Pandemic Log
A running commentary on the unfolding pandemic
Societal Collapse
Coronavirus will change the world. It might also lead to a better future
What’s happening in response to the worldwide spread of the SARS CoV-2 virus (and COVID-19, the disease it causes) is a vivid example of a global ‘tipping event,’ in which multiple social systems flip simultaneously to a distinctly new state.
How Western Civilization Could Collapse
by Rachel Nuwer | The political economist Benjamin Friedman once compared modern Western society to a stable bicycle whose wheels are kept spinning by economic growth. Should that forward-propelling motion slow or cease, the pillars that define our society would begin to teeter.
Ebola Epidemic Could Tear Societies Apart
World leaders finally seem to be waking up to the gravity of the Ebola threat. Like the rest of us, they’ve been distracted by the Islamic State’s rampage in Syria and Iraq, the Ukrainian crisis, and even the mini-drama of the Scottish independence referendum.
When Wise Words Are Not Enough
In two books that offer erudite assessments of the dangers facing humankind this century, Vaclav Smil and Chris Patten address these matters in sharply different ways.
Prepare Today for Tomorrow’s Breakdown
What causes societies to collapse, and are our modern societies at risk of collapse themselves?
Of Human Fallout
Remember the population bomb? This profound concern over exponential growth of the world’s population provided ample fodder for academic dispute and dinner conversation during the 1960s and 1970s. Commentators like Stanford University’s Paul Ehrlich warned we would soon see famine, eco-catastrophe, and war as poor nations failed to cope with their surging birth rates. Yet these worries were swept from the popular imagination in the 1990s, when a less gloomy view prevailed: Yes, world population had grown dramatically, but birth rates were dropping practically everywhere. Many conservative commentators declared that the human population explosion was over. The real problem had become the impending global “birth dearth” or “population implosion.”
Ingenuity Theory: Can Humankind Create a Sustainable Civilization?
People don’t like to even think about their values, let alone change them. So confronting and changing our values, I’m convinced, will be our greatest challenge of all.
Synchronous Failure: The Real Danger of the 21st Century
The Robert J. Pelosky, Jr. Distinguished Speaker Series, The Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
Why Population Growth Still Matters
The human population explosion is far from over, and its dire effects will be with us for many decades yet. “As many people will be added in the next 50 years as were added in the past 40 years,” the U.N. writes, “and the increase will be concentrated in the world’s poorest countries, which are already straining to provide basic social services to their people.”