An excellent article came out recently, explaining 10 reasons why our civilization will soon collapse; here is the link: www.okdoomer.io/10-reasons-our-civilization-will-soon-collapse/ Since this article is so well written, well referenced, and hard hitting I felt that it was very important to do a detailed video on it. Given the total destruction of a hospital in the Gaza Strip today with the loss of over 500 human lives, almost certainly by a U.S. built JDAM 1000 pound bomb dropped intentionally from an Israeli warplane, I have added an additional reason to the ten in the article. Given the events of the day, we appear to be marching closer to global catastrophe and civilization collapse, and it is hard to argue that we don’t deserve it. Please donate to paulbeckwith.net to support my research and videos as I connect the dots on abrupt climate system change caused mayhem.

Wow, thanks for discussing my article! That's actually the first article I ever wrote about collapse. I tried to be thorough because I wrote it in order to convince my family, but glad to see so many others find it interesting.

40 years ago my biology teacher told the class all about overshoot. She had studied fruit fly population for her masters and showed us all the graphs and told us this was happening to us as a species

I was a bookworm in high school and I knew that this was coming back then. I predicted all this would happen in my lifetime and I was labeled an ‘environMENTAList’. I am now 74 and there is a reason why we have no children!

It's really tough going to work every day and working on some pointless bullshit in order to pay the bills while constantly in the back of my mind there's this thought that all this might come crumbling down far before i ever reach retirement age, pay off my debts or afford homeownership. On top of all that im watching my country drift further and further toward fascism which somehow noone seems to notice or care about.

The best we can do in these times is love each other and extend help whenever and wherever we can.

McPherson was wrong to put out dates, and he now knows that, but he's not wrong on the outcome. I think most climate scientists can not bring themselves to look into the Abyss that the future has for us.

I like Alan Urban's writing and his reporting on his journey from realizing that collapse is coming to prepping to acceptance.

A couple of hundred years ago, each human community was more or less self-sufficient, but now we are all interdependent. Our industrial society relies on relatively small numbers of engineers, scientists, and technicians, and if a significant percentage of them were killed in 'natural disasters', society could collapse long before we reach any other limits.

I am the opposite of hopeful. In late 60s and still working part time. My county in Florida is over run with large pickup trucks. more homes being built and the remaining wild land is being bulldozed. An acquaintance of mine is remodeling his house to nearly 4000 square feet. Just him and his wife. None of the people I know, liberal or conservative, have let up on air travel. Globally, I see no let up on consumption combined with an ever growing upper and middle class. Minor changes around the edges, like heat pumps EVs, will do nothing if we can't reverse habits especially among the top 10%.

An observation: Even when serious people discuss climate change, the conversation revolves around transitioning away from fossil fuels to more sustainable green energy. It's always a discussion about how to maintain our status quo by some other means. How do we make cars and airplanes more efficient? How do we reduce the cost of heating our homes? etc. Nobody it seems is willing to even consider the possibility of just using less. And herein lies the real problem. We are not willing to do what is necessary, because we are not willing to make any fundamental changes to our lifestyles. This is why we're all doomed.

we waste half the food we produce

Paul, you've needed to put this video out for a hell of a long time. It's a goddamned doozy, and it's exactly what the whole world needs shouted at them.

I cant wait! Anything is better than to go on as wage slaves longer.

There’s only one question that needs to be answer if (when) we experience a “breakdown of governments and economies” (really there’s only one economy now, it’s global and it can’t stand if it loses any significant part of it). Who is going to keep all of the nuclear facilities out there from failing in some form or other and poisoning the world? Do we seriously believe that the parts and supply chains that they require will continue to be available. Will the maintenance technicians and operation staff of every reactor world wide continue to turn up to work every day when they are no longer being paid - or have food? This isn’t a hypothetical question. If we are seriously expecting economic and government collapse, then this is the end game.

Also the topsoil is completely removed whenever a building is built. Meaning that the farmland we lose to development will not be able to be easily redeveloped into farmland.

The age of convenience is coming to an end.

