The fate of complex civilizations

I’ve previously posted remarks on the most urgent threat we face, climate change, and on the Limits to Growth analyses that convincingly argue that our growth-centered industrial society would eventually be forced into decline by some other problem, if not by climate change. But there is a third tier of threat: the possibility that all large, complex civilizations, even lacking industrialization, inherently tend to become unstable and at risk of collapse. Let’s touch on that briefly.

 

 

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