Our civilisation’s collapse is not yet inevitable

October 6, 2025

Julian Cribb argues that civilisational collapse will soon become inevitable. This collapse is focused on the human future, but necessarily includes the future for all life on Earth.

Humans live in, and depend on, a healthy, rich ecology, but many societies have lived with the religious belief that they are “chosen ones” – that the world has been created for their benefit, with the implicit assumption that they are entitled to all that it contains. This sense of entitlement has led to the pillaging of natural resources that has characterised the world since colonial times. Colonising countries enriched themselves and developed unsustainable lifestyles; their colonies were mostly left in poverty in debased homelands. Today’s colonisers are global corporations.

The interlinked crisis triggers that Cribb identifies centre on our changing climate, our ever-growing population, AI, and deliberate misinformation – all developed and driven by ourselves. As Arnold Toynbee observed, “civilisations die by suicide, not by murder”.

Concerted, urgent global action can still avoid this dystopian fate, but achieving that will require governments and peoples around the world to embrace the common good at an uncommon level. Civilisation might yet be saved from collapse – but our chances don’t look good.