Thank you for this video and thanks to people sharing in the comments. So many of us are completely alone in collapse awareness. Of course I don't and cant talk with my elderly parents about this, but I can't even have a conversation with my husband of almost 30 years. He has (after several years now) accepted my efforts toward increased preparedness and self-sufficiency, but he is not participating and we can't talk about the likely possibility of collapse without arguing. It is just such a dark topic, filled with so many uncertaintaies. Many people just cannot engage in this conversation... maybe never. To anyone else who is feeling completely alone in this, I guess we are united in our isolation. Please share any tips for dealing with all this completely alone... Thank you

'collapse early and avoid the rush' Michael Dowd

I came to the realization about 2 years ago that we. as a species, were done. We've missed every opportunity to save our world. Instead, we're careening off the cliff, opting to do essentially, nothing. I now live off grid, I'm vegetarian and try to be mindful of my environmental impact, knowing full well that my personal actions wouldn't stop the inevitable. Why do I live this way? I decided that I can't look my maker in the eye and admit that "I understood the problem fully and I decided to take no action, even knowing that taking no action leads to our civilizations extinction." How could I justify that? To me, it is indefensible. I now just live as stress free as I can, enjoying what time is left. Paul is right. Civilization will soon collapse. My bet it will be a large failure in the agricultural production realm that sets off the powder keg. Hungry people do drastic things. It will likely be before 2030 based on what I'm seeing reported around the world in agriculture already. Blunt and to the point! I love your approach Paul!

Guy was the pioneer and had the COURAGE to speak! And people bash him for that? How disgusting! I'm sorry but he has EVERY right to be hurt and angry.... ALL that he has done in service to humanity and you insult him for that because "he got the date wrong"? Why was he even "asked" for a f&cking "date" like that's so important - the date, Give me a break!

"the problems world leaders have let spiral" No. President Jimmy Carter brought this to our attention, and we summarily fired him. It's not the leaders...that's STILL MORE denial of responsibility! 🤣

The evil in the world is our unwillingness to compromise, not the consequences from our refusal. It happens because the people who refuse to compromise aren’t the people who have to suffer the consequences of their refusal.

Mr. Beckwith, I have watched you for over 7 years and you have always been very upbeat even though things looked bad. Are you finally realizing what is happening? It is bad, and has been bad which is why I moved from the U.S. 2017. Prepare yourself. It is getting rough and people are beginning to wake up. Your Canada is a very crazy place! There was a time a very long time ago that I thought of moving there. McPherson had the guts to warn people. Well, here we are. I wish you well, prepare!

Every couple thinking about having children should be required to treat this article.

Iceland, Greece and Easter Island-all collapsed due to overshoot. Iceland probably cattle and sheep, Greece was goats, and Easter Island was all resources at once.

I grew up in NYC. When i was a kid, we had fireflies in my backyard. Since then, I've lived in Pennsylvania. There are less fireflies in Pennsylvania now than there were in NYC in the 90s.

The root of the problem is that we demand to live in "civilisation", with all its purported comforts and conveniences (ignore the negatives like pollution, alienation, wage enslavement, diseases of abundance, meaninglessness, mass extinction, anomie, etc). And for awhile there were enough ready "resources" handy to make that possible, at least for many. Now that ship has sailed, and no matter how much you love your civilised comforts and conveniences, they are going away, certainly for the vast majority of people. So we are all faced with two options: 1) Die. 2) Learn to live without civilisation, as humans did for hundreds of thousands of years before we went off on this bizarre, destructive, and short-lived tangent. It was a purple patch, a blowout, a bender, and now we've woken up on the cracked pavement of a barren parking lot with a massive hangover and all our possessions gone. We made a Faustian bargain, and the time to pay the devil has arrived.

I am building a renewable car made completely made out of wood. It works pretty good but the motor keeps catching on fire.

Paul lists 11 factors, any one of which by itself could bring about massive societal disruption, if not civilizational collapse. But we are facing all these looming issues and choke points - and many more besides - concurrently. Given this reality, it is inconceivable that at least some form of civiizational collapse can be avoided. I've spent much of the past 4 years reading about and listening to everything I could find which relates to these issues. And though I have 3 beloved 20-something aged step-children, I am no less sure that our societies will begin to experience severe social and economic disruptions long before they reach their 50s.

