Calmly coasting towards complete collapse

I have been brooding on the title for this editorial. Discarded ideas included: “The sleep of reason breeds monsters,” “Will shifting baseline syndrome kill us all?,” “Path to perdition,” and “Lessons from biology: limitless growth ends in extinction.” Quite apocalyptic titles, I know, but alas, there is no exaggeration here. The various titles share an (implicit) urgent “call to action” character because we really are on the brink of ecological, climate, and societal disaster. That qualifier “really” is the linguistic canary in the coalmine because as I write down this ominous message, it is hard for me, and others as well probably, to believe it is true. How can this be? I focussed on specific biological (“neoteny”) and social (“shifting baseline syndrome”) explanations for our irrational behavior before.^[1] Now I want to highlight some psychological aspects, point out the powerful forces we are up against and end with an urgent plea.

Coming out of high school, I started studying philosophy and psychology. In the last decades of the 20th century, a lot of thought went into explaining why people witnessing ongoing emergencies could often remain aloof, even if action would involve no personal risks. In psychological experiments, there was one constant finding: the effect correlated directly with the number of onlookers. To explain such inaction and the correlation, theories resolved around two major concepts: “diffusion of responsibility” (related to the pernicious “tragedy of the commons” in economic theory, which indeed contributed to, and has negative consequences for, our present-day state of emergency) and the “bystander effect.” An important aspect of the latter also contributes to our current dangerous inertia: we interpret the severity of a situation based on the behavior of others. If most of us, and even more importantly our governments, hardly do anything and in the main, it is “business as usual,” then what I said about being close to disaster must be an exaggeration or even completely false. This was pointed out in a recent article of the indefatigable George Montbiot (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/28/dear-ministers-i-am-a-climate-crisis-campaigner-nationalise-me-right-now; assessed August 28, 2024). Thus, we are watching the collapse of our life support system, and do nothing. I was reminded of cultivating flasks of microbes, which after exponential growth, if left unattended, all die. The earth is our flask, and we are indeed leaving it unattended. If we persist in this behavior, our species is going to have a hard time surviving.

So, what are these forces (and ideas) that we are up against? What I might colloquially refer to as the “tech bros” and media moguls, a group of powerful, extremely rich, and influential individuals, representing the current winners of the unbridled economic growth game. They can be described as advocates for a toxic brew of fatal short-term capitalist thinking based on ever-increasing consumption, and the worldview of libertarianism (“the political philosophy of puberty”) based upon the immature idea of totally unrestricted freedom. Thrown into that dangerous mix are a lack of critical thought and/or morality, as exemplified by the invocation of “free speech absolutism” to justify the spread of stunning numbers of falsehoods, for example, regarding climate and environment. This massive misinformation adds another reason for our overall inertia. Surprisingly, though not completely considering their consumer/capitalist point of view, many of these individuals also worry about declining birth rates. Let that sink in: on a planet swamped with people and their livestock, the richest bro of all stated in 2022: “…a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces, by far.” This might make sense if he worries about the birth rate of a specific group or civilization, clearly signaling deeply held racism; see also Speijer.^[2]

I want to end with a heartfelt entreaty. As biologists, we know the only realistic course towards a sustainable future: Fewer people consuming less. Thus, we must put all our efforts into spreading scientifically based insights, while combatting misinformation, in order to realize a noncatastrophic reduction of the world population, and stringently lessen all-round consumption (especially of fossil fuels and livestock). An important contribution towards rationally facing the challenging future was discussed in BioEssays not long ago.^{[3, 4]} I implore my fellow scientists to stop hiding their heads in the sand, loudly proclaim the scientific consensus, and do their utmost to initiate wide-ranging political and societal action, especially because even climate scientists themselves are being taken by surprise: climate change is accelerating.^[5] We have wasted precious time way too long already.