EDITOR'S COMMENTS
This is a grave prediction that we believe needs no further discourse as the evidence, logic, and mathematics are as straightforward as the last bottle of rum on Earth in a drunkard's cabinet. One day you can guarantee it will be all gone - that's not the issue.
For sure the universe will go on without human activities and cognition forever whereas we have to deal with finite constraints that determine our longevity. How long it will all last is open to speculation, but any difference in conclusions is not of relevance nor important.
What will be; will be...
T A McNeil
CEO Founder
First Financial Insights
YEP, IT'S BLEAK, SAYS AN EXPERT WHO TESTED 1970S END-OF-WORLD PREDICTION
A controversial MIT study from 1972 forecast the collapse of civilization – and Gaya Herrington is here to deliver the bad news
At a UN sustainability meeting several years ago, an economic policy officer came up to Gaya Herrington and introduced himself. Taking her name for a riff on James Lovelock’s earth-as-an-organism Gaia hypothesis, he remarked: “Gaya – that’s not a name, it’s responsibility.”
Herrington, a Dutch sustainability researcher and adviser to the Club of Rome, a Swiss think tank, has made headlines in recent days after she authored a report that appeared to show a controversial 1970s study predicting the collapse of civilization was – apparently – right on time.
Coming amid a cascade of alarming environmental events, from western US and Siberian wildfires to German floods and a report that suggests the Amazon rainforest may no longer be able to perform as a carbon sink, Herrington’s work predicted the collapse could come around 2040 if current trends held.
Research by Herrington, a rising star in efforts to place data analysis at the center of efforts to curb climate breakdown, affirmed the bleaker scenarios put forward in a landmark 1972 MIT study, The Limits to Growth, that presented various outcomes for what could happen when the growth of industrial civilization collided with finite resources.
IT ALL ENDS IN 2040 -MIT
