It's 2050 and the world as we knew it, ended.
"The barracks yeah...
we were insulated from most of the worst.
No one got here easily.
It's ten days hike."
"What we've tried to keep here is that memory
of the best of human achievements."
Global food supply was hit
by a series of climate change-induced droughts.
People ran out of water
which caused riots in every major city.
Looting, destruction, collapse.
"This guy saw it coming.
And so we are taking shelter in a community
he built here back in the 2020s."
"So that to me is a start of a dystopian fiction film
but you see that as an inevitability, do you?"
"I'm not sure how it finishes,
and I hope we are not all living in bunkers,
but dystopia is coming for sure."
Ben is one among an increasing number of climate doomers
who believe the end of the world is nigh.
I spent a couple of days at his repurposed military barracks
in an undisclosed location in Germany –
where he's preparing for a world post-climate-induced collapse.
We had some heated exchange.
"I find some comfort in thinking that we can change."
"And the tooth fairy is real
and so is Father Christmas."
"Watching Ben prepare for a post-climate apocalypse world,
I wonder if he is being absurd, or are we?"
Ben Green probably awaits spring more than most –
after getting through eight harsh German winter months
with no heating and no company.
He was kind enough to trust me with his lettuce.
If ruined, it means Ben has no salad all year.
"Are you totally self-sufficient here then?"
"This isn't an exercise in self-sufficiency.
The ultimate aim is nothing comes in, nothing goes out.
It's just the consistency thing."
"What do you mean?"
"Radical authenticity."
"What's that?"
"So far I'm trying to tell someone my opinion
on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere,
they can't say, well, yeah,
but you use a car and supermarkets."
In his pursuit of authenticity,
Ben doesn't own a car, is vegan
and grows everything he eats right here.
He even makes his own fertiliser.
He says the biggest chinks in his armour though
are three fat mangalitsa pigs
that he rescued from early slaughter.
"Tony stop it!
Yeah I know you're playing
but you're not allowed to play with your mouth open.
It's scary!"
"I probably shouldn't have rescued them."
"Why not?"
"Because all of my money goes on pigs!"
"Do they keep your company in the winter?"
"I mean, they sleep mostly.
It is useful to have something
you have to get out of bed for.
Because it is easy to not get out of bed in the winter.
And that's a slippery slope."
It sounds like such a harsh self-imposed lifestyle
and I wanted to know
what convinced him to dive in so deep.
"I guess I'm trying to get to the core of what you're doing here,
what is your kind of aim or message with this?"
"So it's changed over recent years.
Originally, it was to draw attention to
the inevitability of collapse.
Now that inevitability has gone
beyond the theoretical inevitability,
but it's already started and there's nothing at all
that you can do to stop it.
I'm now trying to be useful
in the rebuilding that will also inevitably happen after."
Hold up – I'll come back to the rebuilding thing but –
is collapse inevitable?
And is there nothing we can do?
I put this to several leading scientists –
including Inger Andersen
who is under-secretary-general of the United Nations
and Joelle Gergis
who is a lead author of the latest IPCC report.
"You only have to really think about it
in terms of just a simple medical analogy.
So say, for example, a doctor said to you, look,
I'm really sorry to say you've got cancer.
Ok, are you going to throw up your hands and say,
oh, there's nothing we can do, there's no treatment!
We're all going to die anyway
so I'm not going to do anything about it.
And you allow yourself to just deteriorate.
And the doctor hasn't said that at all.
All they've said is you've got cancer.
You know, it's spreading.
There are going to be certain things we can save,
certain things we can't save.
But would actually just immediately
throw away all the options that we have
and go to the worst possible scenario and say
there's nothing we can do?"
The latest IPCC report outlines
what we can do and presents multiple scenarios.
So let's do a quick summary of where we are:
The Earth has already warmed by around 1.1 degrees Celsius
compared to pre-industrial levels.
Countries pledged to limit global warming
to well below 2 degrees celcius – aiming for 1.5 degrees.
