The World Has Already Ended
“You say the ocean’s rising,
Like I give a shit,
You say the entire world’s ending,
Honey, it already did.”
– All Eyes On Me by Bo Burnham
The world that many people grew up in is already gone, changed by a world of superstorms, megadroughts, brutal warmth waves, rising sea ranges, poisonous chemical compounds, and mass extinction. It occurred so steadily that most individuals didn’t even discover, however they’ll quickly.
Many individuals, significantly these in first-world international locations, have been comparatively insulated from the results of the polycrisis, even when they’ve seen their way of life drop. So it’s straightforward for them to dismiss warnings in regards to the finish of the world.
I’ve usually heard individuals say issues like, “What’s with all of the doom and gloom? Certain, the climate is slightly worse, however for probably the most half, issues are high-quality.” The aim of this text is to show that issues are not high-quality. In actual fact, issues are worse than ever, and it’s all downhill from right here.
Civilization was born throughout the Holocene, an epoch that lasted about 10,000 years. Throughout this time, the common world temperature was extremely steady, by no means various greater than 1°C. Because of this, climate patterns have been additionally very steady, creating circumstances that have been good for societies to flourish.
With extra predictable climate, farmers have been in a position to significantly develop agriculture, and the flexibility to stockpile grain contributed to the event of the primary civilizations. People have had the intelligence essential to type civilizations for about 300,000 years, however the Holocene made it attainable.
We inherited an exquisite world lined with huge forests and teeming with hundreds of thousands of species. And in only a couple hundred years, we destroyed it. Forests are dying, numerous species are going extinct, and the climate has turn into increasingly dangerous and unpredictable.
The Holocene has ended, and we’re coming into a darkish new epoch often called the Anthropocene, which is outlined by humanity’s influence on geology and the Earth’s ecosystems. Let’s take a more in-depth take a look at the Anthropocene and what we will count on to see as we journey by it.
Local weather Change
The obvious signal that the Holocene has ended is local weather change. All through the Holocene, the focus of carbon dioxide (CO2) within the ambiance was below 300 parts per million. Now it’s nicely above 400 parts per million and rising quick.
CO2 ranges have spiked at numerous instances all through Earth’s historical past, nevertheless it’s often from volcanoes. The result’s widespread biodiversity loss as a result of many species are unable to adapt to spiking temperatures.
Presently, CO2 is being emitted 200 times faster than previous extinction occasions. Meaning temperatures are going to rise sooner than they’ve in hundreds of thousands of years, setting us up for what could become the worst mass extinction occasion in Earth’s historical past.
Already, we’ve had the most popular 12-month interval in 125,000 years. The typical world temperature has risen almost 1.5°C since pre-industrial instances, bringing in regards to the hottest summer on record and a collection of devastating heat waves, a few of which killed people when the ability went out.
Later this century, the warmth will make big swaths of the planet uninhabitable for humans. When that occurs, individuals shall be compelled to maneuver nearer to the poles, however these locations will expertise extreme heat waves as nicely, which will cause the permafrost to thaw faster, releasing extra greenhouse gases and making the planet even hotter.
Greenland has already seen its share of record-breaking heat waves. Usually, the air above the height of Greenland’s ice sheet is so chilly that it solely snows there. However a pair years in the past, for the primary time in recorded historical past, it rained, inflicting the ice sheet to soften even sooner. At this level, it has shrunk beyond the point of no return and can add a minimum of another foot of sea degree rise.
Even Antarctica is getting excessive warmth waves. Final yr, components of the continent had temperatures 38.5°C above normal, the most popular temperature anomaly ever recorded. The continent is turning into more and more unrecognizable, with moss, algae, and flowers blooming like by no means earlier than.
The ocean round Antarctica can be getting hotter. The dearth of sea ice this yr was so extremely low that it shouldn’t have been possible. Because of this, thousands of baby penguins died, and specialists imagine emperor penguins may go extinct by the end of the century.
It’s not simply the ocean ice that’s melting. Scientists now imagine that the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet is unavoidable and can ultimately convey one other 10 feet of sea level rise. This can be a big deal. It means hundreds of coastal cities world wide will ultimately be deserted, and but the common particular person doesn’t even know.