What a great and scary article that pulls no punches. Thank you Paul.

There is one huge difference since the last time we faced extinction. Today no one has ever tried to survive without civilization. Furthermore the last time it was ”only” a super volcano and many locations on Earth was rather pristine. This is not the case today. Extinction is everywhere with ecosystems breaking down. This is not a survivable habitat - especially not the organisms at the top of the food chain - such has well - humans.

Reality is a harsh lesson. Sooooooo many people are not there yet. What an shocking awakening awaits.

Did they also forget to mention the loss of aerosol masking if the green new dream ever starts to pick up speed?

It is an unacceptable trajectory, yet many of us have been thinking but still cannot frankly discuss with friends, family. It is just too disheartening to bring up.

When the humans depart, the surviving animals on land, sea and air will shake their feathers in joy and inspiration. The trees, the meadows, the rivers will welcome the sun, the moon and the stars transforming the atmosphere as heaven on Earth. The Earth will smile, there will be a profusion of life on Earth, thank God no humans with guns to tread and kill in the jungle.

We've been chipping away at the Earth for a long time. Now it's time for the Earth to chip away at us.

Growing food at scale was always tricky enough in the most ideal climate. In the US Midwest, I suspect the increased CO2 and warmer climate of roughly 1990-2010 was as ideal as it gets. Problem is climate change is exponential and we’re leaving the Goldilocks zone. Also, after a certain point crop production declines exponentially. It is not a linear decline with each 1C of warming. Net result will be a crop production cliff. I can’t say what year that will be but it could be real close.

It's taken me a long time to realize and accept this. I still haven't fully, but my hopium is on the last wispy fumes.

Nothing gets better with 8 billion people.

I think........maybe.........I'll take my social security now instead of waiting another five years.

I am a product of reading pivotal books and articles before the age of 10. The Population Bomb and also National Geographic articles on both Population and ecological degradation remain key concerns in my daily musings. I find solace in the idea of Planetary hospice and extracting joy and love each and every minute. Paul, glad to call you a fellow Canadian. VM

I made an antiwar music video called "why can't we live together" on my channel and that's as far as I'm going right now as far as commentary. Everything disgusts me that has to do with war, and it has for decades. The misinformation, the lying, the Ulterior motives, it's all pretty fucking disgusting. I could go as far as to say humans deserve to go extinct, but then the people I surround myself, are so beautiful that sometimes a statement like that is quite harsh. I love you, Paul, and I see your emotions right on your sleeve. It's OK, I just caution that everyone not make Pronouncements without knowing the whole story. And like I told you on Twitter X, we won't know what occurred for 20 years and we probably don't have 20 years.

Paul never fails and is a real ray of sunshine, his positivity brightens your day and is a geniune cheery soul.

Paul, firstly thank you for your efforts and secondly humanity is not up to the tasks required they including ourselves would want our many consumer goods and in a crisis history demonstrates that an authoritarian leader and fascist ideology offers the worst of all hopes. So, saying again a warm thank you over the years for your explanations. Ian

Like it's said in the article, enjoy life now, cos it will only get worse. I need to dig out my bucket list.

So Beckwith , with a small qualification/ quible about style, is stating here that Guy McPherson's apocalyptic climate assertions are essentially correct

Yes, the Amish will outlast the most of us!

Thanks Paul, your videos are very informative. I appreciate all your time and effort! Thank you 🙏🏼

Great show, Paul, you are 100% right on all of this.

Find a regenerative farm near you and support it. A regenerative transition is paramount for future generations to have a chance.

Only 11, Thanks heavens for that I was worried we were in trouble

The planet is in Ester Island mode.

there is a documentary coming out soon called ecosophia exactly about all this

Forget civilization. It looks like your desk is about to Collapse. Thank you for the videos, sir!

Always like your postings, Paul. Glad you had the courage to speak out on the (highly probable) cause of the hospital bombing. But it is very hard these days to be an optimist on so many levels. It's the Roman Empire in the 5th century...only with much worse environmental damage!

In reality in short it only affects those with children that need time to reach adulthood or have families they want to continue ....those of us without progeny and don't see humanity as worth saving can continue to try and enjoy our lives watch the fire works and look back and say well that was exciting......

