The potential for climate change to lead to worldwide societal collapse or even human extinction is a “dangerously underexplored topic”, according to an international team of researchers. More research is needed about “plausible worst cases”, the group of scientists led by Cambridge University have argued in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the paper, they write that there are “ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe”. They say that analysing potential extreme consequences of climate change could “help galvanise action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses”.
The researchers have called on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to dedicate a future report to catastrophic climate change.
