Thank you to @fionaharvey.bsky.social for keeping this in the news. I'm utterly baffled about how the government think they can suppress this report, because soon the reality is going to catch of with us. @rupertread.bsky.social concerns it wasn't complete. theguardian.com 1/🧵
www.theguardian.com
However, there is profound misunderstanding of the redactions. Undoubtedly the government found some of the conclusions unsettling. However, the real elephant in the room not being addressed, is with our current understanding of ecosystems, no one knows how bad this is. 2/ As I keep desperately trying to point out, absolutely no one has any idea how resilient and robust our civilization is to climate and ecological shocks. I can only think that the reason no one understands what I am saying is the general failure to grasp the ecology of this. 3/ As a graduate in scientific ecology, I can state with 100% certainty, that no one has ever studied the reliance of our civilization on natural ecosystems, but most importantly, the ecology of our civilization. Let us get this clear, our civilization is a system, an ecosystem, not a thing. 4/ Let me explain what I mean. Our civilization only operates as a whole, and is what it is, because of lots of processes and parameters. Our civilization is not robust or self-repairing like a natural ecosystem. 5/ It would be very easy for our civilisation to stop functioning as a whole system. Currently, the only glue that holds our ecosystem together, is that everyone is roughly cooperating, because everyone is pursuing economic growth. 6/ If economic growth started to falter because of the collapse of these natural ecosystems, which our civilisation relies on, there would be no common aims, our civilisation system would rapidly stop operating as a whole, and it would cease to provide us with essentials. 7/ I find most evaluations of future impacts are totally unrealistic as they envisage our civilization working together, albeit it struggling with serious challenges. What is totally unrealistic is there is no mechanism for that to happen. 8/ In the present system, people work together for profit, wealth generation, economic growth, not because they are working together for the common good. It is quite possible to have a system, where people work together for the common good, it is innate to humans. 9/ It is just that currently there is no mechanism for that to happen with our societies/system, as it entirely works on the basis of making profit, economic growth, not the common good. So in times of food shortages, the market system would be very bad for food distribution. 10/ But there is no mechanism, for distributing food on the basis of need, not for profit. Scarcity of food, would create food hyperinflation, which would cause social chaos, and likely the fall of governments, with the possible collapse of the whole system. 11/ No one seems to have thought of this, studied or modelled it. There is no field of science that studies this. It is utterly bizarre that this issue of the resilience of our civilisation to climate and ecological impacts, has been totally overlooked. 12/ I find the key problem is the false assumption that this is understood, and is being studied. But when I have challenged scientists to point to who is studying it, they can't. They are totally flummoxed. They just assumed that some field of science was studying it. 13/ If I push this, people, I mean experts, become very defensive and reluctant to discuss it. But I say, I am just asking you to point to the research, and they can't, because there is none. All I am asking for is for it to be studied. Is that too much to ask? 14/ @georgemonbiot.bsky.social @rupertread.bsky.social @greenjennyjones.bsky.social @nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social @zackpolanski.bsky.social