For most people its just 'life as usual' similar to business as usual. My hypothesis here is that many people can't bare to even imagine how they could cope should any event shocking to them occur. They refuse to believe and will also deny because something appears to be simply more than they can handle mentally and emotionally.

Thanos told us before you ever did. This universe is finite, its resources, finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist.

MIT did the limits to growth study in 1971 predicting collapse by 2040, they reviewed and ran similar calculations in 2021 and we're well on track. The main issue is our debt based economic system and our need for continuous growth to pay interest on all the new money (debt) that's created

Guy is largely correct…so it’s the 2030’s at the latest…a decade off.

Thank you for making this video and detailing this information. It is far worse than I envision and I'm a pessimist I already knew Humanity was making this planet uninhabitable. I've also been expecting a large drop and population probably of boards of 80% I would expect I'm curious what you think. Three or four out of the 11 are fairly easily managed. If farming was switched to permaculture farming fertilizers would not be needed and this would also affected the overall topsoil condition of the world. Permaculture is not difficult it's less expensive it just requires a different point of view and unfortunately changing people's ideas is difficult. Wow water is a problem specifically aquifers, I think it's a mainly a problem of water catchment. If you look at India and how they have changed their landscape in many places and manage their waterways they have revitalized their aquifers in as little as a few years. You can find evidence of this in the south of India in the state of Tamil Nadu. It's really quite amazing what the people have done to read about the lies the land. Another one is reforestation. Certainly it takes many years for trees to grow but again in places like India they are planting millions of trees a year. There are groups that are going through burned out forests and replanting saplings before the coals have even cooled off. I freely admit it's a drop in the bucket but my point is simply that there are solutions right here right now that do not require any new methods or technology or mining or resources that will benefit us and the planet. Lastly large-scale raising of cattle and chickens. So much land is being wasted to grow corn and soy to feed animals to make hamburgers it's depressing. Giving each subdivision a certain number of chickens would solve part of this problem in the United States. Same goes for a number of cows. Our biggest wall preventing the change that need to be made are corporations and the politicians they have bought off at least in this country but probably by and large throughout the whole of the world. Certainly oil coal Natural Gas Plastics rubber and transportation are the biggest contributors to the downfall or more specifically this planet becoming uninhabitable for humans but hard times call for hard decisions. We learned in 20/20 that much of the business world can be done from home and all those cars removed from the freeway and roads. That by itself would have a huge effect on the amount of pollution and then the amount of vehicles that were needed on the road. I guess what I'm saying is there are solutions every country can implement right now. Do I believe this will happen, any of what I have said above on a large scale, no sadly. This is supposed to be the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment. Maybe it will be in about 80 years with only 20% of the population Having learned from history creating a cleaner World with better morals. I don't know of course and it is terribly sad if it takes nearly raping the planet and killing over 6.5 billion people to open people's eyes and get us there. I do wonder sometimes if despite all the ways we are trying to kill ourselves and destroy our home if the cyclical solar flares that happen every 6-12,000 years will destroy us first. Which is worse, an instantaneous stop in productionEtc or a slow visible walk to the graveyard as infrastructure breaks down. Either way the end result is the same. I wish I was apart of what will become a return to an aggregarian Society but I will be dead well before that. Thanks again for this video and a link to the article. I'll pass it around to a few people but I bet no one will read it.

One of your most intresting videos, Paul. It's an eye-opener for me, of what to (soon) expect.....

My city gets its electrical power from a nuclear power plant (mostly). However, my house is heated using natural gas. If every house in my city replaced their gas heater (and water heater) with electrical, the city would have to build another nuclear power plant of the same size to power everything. If everybody in my city switched from gas to electric cars, they'd have to build three more. More likely they'd just build natural gas fueled generation plants. Fossil fuels are stored sunlight. The global oil reserves represent millions of years worth of accumulated stored and compressed sunlight. We are burning that sunlight at a rate that will finish them in a few hundred years. Ten million years of sunlight burned in two to three hundred years. There is no way any renewable energy source could possibly replace that. We need to drastically drop the energy level of our civilization, which is essentially what societal collapse is all about.

