"Modern western civilization reached a pinnacle in the last half of the 20th century, spending over 200 years evolving and spreading throughout the world. A robust social contract, technological advancement and pervasive economic success in the context of democracy and capitalism propelled the project. Unfortunately, two underlying pillars of past success developed intensifying negative consequences, hastening socioeconomic decline: insatiable collective wants and global population growth. The rise and decline of civilizations in history is well documented, yet oddly ignored in today’s dialogue. Contemporary civilization is assumed to be immune from forces that shaped cycles of past civilizations—that our age is somehow an exception. For the first time in human history planetary systems that seemed invisible until recently are sending us the message that our civilization is not exceptional, that there are finite limits to the thrust of humanity’s present trajectory..."https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328720300732#sec0025
In the paper above, published last month in the Elsevier journal Futures, I was particularly struck by one unsettling question the authors raise: "What if nations or terrorist groups turn to the use of weapons of mass destruction to achieve their objectives?"
This inquiry emerges as a direct implication of the research conducted by (Krieger & Meierrieks, 2019) an important source notably absent from the author's citations. There is also a wider and darker dimension to the problem. Climate change is profoundly asymmetric: many of the populations that have contributed least to cumulative emissions are among those most exposed to their consequences, while affluent societies responsible for disproportionately high emissions possess far greater resources with which to protect themselves. Under sufficiently severe conditions, such asymmetries may cease to be perceived merely as injustice and begin to generate resentment, radicalisation and ultimately forms of retaliatory violence. I had already explored the deliberately provocative ethical question behind this possibility in an earlier post:post titled "Do third world countries have the right to engage in retaliatory attacks against rich countries as an act of self-defense?" https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2019/12/are-third-world-countries-entitled-to.html
The deeper warning in the Futures paper is therefore not simply that Western civilization might decline. It is that technological sophistication, economic power and institutional stability should not be mistaken for immunity from the forces that have destabilised civilizations throughout history. A civilization capable of generating extraordinary wealth while simultaneously intensifying inequality, ecological disruption and political resentment may ultimately be manufacturing some of the conditions of its own instability.
