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The Crisis of Civilization, due to premiere tomorrow, is a documentary film that is remarkably pleasant to watch considering its subject mattert: the looming destruction of civilization as we know it.

The film looks into how “global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system.”

Over less than 80 minutes of running time, Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, the principal narrator of the film – and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It – draws a compelling portrait of the emerging economical, political and environmental trends that are likely to shape our common future over the next few decades.

His thesis is devastating in its simplicity: unless structural changes are introduced to the way we run our world, we won’t make it past this century, possibly not even the halfway mark. This might not strike readers as particularly different from mainstream environmental orthodoxy. However, CoS adopts a bold set of starting premises.

First, only by observing the trends as a whole, Ahmed argues, can we really get a sense of the sheer urgency of the situation. Whereas anthropomorphic climate change is in itself a very serious threat, the true extent of the unfolding horror can only be apprehended if you combine it with, for instance, the arrival of Peak Oil.