I've witnessed soils go from a dark brown to a light brown sandy soil in my area. I've seen soils full of worms and other organisms to being so dry that they can only support a few ants. That's in about twenty years. The 'farmers' tile drain so they can get more than one crop in per season but that dries everything out and with the increasing temperatures (from global warming) the soil is totally destroyed. With chemical ag, the only job the soil needs to do is hold the plants upright, the rest is mainly chemical inputs being either fertilizer or pesticides and herbicides. Besides chemicals the other big fertilizer in our area is human sewage but there isn't enough sewage to go around either. All the small farms have been bought up by the big 'farmers' (through corruption), and there is little to no room for biodiversity or other farming practices. Even if (the handful of remaining) small farmers try to change the soil profile starting today, it will take many years to rebuild (rotating animals in ways that mimic herd activity will build soil but it requires fencing which is expensive etc., etc.).

I think (in all fairness) that Israel should be held for war crimes. Your video was great and left little to dispute.

This is really alarming why this video is not on main stream?

What people don't realize about GHG emissions is that burning of fossil fuels just adds carbon to the carbon system. That System has 3 carbon pools. Atmosphere, water, organic matter. If we reduce plant matter in an attempt to reduce fossil fuel use, we reduce the organic matter pool and the resulting increase in the other two pools are the same.

I have followed you for a long time. And your journey to the inevitable conclusions. You mentioned economists who perpetuate the absurdity of infinite growth. But I would add that engineers have been complicit in the race to oblivion , even though engineering claims to be applied science. But they , like economists , are highly selective of which science they include. I suspect that archeologists examining the anthropocene in the distant post collapse future will conclude that engineers will be regarded as the slave masters of the era. They harnesed fossil fuels as the new slave of humanity without any consideration of the known consequences , both environmentally and ethically. Even now we still have professional engineeing groups professing ethical standards that are incompatible with the known science of climate change and the impossibility of infinite growth.

Thank you for emphasizing all these points

Robotic cars are as unrealistic as 100% renewable. Bicycles are a more realist option for personal transport.

Just got a quote to basically double our home battery storage. For the same amount of storage we initially installed, the battery price has more than doubled in a couple years. Craziness.

This was an ice water bath of reality that has been shared by Rees, Hagen, Jensen and others for sometime now

I wish Paul would focus less on monotonously reading the work other people have written, but instead focus on discussing the work, assessing its relevance and relating it to previous results. For this specific video I've read the article myself, so I was more interested in the 11th reason Paul wanted to propose. I was happy to be able to jump forward to 1:17:13 on that. But I was less happy to find that Paul doesn't even properly explain what the 11th reason is. The bombing to the hospital itself? That's got nothing to do with overshoot or climate change. Besides, Paul is extremely heavily biased here. The tweet he shows is from Mario Nawfal, who HIMSELF has later added an answer to his own tweet: "I want to clarify, the above is NOT FACT, and it is speculation based on the information we have so far". And information is still piling up. I think we'll probably never know for sure who did this. And that's why I don't support ANY side because I totally know that there's a plethora of misinformation and I have no chance whatsoever to check what's right or wrong. Paul - who is supposed to work scientifically - should also adopt an objective view here imo, rather than falling into quick accusations based on an emotional bias. But alas, everybody has their biases. Which is my take on the 11th reason. This whole thing is a perfect demonstration that in an acute or imminent crisis human reaction tends to be dominated by emotion rather than rationality. Rationality needs evidence which again needs time to collect. Emotion is present at once, it can be instrumentalized, and it spreads in no time through the internet. That again triggers further reactions that may be irreversible, and it reconfirms previous biases regardless if contradicting evidence is found a few days (or hours) after. Hence, one can not expect that humans react onto an acute crisis in a rational way. Emotional reactions on the other side are not always helpful, but more than often chaotic, uncoordinated or even violent. In case of climate change, observation shows that there is no unequivocal emotional response, but mutual blaming, bargaining and denialism. That leads to the true 11th reason: the human psyche (which is btw the root cause of all) is not designed to master an upcoming crisis that needs a global rational answer, and the effect of evidence gets lower the more acute the crisis becomes. Chaos, hysteria and violence will gouvern the time to come.

