Read Part One here and Part Two here. At the end of January 2021, in amongst the headlines on Covid-19 and the virulent new British strain that was set to hit the United States “like a hurricane,” the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed that riffed on a brand-new addition to the English lexicon: “collapseology”. It was heavy reading for the paper’s Sunday edition, particularly given the new dawn that was supposed to have been heralded by the inauguration of Joe Biden, but the facts in the piece were as true as they were newsworthy. For many decades, the authors noted, an ever-growing number of scientists had been warning that the exploitation of the planet’s resources would lead to societal collapse — lately, they added, some of these scientists were suggesting that the collapse may have already begun.