A controversial paper concerning the not so distant future of our civilization has been published this past month (May, 2014) in Ecological Economics. The paper is entitled "Human and nature dynamics (HANDY): Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies".
In summary, the paper uses a predator-prey modelling approach to predict the well-being of people (predator) and nature (prey) in the coming decades. The numerical tool (HANDY) is applied not only to our civilization, but to a wide variety of potential civilizations. The study concludes that our current civilization is on the brink of collapse, and identifies two particular causes: (1) over-exploitation of natural resources and (2) strong economic stratification (large gap between rich and poor).
The paper is controversial for a few reasons. The first is that the media caught wind of this research before it was published, and erroneously attributed it to NASA. The paper, now published, has three authors, none of whom are NASA representatives. Still, their work has been peer-reviewed by experts in the field and has been approved for publication in a reputable journal. This is why this paper should be met with controversy: we need to be talking about this because it is relevant to us all.