I am very concerned that the coming collapse of civilization will result in a rise in the price of plain chocolate digestive biscuits. I am starting to buy a little store of them to see me through the collapse . I assume a dozen large packets of biscuits should be sufficient.

Infinite growth on a finite planet. What major system of organization that we have been living under for three centuries or so requires infinite growth on a finite planet. Hmm.

Nobody has ever liked The Club of Rome. They are OG party poopers. Good stuff, Smil is great and the rest is what Nate Hagens, yourself and others have covered for many years. I guess collapse will finally get our attention.

I've never understood why humans breed the way they do can't they see the truth around them. I was a teenager in the 60's (by this time I had read a couple of history books) and I saw it then already and decided that I would never have any children and have not regretted my decision for one nanosecond - I did the right thing both for me and for the unborn them. Personally I believe that the sooner us humans go extinct the better we're a nasty cruel bloodthirsty lot and all the while there are humans animals will continue to be brutalised at our hands so - vive to the end of humanity

Water is a big underlaying issue in Israel/Palestine. Egypt/Ethiopia is another potential flashpoint. China sits on top of Tibet with its headwaters for many major Asian river putting China in potential conflict with other countries, especially as China want to dam the Yarlung River which becomes the Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh.

I have been aware of most of this for years. We have survived about 20 years longer than I expected. Having grown up in the UK with the prospect of 4 minutes warning if a nuclear war started, it was always hard to be very optimistic. I also studied ecology and realised where we were all heading. I studied chemistry of the upper atmosphere at university and we had a computer model predicting a catastrophe about now. The Book of Enoch has some interesting prophecy saying the first end will be flood and the second end will be from "fire". Luckily for me and Paul, we won't die young, but Israel is at the heart of Biblical predictions of doom and I am still not at all optimistic.

🔥 The writing is on the wall.

Drugs, lots of drugs

We're getting up in the years, these are the last decades of industrial civilization. If the report from MIT 1972 holds out then yes, by 2040 we're going start seeing major problems emerge.

Thanks Paul. I have been following you for years and this is the best you have done. Hard hitting, no false hope. I have been preaching climate change for years and people do not want to hear it. It takes some one like you with the creditability to spread the word. Why preach doom? If you know what's coming its easier to prepare.

Four years ago, me and my best friend were talking about The Collapse. He was 19 and I was 24.

Thank You Very Much Paul.

Wow you actually read this one 😮

Sand for cement is crushed from rock locally, silica sand has a larger surface area to volume ratio which allows more bonding be cement between the grains. I don't think you can extract sand from beaches in the UK due to coastal erosion.

The key is to compare to life outside of civilization.

We now know it wasn't 500 people.

If all this is to happen as you say Paul how could you say that Pherson is wrong about his theories. Have you taken into consideration of all the nuclear power plants that would cause major fallout, that along with the climate issues I believe guy McPherson could be spot on

Thankyou Paul to defending palestinian people from criminal attacs. If It rests humanity in this world.Peace and .Justice.

I raised populations of brine shrimp for years . No matter how good how optimum you keep the conditions eventually the population always crashs . I think of human populations the same way as the brine shrimp.

#9 "To be fair, a country can only handle so many refugees. There is a practical limit to how many refugees a country can accept before total chaos ensues." Before the recent influx of "newcomers" we were already approaching the point where one half of the population was supporting the other half. What happens when millions of people with no education and no skills are suddenly cut off because there's nothing more to give and people are faced with feeding my family or feeding them?

Too bad Stanley Kubrick is no longer with us. We need a "doctor strangelove, or how i learned to stop worrying and love human extinction" movie. Smooth sailing comrades!

Aerosol masking effect.

There is footage of a misfiring Hamas rocket and explosions soon after. Not much fuel would have been used after launch, so it could have possibly been that too. It seemed to have fired quickly back down from where it misfired.

When any civilization reaches its pinnacle,it crumbles at its base.

One of these issues is, That food should be produced , in each city. Not , transported cross country over continental usa. Using up tons of gas / diesel

Thank you for this powerful video. BTW, I may be wrong, but I think the word is pronounced o gah LAH lah.