At the middle of the 13th Century BCE the major civilizations of the Mediterranean and of Mesopotamia were thriving. There were well established trade routes that extended from Afghanistan to Mycenae. The leaders of the major cultures regularly exchanged gifts, and married the daughters of other leaders. There was an interconnected web of relationships that served to keep conflict to a minimum.
But at about the turn of the century most of the major civilizations of the region collapsed. The Egyptians blamed the destruction on invaders who arrived by boat on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean whom they called the “Sea Peoples.” And yes, there were invading forces who ravaged many of the cities that were destroyed. We have a written eyewitness account from the city of Ugarit that describes the arrival of marauders by sea who killed the city’s residents and burned the entire city.
And yet, not all of the destruction of this era was caused by humans. Some cities were destroyed by earthquakes. It also appears that climate change had produced a long drought. Perhaps the marauding invaders were really just refugees from calamities that happened further west.
This is still a subject of active research– even after more than a century of archaeological investigations. But the emerging picture seems to be of a number of separate catastrophes that resulted in a perfect storm of disruption– a crash that is now known as the Bronze Age Collapse.
Today we are confronted with a global climate change that is driven by the human use of fossil fuels. It is like a 10,000 mile long freight train that is moving at half a mile an hour. It’s advance is slow, but when it hits it will demolish everything in its path.
There are estimated to be more than 400 million people living in regions that are less than 10 feet above sea level. As sea levels rise, those people will be forced to move. They will become refugees– a modern version of the Sea Peoples.
But the climate change we are experiencing won’t just result in sea level rise. It will also make much of the planet too hot for farming, too hot for work, too hot for recreation. It will increase the likelihood of devastating storms. And it will increase the numbers and sizes of fires.
One of the worst consequences of the Syrian Civil War that began in 2011 was the displacement of several million Syrian refugees. They were not well received. In fact many people in Europe and the United States felt threatened by the influx of foreigners. But the impending refugee crisis that will be caused by rising sea levels will be a hundred times worse– and the resulting fear and resentment will likely be ruinous.
Another problem that has recently emerged is that of Artificial Intelligence. While its boosters are promising a bold new future of massive productivity gains, there is the distinct possibility that AI could displace more jobs than it creates. In fact Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei said that AI could displace entry level jobs and create a permanent underclass of the underemployed and unemployed.
It seems as if we are confronted with a perfect storm of calamities that threaten to cause a global collapse– very similar to what brought the Bronze Age to a devastating demise.
And yet something else is happening. There is a major energy revolution going on all around the world. Pakistan now produces more than half its electrical energy from renewables. Spain is at about 55%. Portugal is over 75%. California is now over 62%. And Texas– the world capital of “Drill baby, drill!!” is at about one third. Cities all over the world are revising zoning laws to allow apartment dwellers to install solar panels on their balconies. There is a massive, worldwide rush to adopt renewable energy solutions, despite the efforts of business and government leaders who are heavily invested in market doctrines of the past.
And why is this happening? It’s because the costs of renewables are now lower than the costs of coal and gas in most markets. More than 100 coal fired power plants were permanently closed during Trump’s FIRST term of office– because those plants were just too expensive to operate. The logic of the market is the chief instrument that is destroying the fossil fuel market.
Just think about it. Suppose you have an oil well in northern Alaska. You’re pumping out product like mad– but most of your customers probably don’t reside in Alaska. So you’re going to have to ship your product to your customers. But before you can do that, you’re going to have to ship it to a refinery to be turned into products– like heating oil and gasoline– that your customers can use. So you have to pay for shipping once to the refinery, then you have to pay for the refining process, then you have to pay to ship it a second time from the refinery to your customer.
Now imagine that your brother has a wind farm in Montana. He’s got a one time expense of installing his windmills, and another one time cost of connecting them to the electrical grid. But after that, his maintenance costs are minimal. In the long run renewables are just cheaper to operate.
Even with renewable energy sources the world must still confront a huge installed base of fossil fuel powered automobiles, trucks, trains, and planes. But EV sales are rapidly increasing in some parts of the world as the Iran war drives oil prices higher.
And there is another major movement happening. People are rebelling against oligarchs. Victor Orban was booted out of office despite having almost total control over the Hungarian government. Donald Trump’s second term launched a coup against the U.S. constitutional order based on the battle plan spelled out in the Project 2025 handbook. And now, one and a half years later, Trump’s economy is veering toward stagflation, his tariffs are a flop, his war of choice in Iran has resulted in a stalemate, and his brazen corruption has revolted all but the most committed MAGA loyalists. In Russia, Vladimir Putin is losing the war he launched against Ukraine in February of 2024. The Russian people are experiencing fuel shortages, and the Russian economy is faltering. Putin’s regime is teetering.
These problems– climate change and the faltering of oligarchy in Russia and the United States– are directly related. When Trump abducted President Maduro of Venezuela he was very clear that he expected the United States to simply take Venezuela’s oil. “To the victor go the spoils,” he said. The current kerfuffle over a Texas company’s alleged rights to oil exploration in Greenland are clearly part of a ploy to grab as much of Greenland’s oil as possible. The GOP is largely funded by the fossil fuel industry, so it has every reason to defend the old economic order. And it has shown every commitment to continue doing so.
Just imagine what world politics would be like if fossil fuels were not a major factor in the global economy. The shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz wouldn’t be a problem. Climate change would be slowing, or stopping, or perhaps even reversing. The urge to grab another country’s oil resources wouldn’t be a factor in global politics. And the influence of countries that have relied chiefly on oil revenues would begin to decline. It would be a very different world.
As for the adverse effects of Artificial Intelligence, public outrage is building around the world over the construction of massive data centers. They are slurping up water– at a time when drought is affecting much of the world’s population. They are consuming huge amounts of electricity. And many of them are being built with their own power plants using… fossil fuels.
The public is also alarmed at the threat to jobs that Artificial Intelligence poses. AI apologists claim that AI will create at least as many jobs as it destroys. Yes, the construction phase of a new data center will create new construction jobs over the short term. But once a data center has been created it will require very few staff to operate it. In fact most of the monitoring of a fully built out data center can be done remotely.
And we can see clear evidence from the stock market as to what business leaders think about AI. The market has been going up at a time of increasing inflation and falling employment. Why? It’s because CEOs have been told that the wonders of AI will allow them to cut costs by replacing many of their workers with AI agents. They view AI as a cheap way to realize short term profit gains.
The public is beginning to catch on to this bit of legerdemain. Did anyone ever VOTE on the idea of replacing human workers with AI agents? NO! And people the world over are now beginning to realize what the AI stakes really are.
Civilization has collapsed before, and it can collapse again. We have many threats, but this time is fundamentally different from the time of the Bronze Age. People have more awareness of what is happening. Yes, climate change moves slowly. But people are experiencing it directly now. The Aral Sea has been shrinking for decades. Lake Mead is at its lowest level ever. Water shortages have forced Washington State to restrict surface water usage in its eastern half. Fire and hurricane seasons are longer, and the damage they do is much greater than it was a few decades ago. People around the world know that climate change is real, regardless of how many times Trump claims it is all just a Chinese hoax.
And this particular form of climate change is something that humans can actually do something about. We can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. And not only can we do that, but doing so will actually be cheaper in the long run! That is something that just wasn’t true of Bronze Age climate change.
The AI frenzy is very much like the Dot Com bubble. That was a bubble built purely on hype– and it crashed the world economy. This bubble will likely do the same, for the simple reason that the technology companies pushing AI have yet to find an AI product that masses of users actually want. It seems very likely that this bubble is about to burst.
Wealthy and powerful persons are doing everything they can to push the world toward oligarchical control. Russel Vought has declared that we are in a “post-constitutional” era. The seeming glee with which the GOP has supported all of Trump’s fascist policies is clear evidence that they fully approve of Project 2025.
And yet the American public– indeed, the global public– is resisting fascism. And the world economy is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels, despite the best efforts of the ultra rich to preserve the present order.
This is the battle of our time. It’s a battle on three major interdependent fronts: climate change, oligarchy, and Artificial Intelligence. We can look back to the Bronze Age to see what levels of destruction are possible. But each of these fronts in the present battle are amenable to human resistance. And the resistance is building.
Copyright (c) 2026 by David S. Moore
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