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Most of us are a little worried about what lies ahead, but members of the Dark Mountain Project believe that civilisation is about to collapse, that the Green movement has failed, and that we should be preparing to live in a changed world In some places people will start to move back to agriculture and villages, and there’ll be civil unrest

TALK TO ANY group of people these days – friends, family, colleagues – and sooner or later the conversation will turn to the calamitous state of affairs we find ourselves in. But what if things are about to get a lot worse? What if the combined effects of environmental and economic meltdown do actually mean that the globalised economic system sustained by technological growth, rampant consumerism and boom-and-bust economics is coming to an end?

In an effort to grapple with this question, a group of writers, artists, social entrepreneurs, engineers and technology experts have embarked on the Dark Mountain Project. Started by the UK-based writer and community organiser Dougald Hine and the writer Paul Kingsnorth more than two years ago, the project offers a focus for people who are genuinely concerned that we are entering an age of “material decline, ecological collapse and social and political uncertainty”. The central tenet of the project is that we should respond to these combined crises rather than deny that they exist.