Climate change is changing everything before our very eyes. With warming global temperatures we can expect: water shortages, food shortages, storms, floods, wildfires, violent conflict, massive migration, more disease, extinctions, and ecosystem collapses. Without a fix, these burdens could cause the global economy to collapse. Billions of people would soon die and suffer.

We are on the verge of tipping points and feedback loops in Earth systems that could spark warming far greater than what is already caused by fossil fuels. Melting permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide, warming the atmosphere further. Melting ice caps change from white ice to dark water, absorbing more of the sun’s heat instead of reflecting it. Warming forests dry out and are more likely to burn, releasing more carbon dioxide. And there are several more feedback loops like this. So, we should not expect climate change to be a gradual, linear process. It is starting to accelerate, and could greatly intensify at any time.

Our economy and society are not prepared. Farming will be much harder with unpredictable weather, and will become impossible in some places. Food shortages would lead to much higher food prices, triggering uncontrollable inflation - not to mention tremendous starvation and conflict. Too many disasters could overwhelm the insurance industry, a bedrock of the economy. Governments may not keep up with recovery efforts and economic turmoil.

And really, there could be profound effects we cannot even predict. All of human history has taken place on a functioning planet. Our fundamental reality will be different soon.

The science of climate change has been clear for decades, and a strong majority of citizens around the world believe climate change deserves urgent action, but public policies are entirely inadequate compared to the threat.

Despite good progress on renewable energy, greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing, because overall energy use is still increasing. We have a globally competitive economy, so individual countries disadvantage themselves if they "go green" and reduce their consumption.

What Are Existential Threats?

Existential threats are not just "really bad problems". We're referring to trends or potential events that could cause one of two outcomes:

• The human race goes extinct.

• Civilization collapses. Humanity experiences massive death and suffering, and returns to a more primitive lifestyle. Most other life on earth degenerates or disappears.

Extinction is certainly possible, but we believe it's unlikely. Humans are clever. Even under extreme circumstances, a few people will figure out how to survive.

The more likely scenario is that our global civilization collapses, if economic and political systems break amid the onslaught of relentless catastrophes.

• Economic depression could occur as climate change causes burning or flooding in too many places or causes food and water shortages, or as pandemics kill millions and make business impossible, or as destabilizing technologies are poorly managed, or as nuclear weapons explode – or all of these at once.

• Governments may fail if they are unable to meet their citizens' basic needs for food, water or protection from chaos. Amid failure of critical systems - like food provision, communication, infrastructure, government, Nature - survivors would subsist with great manual labor and frequent violence.

With broken systems, lost expertise and planetary dysfunction, humanity could take hundreds or thousands of years to recover.

Many people consider each issue in isolation. And then, they imagine only the immediate symptoms. Instead, we should think of our threats as a collection of several sledgehammers, all simultaneously beating on our fragile political and economic systems. The unraveling could happen not just from the threats themselves, but from the failure of our coordinating systems that hold society together.

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The Human Survival Project is focused on strengthening our political and economic systems to protect them. Then, to use those systems, which are the glue that hold us together. The task is to ensure continuing order instead of debilitating chaos.

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Throughout history, great civilizations have grown and collapsed, repeatedly. We risk the same now. In the past, if one group or region collapsed, the rest of the world kept moving. But now the world is one large interconnected civilization, so everyone could collapse together. Our global interconnectivity is both our strength and our vulnerability.

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Due to dramatic population growth, now 8 billion and growing, the consequences of failure are now larger than during all of human history. The very worst wars and pandemics in history "only" killed Millions. Now, our many catastrophic risks, combined with failing political and economic systems, could result in death, displacement and other suffering by Billions of people. The scale of that much human destruction is hard to fully imagine.

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The ever-quickening change and complexity of our world has outpaced our governing institutions, which are obviously inadequate for today's situation. Thus, the human race is accelerating toward a cliff. No one is at the steering wheel. There are no brakes. The Human Survival Project aims to help humanity build the tools to manage its affairs, instead of stumbling blindly into a dark future.

What Is Causing Our Threats?

In this section of the website, we summarize several existential threats. It's important to realize the shared causes and interconnections between them:

• Often, one will intensify another. The destruction of nature increases our risk of pandemics, and makes climate change worse. Climate change drives destabilizing migration. Poverty and inequality block progress on climate change and pandemics, and make war more likely. Technology is making war increasingly dangerous. And so forth. These problems cannot be solved in isolation. We need systems to manage them in a coordinated way.

