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Our modern civilisation may be the most advanced to ever exist on Earth, but around 100 generations ago, our ancestors had brains that were larger than our own.

Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal, was previously Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. A past president of the Royal Society, he has won numerous awards, including the Templeton Prize and the inaugural Fritz Zwicky Prize. The author of ten books and more than 500 research papers, he cofounded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

WILL birth rates doom humanity? Tech billionaire Elon Musk sounded an old alarm in December when he ...

Dr Matt Boyd & Prof Nick Wilson* (Syndicated from the Adapt Research Blog) Efforts to prevent nuclear war should be greatly intensified – but we must also consider what happens if prevention fails. NZ is often cited as somewhere most likely to preserve a thriving society through a nuclear aftermath. However, our society is a complex adaptive system heavily dependent on trade. Major perturbations triggered by nuclear war could shift the state of NZ society from one of flourishing to one of mere survival. We detail these risks of societal failure and conclude with a set of first steps NZ ...

Summary: Climate change is a clear example of how decisions by small numbers of powerful humans, not population size, drive environmental degradation. The richest 1% of the world, about 63 million people, is responsible for more than twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity. Just 20 fossil fuel companies can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era. Regulating population size, as some have recommended to lower emissions, would infringe on the liberties of billions of people while...