By Madge Waggy
MadgeWaggy.blogspot.com
December 3, 2025
If Present Trends Continue: A Long-Term Prognosis for Human Civilisation
Introduction: The Question Behind the Question
When we ask about humanity's long-term prognosis, "if things continue as they are," we're really asking: What happens when multiple unstable systems destabilise simultaneously while we remain locked in the political and economic patterns that created the instability?
The answer requires examining converging trajectories across climate, geopolitics, technology, resources, and social cohesion-and, critically, how these interact. The prognosis isn't extinction versus utopia; it's a narrowing window for managed transition versus forced transformation through crisis.
Let me be clear about what "if things continue as they are" means: current military spending patterns persist, climate action remains insufficient, inequality continues growing, international cooperation deteriorates, and the political resistances described earlier remain dominant. This is not a worst-case scenario-it's a continuation of present trends.
Track One: Climate and Ecological Collapse
The Physics Doesn't Negotiate
Current trajectory: We're on track for 2.5-3°C warming by 2100, possibly higher. This isn't speculation-it's physics based on current emission rates and committed warming from past emissions.
2030-2050: The Disruption Phase
Even 1.5-2°C warming (now nearly unavoidable) produces:
- Agricultural disruption: Major crop-producing regions face simultaneous heat stress, drought, and unpredictable weather. The "breadbaskets" (U.S. Midwest, Ukraine, Punjab) experience harvest failures that no longer average out globally-they coincide. Food prices spike and remain volatile.
- Water scarcity intensifies: By 2040, an estimated 5.6 billion people (over half of humanity) could face water scarcity at least one month per year. The Himalayan glaciers feeding South and East Asia's rivers are disappearing. Aquifers are depleting. Conflicts over water emerge as existential rather than manageable.
- Coastal displacement begins: Sea level rise of 0.5-1 meter displaces hundreds of millions from coastal cities. Bangladesh, Pacific islands, Florida, the Netherlands-all face choices between engineering solutions costing trillions or mass relocation. This isn't 2100 speculation; it's beginning now and accelerates through mid-century.
- Ecosystem services collapse: Fisheries crash from warming and acidification. Insect populations collapse further, affecting pollination. Coral reefs (supporting 25% of marine species) die almost completely. These aren't aesthetic losses-they're economic infrastructure.
2050-2080: The Cascade Phase
Beyond 2°C, feedback loops become dominant:
- Permafrost methane release: As Arctic permafrost melts, it releases methane (a greenhouse gas 80x more potent than CO2 over 20 years). This is a one-way door-once released, we can't recapture it at scale. Current models suggest this could add 0.5-1°C additional warming beyond human emissions.
- Amazon rainforest dieback: The Amazon is approaching a tipping point where it transitions from rainforest to savanna, releasing billions of tons of stored carbon. Early signs are already visible. Once crossed, this is irreversible on human timescales.
- Ice sheet collapse: Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show signs of irreversible melting. Even stopping all emissions today, they continue melting for centuries, eventually adding 10+ meters of sea level rise. The question isn't if, but how fast-and that depends on decisions made this decade.
2080-2100: The New Normal
At 3°C warming:
- Uninhabitable zones: Regions around the equator become literally uninhabitable during parts of the year-wet bulb temperatures exceed human survival limits. This affects India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, the Middle East. We're talking about 1-2 billion people in currently inhabited areas facing lethal heat.
- Permanent food insecurity: Agricultural productivity falls 20-30% globally from peak, while population peaks around 10 billion. The math doesn't work. Chronic food crises become normal, not exceptional.
- Failed states multiply: Countries unable to provide basic security, food, or water collapse. Climate refugees number in the hundreds of millions. No international system exists to manage this scale of migration.
The Optimistic Climate Scenario
Even this trajectory assumes:
- No major tipping points cascade faster than expected
- Carbon sinks (oceans, forests) continue absorbing roughly half our emissions
- No significant methane releases from Arctic seafloor
- Agricultural adaptation somewhat succeeds
If any of these assumptions fail, we accelerate toward 4-5°C worlds that are genuinely difficult to model because they represent climate states Earth hasn't seen in 3+ million years-before humans existed.
Track Two: Resource Competition and Geopolitical Fragmentation
The Coming Scarcity Wars
Current trajectory: Rising nationalism, deteriorating international institutions, increasing military spending, and declining cooperation-while resource pressures mount.
2030-2050: Stress Fractures
- Water wars become real: The Nile Basin (Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan), Tigris-Euphrates (Turkey, Syria, Iraq), Mekong (China, Southeast Asia), and Indus (India, Pakistan) all face allocation crises. When Pakistan-a nuclear power-faces water shortages threatening its survival, while India-also nuclear-controls upstream flows, we enter unprecedented risk territory.
- Arctic resource competition: As ice melts, shipping routes open and resources become accessible. Russia, the U.S., Canada, and China compete for control. Without strong international frameworks (currently deteriorating), this competition turns militarized.
- Rare earth elements and technology: The energy transition requires massive amounts of lithium, cobalt, rare earth elements. China controls most processing. Competition over these resources entangles with U.S.-China rivalry, creating supply chain vulnerabilities that encourage military action.
- Fishing wars intensify: Fish stocks are collapsing while demand grows. Exclusive economic zones are disputed. Armed conflicts over fishing rights are already occurring (China-Southeast Asia, North Atlantic); they multiply and escalate.
2050-2080: The Fragmentation
- Regional blocs and autarky: Rather than global cooperation, the world fragments into regional blocs attempting self-sufficiency. The EU, North American bloc, Chinese sphere, Russian sphere, and various sub-regions pursue autarky-but none has all resources needed. This creates perpetual low-intensity conflict over borderlands and resources.
- Nuclear proliferation: As security guarantees erode and threats mount, more nations pursue nuclear weapons. South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iran (if not already), Poland-all have motivations. Each new nuclear power increases accident probability, miscalculation risk, and terrorist acquisition risk.
- Climate migration conflicts: By 2070, hundreds of millions of climate refugees seek resettlement. Receiving countries, facing their own climate pressures, militarize borders. Refugee camps become permanent cities. Humanitarian catastrophes multiply.
- Authoritarian resilience: Democracies struggle with climate adaptation's long timelines and painful transitions. Authoritarian states can impose rapid changes, creating a selection pressure favoring authoritarianism. The global democratic recession continues.
The Conflict Trap
Here's the deadly dynamic: Climate stress increases resource competition. Resource competition increases military spending. Military spending diverts resources from adaptation. Lack of adaptation worsens climate impacts. Climate impacts worsen resource scarcity.
Each crisis justifies military priorities over development, ensuring the next crisis is worse. We spiral.
Track Three: Technological Disruption and Existential Risks
The Double-Edged Sword
Current trajectory: Rapid technological development in AI, biotechnology, and synthetic biology-with minimal governance and strong competitive pressures.
2030-2050: The Capability Explosion
- AI reaches and exceeds human-level performance in most cognitive tasks. But we develop these systems:
- Under intense corporate and national competition (racing ahead of safety)
- Without solving alignment (ensuring AI goals match human welfare)
- Deployed by actors with conflicting interests (authoritarian surveillance, corporate profit, military advantage)
- In a context of deteriorating trust and cooperation
The result: Extraordinarily powerful optimization systems pursuing goals that may not align with human flourishing, deployed by actors in conflict with each other. The scenarios range from economic displacement (AI replaces most human labor, creating massive unemployment without social safety nets) to autonomous weapons systems making life-death decisions at machine speed, to AI-powered surveillance creating inescapable authoritarianism.
- Biotechnology becomes accessible: CRISPR and successor technologies make genetic engineering easier and cheaper. The same tools that could eliminate genetic diseases can create engineered pandemics. Unlike nuclear weapons (requiring rare materials and large facilities), bioweapons can be created in small labs by skilled individuals.
Current trend: International biosecurity cooperation is inadequate. Synthetic biology advances faster than governance. In a world of heightened conflict and deteriorating norms, engineered pandemics become not hypothetical but probable-whether from state actors, terrorist groups, or accidental release.
- Autonomous weapons proliferate: Military AI develops under the same competitive pressures that drove nuclear weapons. "Slaughterbots"-small autonomous drones that identify and kill targets-are technically feasible now and becoming cheaper. Arms control agreements are weak or absent. Once deployed by one power, others must match it.
