up!” way. So how are we waking up? California has Integrated a Plan for Addressing Climate Change, their hope is to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Some strategies include increasing renewable electricity production to 50%, Reduce Petroleum Use by 50% in Vehicles, Reduce GHG Emissions from Natural and Working Lands, and more. California is not the only state doing something about this potential global apocalypse, the L.A Times says that many states are requiring certain percentages of electricity to come from renewable sources such as solar and wind, Hawaii wants 100% by 2014, California wants 50% by 2030 and Ohio wants 12.5% by 2027. So while we have many grim statistics to look at, there may be hope in the long run.
It made another prediction, this time for 2020. World One predicted that by 2020, the quality of life would drop dramatically. While this date seemed far-fetched 45 years ago, it’s looking more probable as we approach 2020.
Since 2020 was the first milestone envisioned by World One, it confirms the fear of global collapse in 2040. ABC news Australia reported that "At around 2020, the condition of the planet becomes highly critical. If we do nothing about it, the quality of life goes down to zero. Pollution becomes so serious it will start to kill people, which in turn will cause the population to diminish, lower than it was in the 1900. At this stage, around 2040 to 2050, civilized life as we know it on this planet will cease to exist."
Since the 19th century, our earth has warmed to one degree Celsius and now The New York Times reports that the Earth is at risk of heating up to two degrees Celsius—which doesn't seem like much to the common citizen. What is the damage of just one more degree? The Times states, “That much warming could expose tens of millions more people worldwide to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding. Half a degree may mean the difference between a world with coral reefs and Arctic summer sea ice and a world without them.”
The Intergovernmental panel on climate change says that half a degree could make small island nations especially vulnerable to sea level rise and could affect up to 32 to 80 million people worldwide. In other parts of the world lack of water would be the issue. The Mediterranean region is reported to see a “particularly strong increases in dryness in a 2°C world compared to a 1.5°C world” and about 37% of world population will be affected by extreme heat, compared to the 14% now. “Global crop yields are expected to be lower under 2°C of warming compared to 1.5°C, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America.” which would mean extreme famine and hunger. Species could also lose almost half their range. One degree warmer could flip the world around as we know it.
The world’s natural resources are also in crisis, especially since the world’s population is assumed to grow to 9 billion by 2050. Matt Young, a writer for news.com.au says, “With the world’s population set to hit 9 billion by 2050, demands on the Earth to meet food and water supplies could be stretched so tightly humankind will implode on itself; causing civil wars, relentless terrorism and heightened weather events that will leave the world in tatters.”
ABC News Australia also reported that the “intensity and frequency of extreme weather events” including flooding, droughts and wildfires, paired with the spread of agricultural pests and disease, will leave food supply in uncharted territory. “This is further exacerbated by the growing issue of water scarcity, which is accelerating at such a pace that two-thirds of the world’s population could live under water stress conditions by 2025 [....] food prices and increasing political instability are likely to magnify the impacts of food production shocks, causing a cascade of economic, social and political impacts across the globe.”
People living in the poorest communities will be the affected the most which will divide the social economic structure even more. Poverty, starvation, and lack of shelter will work its way up and start to affect everyone but the 1%. Because the people in public office at the moment are, essentially, the one percent, there has been very little attention given to this issue, and not much is being done about it.
President Donald Trump has commented on it briefly. “I think something’s happening. Something’s changing and it will change back again,” Trump said in a recent New York Times article. The writer, Lisa Friedman, responded to this comment with a fact check, “Climate change will not reverse itself. Long-term average global temperatures have moved in one direction in the past 115 years: upward. The rise of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the start of the Industrial Revolution has already led to more intense wildfire seasons and the melting of Arctic sea ice.”
Having a president who does not believe there is anything that needs to be done about climate change could be extremely dangerous. David Roberts, a writer for Vox commented on the issue with politicians in office not believing climate change, writing, “...front-line, hardcore denialism of the ‘it’s a hoax’ variety has largely receded to the base. Republican leaders and spokespeople have moved back to the next line of defense: Yes, the climate is changing, but we don’t know to what extent humans are responsible.”
“Human responsibility is the whole point,” Roberts continues.“It is the heart of the matter. That is precisely what the much-discussed scientific consensus is a consensus about. Denying it — or muddying it up, saying ‘many scientists would debate the percentage [that] is contributable to man versus normal fluctuations’ — is what we mean when we talk about denialism.”
Trump has taken many steps back when it comes to climate change. He took the U.S out of Paris international climate agreement, he cut back the US Environmental Protection Agency, and is on record saying that global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese to attack US manufacturing.
Climate change is often talked about in a desperate way, a hands shaking shoulders yelling “wake up!” way. So how are we waking up? California has Integrated a Plan for Addressing Climate Change, their hope is to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. Some strategies include increasing renewable electricity production to 50%, Reduce Petroleum Use by 50% in Vehicles, Reduce GHG Emissions from Natural and Working Lands, and more. California is not the only state doing something about this potential global apocalypse, the L.A Times says that many states are requiring certain percentages of electricity to come from renewable sources such as solar and wind, Hawaii wants 100% by 2014, California wants 50% by 2030 and Ohio wants 12.5% by 2027. So while we have many grim statistics to look at, there may be hope in the long run.
