There are many reasons to despair: our green and pleasant land is parched and brown, reservoirs are depleted, and wildfires are racking the UK, Europe and the US. But there are many more reasons not to despair: despair is self-fulfilling; despair is disempowering; despair is what the bastards want you to feel. But above all, despair is irrational. Let me explain why.
However sophisticated our forecasting tools may be, we simply have no means of knowing what comes next. Like the climate, like every ecosystem, society is a complex system. Its properties and adaptive responses cannot be predicted by studying its components in isolation, regardless of the brilliance of social scientists and futurologists. Things happen - unexpected things - sometimes at astonishing speed. In other words, society has tipping points. It can quickly flip from one equilibrium state to another.
