Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy

Experts are alarmed that climate disruption could collapse our global civilization. In July 2018, U. K. sustainability professor Jem Bendell published the academic paper “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy”. In it, he predicts the “near-term collapse in society with serious ramifications for the lives of readers”. He asks us to shift our focus to Deep Adaptation, that is, resilience, relinquishment, restoration and reconciliation.

Our speaker, Tim Mock, will summarize this academic paper.

Citizens took Bendell’s warning seriously. They dowloaded his paper 500,000 times. A growing movement of visionaries have repeated the call to action. In April, David Attenborough said in a special BBC TV program “… if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies. … if we better understand the threat we face, the more likely it is that we can avoid such a catastrophic future.”

In May, Australian experts issued a similar paper “Existential climate-related security risk”. They predict collapse of agriculture in the tropics and a billion climate refugees. They warn that unless we take serious action in the next decade, there’s a good chance society could collapse as soon as 2050.

On May 1, the UK Parliament declared an environmental and climate emergency. On June 14, Pope Francis declared a climate emergency.

The cloud of collapse has a silver lining. Only twice since 1970 have emissions dropped: the 1990 collapse of the Soviet Union and the near-collapse of the global economy in 2008.

The future is calling us to greatness says Reverend Michael Dowd.

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