But current trends put us on track to cross 1.5 degrees
in the next 5 years.
Scientists still offer many other scenarios though.
"In the IPCC we have a range of different you know,
climate modelling scenarios
ranging from lower emission scenarios
to really high emission scenarios
and kind of everything in between."
The higher you go, the worse things can get.
Especially as we could hit tipping points
like thawing permafrost releasing methane
or large forests dying off.
But the higher end scenarios are unlikely.
"So while scientists argue
that there is no scope for "the apocalypse" per se,
it's important to acknowledge that in many parts of the world
some 'apocalypses' are already happening."
"We are already seeing the Greenland ice sheet collapse.
We are already seeing coral reefs die off,
and we are already seeing ocean currents being altered,
the northern forests, the high forests, changing.
These kind of enormous climatic events
and add to that the fires, the heat waves, the floodings, etcetera
are real.
You can't deny that.
And so whether one wishes to call it doomerism
or whether one wishes to call it a call to action
and therefore take action,
this is really up to us as humanity."
Humanity has shown progress –
some of which has been unexpected.
CO2 emissions were not as high as predicted in 2022.
"Look, renewable energy is cheaper in most countries
than hydrocarbon, than oil or coal etcetera based fuels.
Now that's mind blowing right?
Look, night time storage is getting better and better.
Or look at Morocco – made this massive investment in solar
by which they can actually export into the European Union.
So I think that we have solutions abound."
The IPCC says that we can still, in theory,
keep warming to below 1.5 degrees with such action –
and other urgent and systemwide changes.
Including decarbonising buildings and industries
like steel and cement
and importantly
severely ramping up carbon capture technology.
Ben does have a somewhat sceptical view on this.
"I genuinely don't think your IPCC scientists
are communicating to you
the way they communicate with other people."
"But why do you think that is?"
"Because you are a journalist?"
"So?"
"Because they need to not spook the people.
You know how deliberately cautious they are.
Also, scientists are cautious people.
Because they absolutely abhor the idea of saying 100% or 0%."
"I understand that people have fear about climate change,
I also understand that people sometimes
misunderstand the science
because it's actually quite complex science
and it's nuanced and it means that if you read it,
doesn't necessarily mean you understand it.
But what I do share with this person is that
the climate emergency that we face right now is very real and
does require an extremely urgent response."
"The idea that we're going to act when we traditionally haven't,
is to me pure hokum.
How long did it take the world governments
or the world organisations,
whatever it is to agree on one way for us
to make telephone calls between countries
I mean it's like 20 years or something was it –
to end up with double O standard country code."
So while science leaves a window of possibilities –
this I can get on board with.
There has been a lot of lethargy and inaction
from governments.
Promises repeatedly broken.
While corporations and fossil fuel lobbies
have been actively holding back
the large-scale change that we need.
Many of our videos are about this.
So as a result, Ben decided to take this extreme position.
"It's where I feel useful and comfortable
and I believe that if you're in a position in your life
where there's a decision that's really obvious..."
"But what made it seem so obvious?"
"My life situation at the time was I was single.
I had a small flat in Berlin which I'd sold.
I got fired from my job and got a nice big compensatory payout.
It was perfectly obvious
that it was time to do something with some meaning."
Ben's experiment is not really what you would expect
when you first hear someone prepping for the apocalypse.
I pictured a lonely bunker with canned tomatoes,
weapons and iodine tablets.
And the anxious wait for Armageddon.
In some ways, it's the opposite.
"I call it a research Institute.
It's a place where people can come
and authentically think about a situation
that is so far out with their own experience."
His goal is to produce a manifesto for the people
who might be rebuilding the world post collapse –
including notes on the best music and art out there.
This is an extreme stance, but many, especially young people,
do feel the end is nigh.
In a poll conducted among 10,000 children
around the world last year –
over half believed that humanity is doomed.
And the biggest reason they saw was government inaction.
