‘Collapsologie’: Constructing an Idea of How Things Fall Apart

Heat waves, droughts, and other forms of extreme weather will increase in frequency and severity. Agriculture will become less reliable and suffer declining yields. Rising sea-levels will mean the submersion of many coastal regions. Most discussions of the environmental crisis stop there, however. We then go on to demand an end to fossil-fuel extraction and the redoubling of efforts to convert our economies to renewable forms of energy. The collapsologues go further. The flippancy with which they declare that a future of economic meltdown and societal failure is just around the corner can be quite chilling: “By 2035, the French Republic, the European Union, will not exist.”