Thank you for writing this profile & post. Two queries/thoughts that came to mind:
Regarding risk from biodiversity collapse—I have yet to see any in depth or thorough research into this. The cited paper (Kareiva and Carranza) devotes only two paragraphs to biodiversity as a potential existential risk, and while it makes good points, I think it only scratches the surface the topic. Biodiversity is a crude but effective proxy measure for ecosystem health, and human civilisation and indeed life relies unavoidably on ecosystem services. It is not implausable that a large enough disruption to these services would represent either a direct or indirect risk. There is simply too much uncertainty around this issue to draw any real conclusions at this point, especially without in depth research. Given that we can observe biodiversity loss occuring today at unprecedented speeds, we should aim to reduce this uncertainty before claiming that the risk posed is minimal or negligible.
Regarding the risk from agricultural collapse—This ties into the previous point and a broader point I would like to spend some time diving into. It is entirely possible (as one comment claims below) that global agriculture will adapt to new conditions and keep pace with growing demand alongside increase environmental pressures, however this will almost certainly rely on hypothetical technological advances that are far from guaranteed to happen. Beyond this, agricultural methods that are more removed from the Earth system (e.g. vertical farming) demand an immense amount of energy and other inputs. And here is the problem, because the question is not whether or not the global agricultural system could potentially absorb stresses it may face, but whether it can do that while almost all other socio-technical systems are in crisis. Systems collapse is a real possibility and an incredibly understudied concept. Couplings between systems (including functional couplings, structural couplings, etc.) introduce cross-system vulnerabilities which mean that as stressors accumulate, the capacity of civilisation to absorb shocks diminishes. Could agriculture cope with projected warming? Possibly, maybe probably. Can it do so while supply chains, global power relations and financial systems are disrupted or in crisis? That’s a much harder prospect.
I think this comment demonstrates the importance of quantifying probabilities. e.g. you write:
Could agriculture cope with projected warming? Possibly, maybe probably. Can it do so while supply chains, global power relations and financial systems are disrupted or in crisis? That’s a much harder prospect.
I can imagine either kinda agreeing with this comment, or completely disagreeing, depending on how we’re each defining “possibly”, “probably”, and “much harder”.
For what it’s worth, I also think it’s probably that agriculture will cope with projected warming. In fact, I think it’s extremely likely that, even conditional on geopolitical disruptions, the effects of technological change will swamp any negative effects of warming. To operationalize, I’d say something like: there’s a 90% chance that global agricultural productivity will be higher in 50 years than it is today.[1]
+1 - Ecosystem services (and more generally, Earth systems) are infamously hard to pin down, which is why I often taken any bottom line analyses of climate change with gigantic grains of salt (in both directions). For example, there’s currently a gold rush on technology to quantify the value of soil sequestration, forest sequestration, etc, and as far as I can tell, experts are still bickering over the basics on how to calculate these data with any accuracy. Those are just a few small pieces of a very very large pie that is difficult to value. Perhaps the modeling takes these massive uncertainties into consideration, but I’m skeptical (and will have to do some research of my own).
Thank you for writing this profile & post. Two queries/thoughts that came to mind:
Regarding risk from biodiversity collapse—I have yet to see any in depth or thorough research into this. The cited paper (Kareiva and Carranza) devotes only two paragraphs to biodiversity as a potential existential risk, and while it makes good points, I think it only scratches the surface the topic. Biodiversity is a crude but effective proxy measure for ecosystem health, and human civilisation and indeed life relies unavoidably on ecosystem services. It is not implausable that a large enough disruption to these services would represent either a direct or indirect risk. There is simply too much uncertainty around this issue to draw any real conclusions at this point, especially without in depth research. Given that we can observe biodiversity loss occuring today at unprecedented speeds, we should aim to reduce this uncertainty before claiming that the risk posed is minimal or negligible.
Regarding the risk from agricultural collapse—This ties into the previous point and a broader point I would like to spend some time diving into. It is entirely possible (as one comment claims below) that global agriculture will adapt to new conditions and keep pace with growing demand alongside increase environmental pressures, however this will almost certainly rely on hypothetical technological advances that are far from guaranteed to happen. Beyond this, agricultural methods that are more removed from the Earth system (e.g. vertical farming) demand an immense amount of energy and other inputs. And here is the problem, because the question is not whether or not the global agricultural system could potentially absorb stresses it may face, but whether it can do that while almost all other socio-technical systems are in crisis. Systems collapse is a real possibility and an incredibly understudied concept. Couplings between systems (including functional couplings, structural couplings, etc.) introduce cross-system vulnerabilities which mean that as stressors accumulate, the capacity of civilisation to absorb shocks diminishes. Could agriculture cope with projected warming? Possibly, maybe probably. Can it do so while supply chains, global power relations and financial systems are disrupted or in crisis? That’s a much harder prospect.
I think this comment demonstrates the importance of quantifying probabilities. e.g. you write:
I can imagine either kinda agreeing with this comment, or completely disagreeing, depending on how we’re each defining “possibly”, “probably”, and “much harder”.
For what it’s worth, I also think it’s probably that agriculture will cope with projected warming. In fact, I think it’s extremely likely that, even conditional on geopolitical disruptions, the effects of technological change will swamp any negative effects of warming. To operationalize, I’d say something like: there’s a 90% chance that global agricultural productivity will be higher in 50 years than it is today.[1]
Note that this is true at the global level. I do expect regional food crises due to droughts. On the whole, I again believe with high confidence (again, like 90%) that the famine death rate in the 21st century will be lower than it was in the 20th century. But of course it won’t be zero. I’d support initiatives like hugely increasing ODA and reforming the World Food Program (which is literally the worst).
I haven’t modelled this out and I’d expect that probability would change +/- 10 p.p. if I spent another 15 minutes thinking about it.
+1 - Ecosystem services (and more generally, Earth systems) are infamously hard to pin down, which is why I often taken any bottom line analyses of climate change with gigantic grains of salt (in both directions). For example, there’s currently a gold rush on technology to quantify the value of soil sequestration, forest sequestration, etc, and as far as I can tell, experts are still bickering over the basics on how to calculate these data with any accuracy. Those are just a few small pieces of a very very large pie that is difficult to value. Perhaps the modeling takes these massive uncertainties into consideration, but I’m skeptical (and will have to do some research of my own).