Analysis Of The Collapse Of Western Civilization

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future is a “future historian”/ science fiction book set in the early twenty-second century in a fictional region located near present day China. This third person narration recounts both real and fictional events that, in the novel, lead to the Great Collapse and Mass Migration that occurred in 2073-2093. The narrator recollects events from “the Period of the Penumbra” (1988-2093) in which current generations failed to recognize the effect humans had on the environment, therefore causing irreversible damage to the earth. By the year 2093, Western nations such as the United States and Canada, as well as Australia, most of Africa, and parts of Europe, had collapsed due to food shortages,

The authors also give examples of ways humans can change their actions in order to decrease the rate of global warming, such as relying on renewable energy sources in order to decrease fossil fuel emissions. In the novel, the polar ice caps have melted and polar bears have become extinct. This prediction is reasonable; areas such as Greenland are experiencing higher temperatures, which results in the melting of sea ice at an alarmingly fast rate. Without sea ice, polar bears lose their habitat and they will become extinct. Although some aspects presented in the novel are hyperbolic, such as the end of civilization in the United States in the next 100 years, the authors are able to persuade readers to acknowledge the power and intensity of climate change and take action to prevent it from accelerating at the rate it is today. The exaggerations used by the authors are what makes the story effective in informing and persuading the audience; they are able to overstate their ideas in order to emphasize the urgency for change. If the authors were to have written the book from a present-day point of view and simply state facts and current events, the reader would not understand the magnitude of the effects global warming could have on our civilization in the