From “Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart” by Brian D. McLaren
People who think deeply about our current situation fear environmental collapse. But with no less urgency they fear the social collapse that will likely accompany the early stages of environmental collapse. Long before the last ice sheet has melted, long before the critical ocean currents have completely stopped their flow, long before the sea levels have engulfed our coastal cities, they imagine how the economies and governments of Earth’s most powerful nations might cope with shock after shock. Fires, storms, floods, depleted aquifers, degraded soils, and droughts will lead to crop failures. Crop failures will lead to food shortages. Food shortages will lead to mass unemployment and mass migration, in turn leading to financial recessions and depressions, leading to supply chain disruptions, leading to un-insurability and debt defaults, leading to bank failures and currency failures.
They imagine how civil unrest would erupt and how governments would respond with increased crackdowns, which would increase civil unrest which would intensify government crackdowns. When governments can no longer keep the gas or electricity flowing, the grocery stores full of affordable food, the hospitals staffed with doctors and nurses and supplied with medicines, the banks functioning, the police and military forces maintaining order – and following orders, they imagine how civilization as we know it could quickly pass from stable to struggling to failing to fragmenting to collapsing.
In other words, long before the Earth destroys us, we destroy ourselves.