"What are we doing when 65% of our young people think
the government is failing them?"
Caroline Hickman was one of the authors
of the study resulting from the poll
and she's also one of the world's leading psychologists
on climate anxiety.
I spoke to her about this trend and
what psychologists believe is happening.
"Think of a spectrum, a line.
One end of your spectrum,
one end of the line, is the apocalyptic, catastrophic
doom and gloom.
Absolute belief in that.
Ther other end, far end, you've got naive optimism.
"It's ok!
The government will save us. Technology will save us.
Humans have...
dealt with problems before we can deal with this one."
The problem we have
is that both of these opposite positions are the same thing.
Because both of them are the human ego
attempting to get back in control.
The ego, the human ego, does not like uncertainty."
She argues feeling anxiety is a valid response at this time.
"We need to feel anxiety, depression, despair, rage, doom.
We need to feel doom.
That hopelessness.
That helplessness.
You just don't want to be stuck there.
So I also then remember creativity, joy, connection, empathy,
resilience, anger.
You can carry that pain in your heart.
You can carry it in the way you take care of your environment,
and you can take small actions as a home level,
but you can also take big actions as a planetary level.
You can take political action and social action
and personal action.
And you just need a combination of them all."
Research shows taking care of your mental health
and taking action – on an individual and community level –
does improve your wellbeing.
And these actions – whatever they are – lead to change.
Ben is taking action. But I feel unsettled
by the focus being so far into a dystopian future.
"I think it's like a very morbid approach also to just kind of like,
say, let's not get involved because I mean things...yeah...
I agree that things are bad,
but they can be so much worse
and they could get so much worse.
And I think that's where we have to step in
and prevent that instead of all just like,
because the amount of suffering that we're going to experience
until this collapse happens is enormous.
Why are we not stepping in it in this moment?"
"Because its physically impossible.
Yes, we should be engaged, absolutely.
What's the cost of failure, though?
If you were motivate enough people,
strongly enough to actually come together
and change something.
And you knew that it was already too late.
There is already too much carbon in the atmosphere.
What's then the cost of essentially being dishonest with people
and then failing?
I think, yeah, absolutely you should be spending
an awful lot of time in thinking about adapting.
And I know there are a lot of good people
putting a lot of energy into that.
My stance is just to go one step further."
The scientists I spoke to echoed the sentiment
that it's not too late to take action and avert the worst
or even the "really bad".
"For me, this is the most profound moment in human history.
We are going to look back at the 2020s
and say to your kids or your grandchildren
where were you at that time?
How did you show up?
And you know when we think sometimes about say the 1960s,
that really revolutionary time in say US history
where you know all the civil rights
and, you know, gender equality.
It was this moment where people had to step up
and say you know, are you gonna be a racist
or you actually gonna be someone
that's taking a stand for equality in society?
Really, it's profound and I and the people alive today
are effectively the people
who are going to determine the future course of humanity."
"You have to face the truth.
Things are really bad.
So what we have to do is fill the tension of that
and hold that position in the middle where
we have multiple uncertainties and there is a lot we can do."
I asked Ben how he would feel if collapse,
as he sees it, is averted.
"I mean, I'm not going to feel that I've entirely wasted my life.
I'm also not going to feel that I contributed particularly to it.
It's like, yeah, "the barracks saved the world" –
definitely not that.
I don't know really.
I don't know what I'll do.
I think the only way for me to conceptualise an answer to that
is to think of a magic carbon sucking technology.
I need to,
I need to believe in that first, right?
Ok *snap* I believe in that.
I think I'll probably sell this place
and go do yoga on the beach."
"It's a big and difficult thing to talk about the fate of humanity –
but I've left with this feeling
that it is something we should be doing more.
Because multiple scenarios do exist.
And many solutions are out there too.
And the scenario that ends up playing out
will be the one that we choose.
So which one do you think it's going to be?
Let us know in the comments
and don't forget to come back every Friday
for more videos like this."