• They often stem from unmanaged competition between countries or between corporations. Obviously, war is unmanaged competition between nations. But so is climate change, destruction of nature, and technology - countries don't want to slow down because they're locked in competition with each other. And there's economic competition between corporations - they don't want to slow down harmful activities because they're afraid of falling behind. We need systems for managing harmful competition.

• Some happen because there's no system for sharing the responsibility and costs of fixing them. Pandemics, migration, poverty and other threats are entirely solvable, but they're beyond the scope of what one country can fix. We need systems to share the responsibility fairly among nations, with the power to enforce the rules so that everyone does their part.

Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short

You might ask: "Haven't we been trying to solve these problems for decades? Don't we already have the United Nations and international agreements?" The answer is yes, but our current global systems have critical weaknesses:

• Voluntary agreements without enforcement lead to non-compliance. The Paris Climate Agreement is a perfect example - many countries simply don't meet their commitments because there's no real consequence for failing.

• Security Council vetoes block action. The five permanent members (US, China, Russia, UK, France) can veto critical actions, leading to paralysis on urgent threats.

• Inadequate funding and authority prevent effective response. The UN budget is tiny compared to what's needed, and UN agencies lack authority to coordinate global action.

Why a Redesigned United Nations Is the Solution

A reformed UN would address these existential threats by:

• Providing enforceable mechanisms for global cooperation - moving beyond voluntary agreements to binding ones with consequences for non-compliance

• Creating fair systems for sharing costs and responsibilities - ensuring wealthy countries contribute proportionally while respecting the sovereignty and needs of all nations

• Coordinating responses across interconnected threats - recognizing that these challenges can't be solved in isolation

• Mobilizing resources at the scale needed - with proper funding and authority to implement solutions

Which Threats Do We Need To Worry About?

As you read the following pages, please understand they are intentionally brief. These problems are complex, and these pages are just an introduction to convey the severity of our threats, and the necessity of a stronger United Nations. If you want to dive deeper into these topics than the brief summary here, consider our more detailed resources like the Human Survival Podcast.

• Climate Change

• Destruction of Nature

• Pandemics

• War

• Technology

• Migration

• Inequality

Une personne seule ne peut pas sauver la race humaine. Et travailler seul est moins joyeux.

Je veux que la joie de sauver la race humaine soit un effort d'équipe.

Si notre relation est simplement moi qui crée la série et que vous la consommez, c'est bien. Mais je préférerais que vous et moi travaillions ensemble pour rendre notre monde meilleur. Et mon rêve est qu'au fil du temps, une tribu mondiale de personnes se réunisse autour de ce travail.

Donc, si l'idée de sauver la race humaine vous rend joyeux, alors voici quelques façons dont nous pouvons travailler ensemble ...

Faire connaitre

Parlez de l'émission à d'autres personnes: amis, famille, collègues, voisins, personnes sur vos réseaux sociaux, étrangers - qui que ce soit. Les gens me demandent parfois: «Quel est le public cible de votre émission?» - et je réponds: «Tout le monde».

Pour créer un mouvement citoyen mondial visant à promouvoir des améliorations mondiales, nous avons besoin d'autant de personnes engagées que possible. C'est pourquoi j'essaye de rendre le spectacle accessible aux personnes de tous types et de tous horizons. Lorsque vous trouvez des personnes que vous souhaitez éduquer sur ces problèmes mondiaux importants, leur parler de La joie de sauver la race humaine est un bon moyen de les aider à s'impliquer.

Faire un don d'argent

Faire ce spectacle n'est pas facile. Cela prend du temps et du travail. Et il y a des dépenses - comme l'hébergement de ce site Web, l'hébergement de podcast et l'équipement. Les dons aident à couvrir ces dépenses.

Plus important encore, les dons m'aident à réduire mon autre emploi qui paie mes factures - afin que je puisse passer plus de temps à faire un spectacle de haute qualité pour vous. J'espère qu'avec suffisamment de soutien, La joie de sauver la race humaine pourra devenir mon travail à plein temps.

J'ai un niveau de vie modeste. Rien d'extraordinaire ici dans ma vie. Votre soutien financier ne servira pas au luxe - ce sera une contribution significative au loyer, à la nourriture et aux produits de première nécessité. Je ne m'attends pas à devenir riche en faisant ce travail. En fait, si les dons dépassent jamais ce dont j'ai besoin pour vivre, je commencerai à embaucher d'autres personnes pour aider à étendre le travail sur cette émission et les projets connexes.

Je suis extrêmement reconnaissant pour tout montant que vous offrez, petit ou grand, une seule fois ou sur une base mensuelle. Tout cela aide. Vous pouvez le faire ici: