Thousands of scientists are warning of "untold suffering" if climate change isn't tackled, saying the impacts of the COVID-19 were "not nearly enough" to halt its "ruinous" effects.
But the good news - if you can call it that - is that if the world does go to hell New Zealand would be the best place to ride it out, according to a new study labelling Aotearoa a "collapse lifeboat".
The bad news
In 2019, more than 11,000 scientists signed a declaration that the world is in the grips of a climate emergency that threatens "the fate of humanity". In a new paper published by the same journal, BioScience, another 2800 experts have added their names - and in the past two years things have only gotten worse.
"There has been an unprecedented surge in climate-related disasters since 2019, including devastating flooding in South America and southeast Asia, record shattering heat waves and wildfires in Australia and the western United States, an extraordinary Atlantic hurricane season, and devastating cyclones in Africa, south Asia, and the west Pacific," the new paper says.
"There is also mounting evidence that we are nearing or have already crossed tipping points associated with critical parts of the Earth system, including the west Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, warm-water coral reefs, and the Amazon rainforest."
They place the blame on "unrelenting business as usual", saying carbon emissions are at their highest-ever, glacial ice thickness at its lowest, ocean acidity at a near-record and all five of the hottest years on record have taken place since 2015.
The lockdowns of 2020 in response to COVID-19 only had "short-lived" impacts on the environment they say, and despite a boost in solar and wind energy production, they still produce "roughly 19 times less energy than fossil fuels.
Global GDP is back above where it was before the pandemic hit, the report said, but - based on past trends - that comes with increased consumption and environmental degradation.
"On the basis of recent trends in planetary vital signs, we reaffirm the climate emergency declaration and again call for transformative change, which is needed now more than ever to protect life on Earth and remain within as many planetary boundaries as possible," the paper reads. "The speed of change is essential, and new climate policies should be part of COVID-19 recovery plans."
The silver lining
New Zealand has been ranked the number one place to be in the event of a global "de-complexification", or "collapse", which reverses the "continuous trajectory of rising sociopolitical complexity" humanity's experienced since the invention of agriculture, and particularly since the Industrial Revolution.
Whether the global disaster is environmental, financial or even a pandemic worse than COVID-19, the authors of a new study published in journal Sustainability say Aotearoa has a good chance of ending up a "node of persisting complexity" - where things don't change too much, at least compared to the rest of the planet.
First, they looked at what countries had the best starting conditions - for example, our location, political stability, rule of law and quality of governance. They then looked at what capabilities each country had for energy production and agriculture.
"This identified New Zealand as having the greatest potential to form a 'node of persisting complexity', with Iceland, Australia (Tasmania) and Ireland also having favourable characteristics," the paper said.
New Zealand scored well because we already have a large renewable energy sector, with the potential for more - particularly if the South Island's Tiwai smelter is shut down; our big agricultural sector - but not if we keep intensifying output); and low population density.
"We weren’t surprised New Zealand was on our list," one of the authors, Aled Jones, told The Guardian.
New Zealand has also ranked highly in leaderboards looking at the best place to be amid the COVID-19 pandemic, until recently top of Bloomberg's list but since overtaken by the US and Norway, who have had much faster vaccine rollouts.
The major downsides of being in New Zealand during the collapse of civilisation would be the risk of volcanoes and earthquakes, the study noted.
