The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth

Risk of societal collapse

The climate emergency is not an isolated issue. Global heating, although it is catastrophic, is merely one aspect of a profound polycrisis that includes environmental degradation, rising economic inequality, and biodiversity loss (Hoyer et al. 2023). Climate change is a glaring symptom of a deeper systemic issue: ecological overshoot, where human consumption outpaces the Earth's ability to regenerate (Rees 2023, Ripple et al. 2024). Overshoot is an inherently unstable state that cannot persist indefinitely. As pressures increase and the risk of Earth's climate system switching to a catastrophic state rises (Steffen et al. 2018), more and more scientists have begun to research the possibility of societal collapse (Brozović 2023). Even in the absence of global collapse, climate change could cause many millions of additional deaths by 2050 (WHO 2023).