Because the world warms, glaciers that folks depend upon for consuming and irrigation are melting. Nearly 2 billion people depend on the Himalayan glaciers for water, however they’re quickly disappearing. By the tip of the century, they’ll be 75% smaller.
Civilization can’t exist with out dependable sources of water, however local weather change is warping the fresh water cycle, making many locations too dry for societies to inhabit. We’re already dealing with a major water crisis, and that is only the start. Droughts are permanently changing the land and turning some locations into deserts.
Issues are so dangerous that total lakes are drying up, ruining the lives of farmers, who’re committing suicide at record rates. Even the Nice Salt Lake will most likely dry up by the end of the decade. When it does, it’s going to produce plumes of toxic dust, placing the well being of hundreds of thousands in danger.
The rivers are drying up, too. Each the Mississippi river and the Amazon river are hitting document lows. Another rivers hitting document lows embody the Nile river, the Indus river, the Rio Grande, and the Colorado river, however there are numerous others, not point out all of the streams that are vanishing.
Farmers are more and more counting on aquifers to water their crops, however these are additionally being depleted. Already, hundreds of wells world wide are running dry, and farmland is being abandoned. It will push meals costs even increased.
Whereas some locations are going by megadroughts, different locations are having among the worst floods ever. The type of storms that used to occur as soon as in a thousand years are actually a regular occurrence. Because of this, our flood maps are outdated.
Extreme climate is now the new normal. Tornadoes are getting stronger and lasting longer, and category-5 hurricanes are actually able to popping up overnight. Even blizzards have gotten extra widespread, quadrupling in number because the mid-Twentieth century.
One motive the climate is turning into unpredictable is due to the polar jet stream, which is quickly falling apart attributable to arctic amplification. Scientists imagine it’s going to move permanently by 2060, creating an entire new local weather regime that our agricultural system was not designed for.
The oceans are additionally in crisis attributable to local weather change. Warmth is accumulating within the ocean at a fee of 5 Hiroshima bombs per second, defending us from the bulk of global warming and making individuals complacent.
In the meantime, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is slowing down and can collapse some time this century. The end result shall be a sudden change in temperature and climate patterns world wide. Europe will turn into a lot cooler, North America will turn into a lot hotter, and climate patterns world wide shall be completely altered.
The change in ocean circulation can even influence marine ecosystems, inflicting a cascading impact on meals chains. Already, huge useless zones within the ocean are killing fish by the tens of thousands, and document warmth is killing phytoplankton, forcing fish emigrate North.
Ocean temperatures have been off the charts all year, and that is only the start. All of that is occurring at a time after we haven’t formally reached 1.5°C of warming. Scientists imagine the impacts of local weather change will get exponentially worse because the planet warms, and we’re on our option to 4°C of warming by the tip of the century.
Air pollution
One other signal that the Holocene has ended is the buildup of artificial chemical compounds within the atmosphere, particularly within the air we breathe. Air air pollution from fossil fuels changes the brain, makes bones more brittle, and will increase the chance of Parkinson’s disease. Already, air air pollution kills about 7 million people every year, and the quantity retains rising.
One other sort of air pollution that has gotten more and more worse lately is chemical air pollution—particularly, PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), also referred to as “without end chemical compounds.” These artificial chemical compounds are utilized in hundreds of on a regular basis merchandise and inevitably make their means into the soil, crops, water, and air.
Even tiny quantities of without end chemical compounds pose health risks and disrupt key biological processes, contributing to all types of illnesses in each people and animals. Large quantities of without end chemical compounds will be found in wildlife everywhere in the world. It’s so dangerous that consuming one wild fish is the equal of consuming tainted water for a month.
This map exhibits 50,000 websites across the U.S. which might be contaminated with without end chemical compounds. Even rainwater contains forever chemicals above the EPA’s official security restrict. Take into consideration that: Rain, which was pure and secure to drink, is now dangerously polluted. All these without end chemical compounds in our surroundings is simply one of many causes most cancers charges are skyrocketing.
One other sort of air pollution that’s getting exponentially worse is plastic air pollution. For a very long time, plastic was thought-about secure, however we now know that it will definitely breaks down into dangerous microplastics, even when recycled.
