Stanford University scientists say civilization as we know it will ‘disappear’

scientists Stanford University foresaw that society the global economy as we know it today will “disappear” in the coming decades.

Investigators met on the network’s “60 Minutes” program CBS talk about the difficulties that humanity will face in the coming years. And the forecasts were not at all positive.

global extinction crisis

Tony Barnosky, biologist Stanford who is working on using fossil records to map changes in ecosystems, noted that his work suggests that current extinction rates are changing 100 times more than the average over the entire history of the Earth.

Such rapid population decline means the planet is currently experiencing the worst mass extinction since the dinosaurs, Barnosky said. And although the Earth itself has repeatedly recovered from such events, the vast majority of life on our planet has not.

“I and the vast majority of my colleagues believe we had it,” Barnosky’s colleague told reporter Scott Pelley in StanfordPaul Ehrlich, “that the next few decades will be the end of the civilization to which we are accustomed.”

Risk of Chaos

Scientists note that this reality will mean that even if humans manage to somehow survive, the far-reaching effects of the mass extinction, including habitat destruction, disruptions in the natural food chain, soil infertility and more, will lead to the collapse of society.

“I would say it’s too much to say we’re killing the planet because the planet will be fine,” Barnosky said. “What we are doing is killing our way of life.”

“Humanity is not stable. To save our way of life for the entire planet, you will need five more Earths,” Erlich said in an interview. “It’s not clear where they come from.”

“Humanity is very busy sitting on the branch that we cut,” he concluded.

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