![]() The most serious of these problems show signs of rapidly escalating severity, especially climate disruption. Humankind finds itself engaged in what Prince Charles described as ‘an act of suicide on a grand scale’, facing what the UK's Chief Scientific Advisor John Beddington called a ‘perfect storm’ of environmental problems. īut today, for the first time, humanity's global civilization-the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded-is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems. In many, if not most, cases, overexploitation of the environment was one proximate or an ultimate cause. Sometimes, as in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, new civilizations rose in succession. All those previous collapses were local or regional elsewhere, other societies and civilizations persisted unaffected. ![]() ![]() Some, such as those of Egypt and China, have recovered from collapses at various stages others, such as that of Easter Island or the Classic Maya, were apparently permanent. Virtually every past civilization has eventually undergone collapse, a loss of socio-political-economic complexity usually accompanied by a dramatic decline in population size. ![]()
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