As single-use plastic manufacturing ramps up, microplastics are making their means into each nook of the Earth. They’ve been discovered within the pristine snows of Antarctica and deep inside caves that have been closed to the general public for many years. That’s as a result of microplastics are actually a part of the ambiance. There are such a lot of of them in the clouds and in the rain that they’re even disrupting weather patterns.
Most microplastics find yourself within the ocean, going as deep as the underside of the Mariana Trench. And not too long ago, scientists realized there are a million times more microplastics within the ocean than we thought. It’s so dangerous that the oceans are actually emitting microplastics.
With all these microplastics within the air, most individuals are actually inhaling a credit card’s worth of plastic each week. They’re additionally eating that much plastic each week, and it’s severely damaging their intestines.
Our our bodies our now filled with microplastics. They’re in our lungs, in our veins, in our hearts, and even in breast milk. They’ve additionally made their means into our brains, leading to toxic effects that we’re solely starting to grasp.
Thousands and thousands of years from now, when the Earth has recovered from the sixth mass extinction, one of many solely indicators that people existed shall be a skinny layer of plastic in the fossil record.
Biodiversity
Talking of the sixth mass extinction, it’s nicely underway and quickly getting worse due to local weather change, air pollution, and habitat loss.
People have already killed 83% of wildlife and 1/2 of plants, they usually’ve worn out 71 branches of species from the tree of life. A pair centuries in the past, people made up a small proportion of animal life, however in the present day, people and their livestock make up 96% of animal biomass.
Since 1970, world wildlife populations have fallen by 69%, with species going extinct 1000 times faster than they have been earlier than people got here alongside. It’s already so dangerous that it’ll take the Earth a minimum of 10 million years to get better. Within the meantime, meals webs that we depend on for survival are in danger of collapsing.
Animals of every kind are in decline: mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and especially birds. Since 1500, a minimum of 182 species of birds have gone extinct, and in the present day, half of the world’s fowl species are in decline.
A few of it’s from extreme heat, a few of it’s from plastic pollution, and the remainder is from different human activities. Thus far, 1/3 of North America’s birds have vanished, and a pair of/3 of fowl species are facing extinction.
Much more alarming is what’s occurring to bugs. Prior to now 50 years, insect numbers have declined by 75%. Presently, insect populations are declining exponentially at a fee of about 2.5% per year. Though bugs are unlikely to vanish fully, at this fee they might be mostly gone by the tip of the century.
Bugs are presumably an important sort of animal as a result of each different animal—plus many crops—depend upon bugs for his or her survival. That’s why scientists warn that the collapse of bugs means the collapse of nature. There isn’t a means for people to exchange the work done by quintillions of bugs daily.
One of many extra instant penalties of the insect apocalypse is the decline of pollinators. About 75% of the world’s flowers and 35% of the world’s crops depend on pollinators to breed, however already, there are 70% fewer pollinators in polluted areas as a result of the scent makes it difficult for them to seek out flowers.
Cleansing up the air air pollution would assist, however honeybees reside half as long as they used to due to different environmental contaminants reminiscent of pesticides. In some locations, flying insect numbers have plunged as much as 60% over the previous 20 years, and the dearth of pollinators has already reduced the variety of wholesome meals farmers can produce.
If there’s any sort of life extra vital than the bugs, it’s marine life. As Paul Watson once said, “The fact is that if the ocean dies, we die – as a result of the ocean gives all of these issues which make it attainable for us to dwell on the planet.”
He went on to elucidate that organisms reminiscent of phytoplankton produce 70% of the oxygen we breathe, and their numbers have dropped 40% since 1950 and proceed to say no by about 1% per yr. The disappearance wouldn’t trigger everybody to suffocate instantly because the ambiance has a big reservoir of oxygen, however it might trigger marine meals chains to break down, which might have cascading results on all plant and animal life.
Indicators that the ocean is dying are throughout us. The world’s fisheries are collapsing, and the fish that stay are much smaller than their forebears. Grey whales are washing up dead on the coasts, hundreds of fish are suffocating, and billions of snow crabs are starving to death. These are the early levels of the best extinction of marine life in 250 million years.
