Historical sociologists have used the terminology of a ‘long crisis’ to analyse past phases of human history marked by turbulence and disruption. These phases of greater instability saw an increase in warfare between states, popular rebellion and revolution. Their underlying cause, insofar as a single one could be identified, often lay in contingent processes taking place in the ecological biosphere, regionally or globally. These placed acute pressures on the development needs of societies. Changing weather patterns leading to prolonged droughts, for example, had particularly severe effects in low productivity, predominantly agricultural societies. The spread of pathogen diseases, especially when new points of connectivity between societies have been established through war, trade or empire, could also expose populations with little or no immunity to illness, leading to terrible hardship and death.

The regional system of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia was hit brutally hard by the ‘Black Death’ in the 14th century – with the ‘first wave’ alone, running from around 1347 to 1352, killing around 50 per cent of the population of Western Europe (Belich, 2016, p 95). A disaster on this scale inevitably had a profound effect on the dynamics of these societies, driving rebellion, forcing structural changes, and conjuring ‘prophecies and apocalyptic visions announcing the end of the world’ (Federici, 2004, pp 31–32). In the 17th century, changing weather patterns created a similar but more global dynamic, as persistent and widespread drought brought war and revolution – extending from the Thirty Years War in Europe to the world's most prosperous polity, China, as the Ming dynasty fell (Goldstone, 1988; Parker, 2008). The complexity of the human relationship to our environment has shaped the terms of these long phases of crisis. ‘Human relationships to the natural environment and short-term climate change have always been’, as Brian Fagan argues, ‘in a complex state of flux. To ignore them is to neglect one of the dynamic backdrops of human experience’ (Fagan, 2001, np).

Are we witnessing a similar long crisis unfolding today?