Throughout human history civilizations have collapsed for what ever reasons, but the sudden collapses are usually due to some kind of severe climate change or just overpopulation. And when they collapse terrible things happen. 

     The pyramid builders of ancient Egypt were brought to their knees when the Nile stopped flooding because of climate change. The people relied on the floods to replenish the soils and when the Nile stopped flooding for over a decade, a terrible famine set in. It is written on the tombs that they were eating their children. 

     This was the greatest civilization on the planet at the time - the great pyramid at Giza was the tallest intact man-made structure on earth until the Eiffel Tower was erected in 1889 - and they collapsed into cannibalism. 

      Another contender for the most terrible collapse award would be Easter Island. They were a complex society and after they chopped down the last tree - their energy source - the collapsed into cannibalism. At the present moment we seem to be on the cusp of running out of the energy source that has powered the planet for the last 150 years - oil. 

At the moment agriculture is turning oil into food so what do we do when there is no more cheap oil. 

      In the great El Nino of 1876 to 1878 missionaries in India and China wrote about the starving people eating their children, so we could assume the reports are fairly accurate. 

      What are we going to do when global warming and El Nino combine to wreak havoc on the planet. We are in a rather precarious position at the present time with overpopulation, global warming and peak oil all coming together, so what do we do.