Future Civilization Collapse

For John, BLUF:  The end is coming, due to your sins, and there is nothing you can do.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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At The [Manchester] Guardian is an article on a Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?  As the sub-headline says:  "Natural and social scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises could unravel global system".

Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:

".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society.  It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."

Missing from the article, and derivative articles, was the name of the peer reviewed article that this was based on.  I EMailed the Guardian author—nothing.  I went to the Goddard and the NSF Center web sites.  Not even bread crumbs.  I searched the web for "Handy".  Turns out there is a paper, accepted for publication, but it is a ways off, per The World Affairs Board.

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists.  The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

Of course there is a pay wall for Ecological Economics.  You don't think the 1% does this for free, do you?

Hat tip to the Instapundit, who noted:

Well, they say the Romans’ leadership class became stupid because of lead poisoning.  What’s wrong with ours?

That and The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, FRS.

Regards  —  Cliff