In actual fact, the ocean is warming so rapidly that people may doubtlessly wipe out almost all marine life. Even when they don’t, plastic is more likely to outweigh all of the fish within the ocean by 2050, making it even more durable for marine life to get better.
The forests can even have a tough time recovering. Over the previous three centuries, people have destroyed about 35% of the world’s forests. For a very long time, deforestation was the principle motive, however now local weather change is killing the forests as nicely, inflicting them to dry up and shrink.
Take the Amazon rainforest, for instance, the most important and most biodiverse forest on the planet. It used to behave as a carbon sink, however due to droughts and wildfires, it’s now emitting more carbon than it absorbs. Many scientists imagine it has already reached its tipping point and can flip right into a grassy savannah later this century.
It’s not simply the forests. Crops in every single place are going extinct 350 times faster than typical. Greater than 1/3 of the world’s wetlands have been destroyed, 40% of plant species are at risk of extinction, and the deserts are getting so scorching that saguaro cacti are collapsing. Should you’re questioning what many of the world will appear like by the tip of the century, image a barren wasteland.
Planetary Boundaries
If somebody have been to invent a replicator like in Star Trek, it may be attainable to outlive on a barren wasteland. Sadly, we depend on the richness of biodiversity to develop the meals we want. As the food chain collapses, it’s going to get more durable and more durable to provide sufficient energy for everyone.
95% of the meals we produce depends on topsoil, which is now eroding up to 1000 times faster than it kinds. Since farmers started tilling the land of the Midwestern United States 160 years in the past, 50 billion tons of topsoil have been misplaced. Due to topsoil erosion, 30% of the world’s arable land has become unproductive.
In the meantime, farmers are complaining that there are no normal seasons anymore. With out the predictable climate patterns we loved in the course of the Holocene, an space can go from extraordinarily dry to extraordinarily moist in a matter of days, ruining farmers’ crops. And even when floods weren’t an issue, droughts and heat waves would kill the crops as an alternative. On high of all that, the meals we do handle to develop is less healthy.
In September of 2023, a group of scientists quantified nine processes that regulate the soundness and resilience of the Earth system. They’re referred to as planetary boundaries, and as soon as they’re crossed, the atmosphere is not in a position to self-regulate.
The nine boundaries they recognized embody local weather change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater change, biogeochemical flows, novel entities (artificial chemical compounds), ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol cooling, and stratospheric ozone depletion. Because it seems, now we have already crossed six of these boundaries.
Take into consideration what this implies: The world by which civilization developed is already gone. Every little thing is altering, and the velocity of that change is accelerating. As Climate Change Doomer tells us time and again, “Every little thing people have constructed, was designed for a local weather that not exists.”
Conclusion
So what will we do?
As I hope this text has made clear, it’s already too late to return to the Holocene. The Anthropocene is right here to remain, and the sixth mass extinction has only just begun. The primary query now could be whether or not people will go extinct, however that relies on what we do subsequent.
Our greatest shot at saving the human race is to cease burning fossil fuels as rapidly as attainable and return to native dwelling, the place communities develop their very own meals and create their very own merchandise. This might require a radical transformation of world society the place each business that doesn’t contribute to individuals’s fundamental wants could be sidelined, and 90% of individuals would work on farms, as they did over two centuries in the past.
Sadly, the chances of this truly occurring are… let’s say… small. That doesn’t imply we shouldn’t hold attempting, however the actuality is that humanity was doomed from the beginning. As defined in this article, “The evolutionary course of elevates probably the most aggressive and exploitative species and so the very motive for humanity’s success is the reason for our inevitable collapse.”
That is why I’m a doomer. As a result of the world has already ended, and human nature prevents it from creating a greater world. Now, I’m simply ready for the tip whereas having fun with the time now we have left, like somebody watching their final sundown.
I’ll shut with some extra tune lyrics:
Oh-oh, is that this the world we created?
We made it on our personal
Is that this the world we devasted, proper to the bone?
If there is a God within the sky, trying down
What can he consider what we have achieved
To the world that He created?
– Is This The World We Created…? by Queen