2050-2080: The Control Problem
Two concerning scenarios emerge:
Scenario A: Multipolar AI Competition Multiple state and corporate actors deploy increasingly powerful AI systems without coordination. Each racing ahead because falling behind is unacceptable. This creates:
- Brittle, unstable systems (speed prioritized over safety)
- Unexpected interactions (multiple powerful systems optimizing for different goals)
- Reduced human oversight (decisions too fast for human intervention)
- AI-enabled warfare (conflicts fought at machine speed with machine logic)
Historical analogy: Imagine the Cuban Missile Crisis, but decisions made by algorithms in milliseconds rather than humans over days. The margin for error approaches zero.
Scenario B: Authoritarian Lock-in AI-enabled surveillance, social credit systems, and behavioral prediction become so sophisticated that authoritarian control becomes nearly escape-proof. Dissent is predicted and prevented. Information is completely controlled. Physical rebellion is impossible against autonomous defense systems.
This could lock in authoritarian governance for centuries-a "eternal" dictatorship enabled by technology. Once established, there's no clear path to liberation.
2080-2100: The Question Mark
Beyond 2080, the range of scenarios becomes so wide that prediction is nearly impossible. Either:
- We've navigated these technologies successfully (established governance, aligned AI, biosecurity)
- Or we've experienced catastrophic failures (AI misalignment, engineered pandemic, autonomous weapons war)
The concerning trend: We're developing god-like technological powers while our political systems remain locked in 20th-century nation-state competition. The powers grow exponentially; wisdom grows linearly if at all.
Track Four: Social Cohesion and Institutional Collapse
The Fraying of Trust
Current trajectory: Declining trust in institutions, rising polarization, weakening of democratic norms, and growth of zero-sum thinking-all accelerating.
2030-2050: Legitimacy Crisis
- Democratic backsliding continues: More democracies slide into "electoral authoritarianism"-maintaining election theater while concentrating power. Hungary, Turkey, India, Brazil show the path. As climate stress and economic disruption intensify, voters increasingly choose "strong leaders" over democratic process.
- Information ecosystems fragment completely: AI-generated content becomes indistinguishable from reality. "Deepfakes" are trivial to create. Everyone lives in algorithmically-curated information bubbles. Shared reality-necessary for democratic deliberation-ceases to exist. Political compromise becomes impossible when citizens don't agree on basic facts.
- Inequality reaches historical extremes: The top 1% owns 60-70% of global wealth. This isn't just unfair; it's unstable. Historical precedent shows societies with extreme inequality face:
- Popular uprisings (Arab Spring x 100)
- Authoritarian crackdowns (to maintain order)
- State failure (when elites lose control)
- Generational conflict intensifies: Young people, facing climate catastrophe their elders created, economic systems that don't provide opportunity, and political systems that don't respond to them, increasingly view the current system as illegitimate. But they inherit the same dysfunctional structures.
2050-2080: Institutional Failure
- States lose monopoly on violence: As states fail to provide security, prosperity, or legitimacy, alternative power structures emerge-militias, gangs, warlords, corporate security forces, armed community groups. Parts of Mexico, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan show the pattern; it spreads.
- Mass migration without destination: Climate refugees face militarized borders. Host countries can't or won't absorb them. Massive camps become permanent settlements. Generations grow up stateless, without education or opportunity-creating tomorrow's instability.
- Pandemic becomes endemic: Without global cooperation, emerging pandemics (zoonotic diseases increase with climate change and habitat destruction) can't be contained. COVID-19 was mild compared to what's possible. Society adapts to perpetual pandemic risk through isolation, restrictions, and decreased human contact-corroding social capital further.
- The collapse of professional management: Complex systems (electrical grids, supply chains, financial systems, healthcare) require skilled professional management based on expertise and trust. As these erode, systems fail. Power outages become common. Supply chains unreliable. Financial crises frequent. Healthcare rationed or unavailable.
2080-2100: Neo-Medievalism?
Some political scientists describe the emerging order as "neo-medieval"-not a return to the Middle Ages but a world with:
- Overlapping, competing authorities (states, corporations, criminal networks, militia groups)
- No clear monopoly on legitimate violence
- Fragmented legal orders (different rules in different spaces)
- Walls and fortification (gated communities, bordered zones)
- Extreme inequality (small elites in protected enclaves, masses outside)
This isn't Mad Max-it's more like a high-tech version of feudalism, with elites in climate-controlled compounds protected by private security, while the majority navigates failed states, climate disasters, and resource scarcity.