The DOI matches its Crossref record; 94 of the 94 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Re-framing the threat of global warming: an empirical causal loop diagram of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse
Open accessAbstract
Abstract There is increasing concern that climate change poses an existential risk to humanity. Understanding these worst-case scenarios is essential for good risk management. However, our knowledge of the causal pathways through which climate change could cause societal collapse is underdeveloped. This paper aims to identify and structure an empirical evidence base of the climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse pathway. We first review the societal collapse and existential risk literature and define a set of determinants of societal collapse. We develop an original methodology, using these determinants as societal collapse proxies, to identify an empirical evidence base of climate change, food insecurity and societal collapse in contemporary society and then structure it using a novel-format causal loop diagram (CLD) defined at global scale and national granularity. The resulting evidence base varies in temporal and spatial distribution of study and in the type of data-driven methods used. The resulting CLD documents the spread of the evidence base, using line thickness and colour to depict density and type of data-driven method respectively. It enables exploration of how the effects of climate change may undermine agricultural systems and disrupt food supply, which can lead to economic shocks, socio-political instability as well as starvation, migration and conflict. Suggestions are made for future work that could build on this paper to further develop our qualitative understanding of, and quantitative complex systems modelling capabilities for analysing, the causal pathways between climate change and societal collapse.
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“Small variations in yields of staple crops could induce disproportionate price fluctuations and cascades into socio-political violence, particularly in areas with political instability and weaker governance (Natalini et al., 2015, 2017; Richards et al., 2021).”
From A Fate Worse Than Warming? Stratospheric Aerosol Injection and Global Catastrophic Risk (2021) · cites this paper as Richards et al., 2021
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Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios
Kemp, L., Xu, C., Depledge, J., Ebi, K. L., Gibbins, G., Kohler, T. A., Rockström, J., Scheffer, M., Schellnhuber, H. J., Steffen, W., et al. (2022) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2108146119 · Cited by 918
Nguyen, T. T., Grote, U., Neubacher, F., Rahut, D. B., Do, M. H., & Paudel, G. P. (2023) · Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability · doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2023.101322 · Cited by 431
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RetractedClimate change and the threat to civilization
Steel, D. P., DesRoches, C. T., & Mintz‐Woo, K. (2022) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2210525119 · Cited by 99
Metadata
- Authors
- Richards, C. E., Lupton, R. C., & Allwood, J. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Allwood, J. M.
- Venue
- Climatic Change
- Published
- 2021-02
- Volume
- 164
- Issue
- 3-4
- ISSN
- 0165-0009 (ISSN-L)
- 1573-1480
- OpenAlex
- W3133385722
- Cited by
- 134
- References
- 94
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 41 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 9
- FWCI
- 37.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Climatic Change (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Cambridge University Engineering Department Publications Database (submittedVersion)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Apollo (cc-by)
- Funders
- The General Sir John Monash Foundation
- The Cambridge Trust
- UK FIRES (EP/S019111/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Environmental, Ecological, and Cultural Studies
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Agronomy and Crop Science › Climate change impacts on agriculture
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
- Keywords
- climate change, food insecurity, societal collapse, existential risk, causal loop diagrams, causal pathways, agricultural systems, food supply disruption, economic shocks, socio-political instability, migration, conflict, starvation, complex systems modeling
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