![]() Regardless of which complex system is being studied, there’s a way of telling whether it is approaching a tipping point. ![]() Everything we know and love depends on AMOC remaining in the on state. It has been on for almost 12,000 years, following a devastating, thousand-year off state called the Younger Dryas (12,900 to 11,700 years ago), which caused a global spiral of environmental change. Without it, the UK would have a climate similar to Siberia’s.ĪMOC has two equilibrium states: on and off. For example, the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which delivers heat from the tropics towards the poles, is being disrupted by the melting of Arctic ice, and has begun to weaken. Global circulation is already looking vulnerable. Without it, the UK would have a climate like Siberia’s The ocean current that brings heat from the tropics is weakening. The Cerrado and the rainforest both create “ rivers in the sky” – streams of wet air – that distribute rainfall around the world and help to drive global circulation: the movement of air and ocean currents. They are being hammered by a deadly combination of clearing, burning and heating, and are already threatened with possible systemic collapse. As less water feeds the rivers, this could exacerbate the stress afflicting the rainforests. The Cerrado is the source of some of South America’s great rivers, including those flowing north into the Amazon basin. In combination with global heating, some scientists warn, this vicious cycle could – soon and suddenly – flip the entire system into desert. This means smaller plants die, ensuring that even less water is circulated. As the trees are felled, the air becomes drier. But over the past few years, vast tracts of the Cerrado have been cleared to plant crops – mostly soya to feed the world’s chickens and pigs. Its vegetation depends on dew forming, which depends in turn on deep-rooted trees drawing up groundwater, then releasing it into the air through their leaves. A belt of savannah, known as the Cerrado, covers central Brazil. Here’s one of the many ways in which it could occur. This is what happened during previous mass extinctions. If one system crashes, it is likely to drag others down, triggering a cascade of chaos known as systemic environmental collapse. But, all over the world, crucial systems appear to be approaching their tipping points. Human civilisation relies on current equilibrium states. Deforestation in Brazil’s Cerrado: ‘If one system crashes, it is likely to drag others down, triggering a cascade of chaos known as systemic environmental collapse.’ Photograph: Reuters It passes a tipping point, then falls into a new state of equilibrium, which is often impossible to reverse. It can absorb stress up to a certain point. In normal conditions, the system regulates itself, maintaining a state of equilibrium. It doesn’t matter whether the system is a banking network, a nation state, a rainforest or an Antarctic ice shelf its behaviour follows certain mathematical rules. People who study complex systems have discovered that they behave in consistent ways. We know that our lives are entirely dependent on complex natural systems: the atmosphere, ocean currents, the soil, the planet’s webs of life. It is impossible to discern, in our response to what we know, the primacy of our survival instinct. In the back of our minds, there’s a voice whispering, “If it were really so serious, someone would stop us.” If we attend to these issues at all, we do so in ways that are petty, tokenistic, comically ill-matched to the scale of our predicament. We double down on destruction, swapping our ordinary cars for SUVs, jetting to Oblivia on a long-haul flight, burning it all up in a final frenzy. We convince ourselves that it’s not so serious, or even that it isn’t happening. When faced with an impending or chronic threat, such as climate or ecological breakdown, we seem to go out of our way to compromise our survival. When confronted by an impending threat, such as winter, they invest great resources into avoiding or withstanding it: migrating or hibernating, for example. It’s that we always put our survival first. There is a myth about human beings that withstands all evidence. This article titled “Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction” was written by George Monbiot, for The Guardian on Saturday 30th October 2021 07.00 UTC ![]() I ndy editor’s note: The Indy will from time to time re-publish articles from The Guardian using the Guardian’s Open Platform.
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