Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond is back with a shiny new prediction: a 49% chance civilisation will collapse by 2050. Why 49%? It's not 50% or 60%, it's just "scientific" enough to sound credible while dodging accountability. Welcome to the latest chapter in the doomsday playbook: vague warnings, arbitrary numbers, and a call to panic.
Diamond's 49% figure is pure theatre. There's no model, no equation, no data, just a number plucked from thin air to give the illusion of precision. Civilisations don't come with expiration dates or probability calculators. This isn't science; it's storytelling dressed up as analysis. Compare it to a weather forecast claiming a 49% chance of rain without a single radar image. You'd laugh it off. So why take Diamond's number seriously?
We've seen this movie before. In the 1970s, Paul Ehrlich swore we'd run out of oil and face mass starvation by the 1980s. Al Gore promised an ice-free Arctic by 2013. Climate models keep missing the mark, yet the prophets of doom just tweak their deadlines and double down. Diamond's remix is the same old tune: collapsing fisheries, vanishing topsoil, and imminent catastrophe. It's not prophecy, it's recycled fearmongering.
Civilisations don't just vanish because of a bad harvest or an empty net. Rome's decline took centuries. The Black Death killed half of Europe, yet humanity rebuilt. Modern society is even tougher. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, with its high-yield crops and fertilisers, fed billions despite Ehrlich's starvation predictions. Fracking and horizontal drilling unlocked energy reserves once deemed unreachable. Precision agriculture is already tackling Diamond's "empty seas" and "barren farms." Human ingenuity doesn't just move the goalposts, it builds a new field.
So why does every generation get its own apocalypse? Because fear is profitable. It sells books, drives clicks, and fuels policy agendas. Diamond's "49% collapse" grabs headlines in a way "humanity will likely adapt, as always" never could. Fear primes the public for top-down solutions, regulations, taxes, and controls, that often do more harm than good. It's no coincidence that doomsday predictions peak when someone's pitching a book or a cause.
The true risk isn't a 2050 collapse. It's the policy panic that follows these predictions. Dismantling reliable energy systems, crippling economies, and stifling innovation in the name of "saving the planet" could do more damage than any hypothetical resource shortage. Look at Germany's energy crisis after phasing out nuclear and coal, skyrocketing costs and blackouts for a greener dream that didn't deliver. Civilisation won't collapse because we run out of fish or soil. It could, however, stumble if we let alarmism choke progress and freedom.
Jared Diamond is half-right: challenges exist. Ethno-racial conflicts, resource strains, and population pressures are real. But betting on collapse is a loser's wager. History proves humanity's resilience, our ability to invent, adapt, and thrive. The real unsustainable practice isn't farming or fishing; it's the endless cycle of doomsday predictions designed to scare us into submission. Let's stop buying the panic and start trusting our ability to solve problems. The future isn't 49% doomed, it's 100% ours to shape!
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2099170/scientists-predict-world-end-25-years-jared-diamond