The 21st century is changing much about the world that humans take for granted.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Among the more shocking possibilities is that it will sound the death knell of the nation-state as the main instrument of human self-governance.
The nation-state, established in the Americas and in Europe post-Napoleon, is now so firmly ingrained in our identities, customs and beliefs that many people are unable to imagine a world in which this edifice of self-organisation might disappear, or at least fade into insignificance - like feudalism, monarchy, the ancient imperial systems, or the priest-states and tribal lands before them.
However, certain currents are now established in the stream of history whose confluence threatens to engulf the nation as an entity. Everywhere.
And it is time we discuss the possibility, rather than assume that everything will remains the same, forever.
The first of these gigantic currents is the rise and rise of transnational businesses, whose individual economic might now exceeds that of all but the largest nations.
These self-governed entities - all autocracies - now dominate more than half the world economy and do pretty much as they choose.
They buy and sell governments. They bend, break and amend the laws of nation-states at will. And they pay only a whisker of their fair share of taxes.
The loss of tax revenue is slowly strangling the government of all nation-states: they no longer have the funds with which to govern.
This attrition of the fiscal power to govern is rapidly translating into the disillusion and disgust which many citizens now feel for the politicians and governments who over-promise and constantly fail to live up to our expectations.
The second current is the defiance of regulation. National governments can no longer control these giant businesses as they skip adroitly between jurisdictions.
The chemical industry, for example, has fled headlong into Asia where regulation is weak and officialdom usually corrupt.
National governments are now powerless to stop its emissions from returning to poison their own citizens in air, water, food and traded goods.
If national governments can no longer enforce laws to protect their citizens, they are no longer governments, by definition.
A third reason that the nation-state is in trouble is the rise of social media.
Yes, social media, that font of trivia and vapid opinion, is rapidly becoming more potent as a determinant of political outcomes than the creaking power centres.
Social media can respond with a freedom, flexibility, immediacy and agility that is simply beyond the lumbering autocrats.
It is also particularly susceptible to well-poisoning by fossil fuel companies and other manipulators, with their armies of bots and useful idiots.
Social media has the power to build, reform and alter public consensus in ways that often leave governments stranded like shags on a rock.
Nobody would claim it is carefully thought through, but at least it's still fairly democratic - something not many governments nowadays can truthfully claim.
A fourth reason why governments fail is their growing impotence. Many critical issues today are global in nature, and individual governments - even great federations like the EU - are relatively powerless to control or influence them.
Decisions about what to do about the atmosphere, the oceans, famines, refugee crises, the world economy etc. are being taken by global consensus and through global institutions, emasculating the decision-making powers of national governments.
The problem is a compounding one.
As national government becomes less capable and more autocratic it ceases to attract quality leaders, innovators and reformers.
Instead, it draws in a class of bottom-feeders, adept at every trick to gain and retain power, and who reward themselves and their pals with vast entitlements.
Public service lapses into oblivion as the administrative arm of government becomes politicised. This accelerates the spiralling loss of credibility, influence and public support for national institutions.
A fifth reason nation-states are crumbling is refugeeism. When the UNHCR was set up post-WWII it had 1 million people to deal with.
Today 103 million people are displaced by war, famine, political and religious persecution.
This is up from 19 million in 2000 - and another 250 million are seeking economic opportunity elsewhere or else are driven by fear of impending disaster as their home state totters.
That's a third of a billion humans, on the road, every year, putting all borders under growing strain.
By mid-century, with climate-induced famines striking around the world and the outbreak of resulting conflicts, the displaced population may well number hundreds of millions.
Borders become porous and then meaningless in the face of such tidal population shifts.
Nation-states that cannot defend their borders become equally meaningless.
Today's refugee crisis is a mere foreshock of what the combined forces of resource scarcity, eco-collapse, peak people, climate change and resulting conflict will bring.
Faced with the erosion of its wealth and power, with public disillusion and increasingly porous borders, the nation-state is an entity fast approaching its use-by date.
Something constructed on 19th century Bismarckian lines is hardly up to the task of a world in which everything - money, people, power, information, opinion and pollution - flows globally.
For all their patriotic sentiments, flagwaving and anthems, nations are a poor idea.
Since the 1850s they've slaughtered around 200 million people - mostly civilians - in their wars. More, even, than religions. It wasn't the people who started these wars - it was their governments (almost universally male).
If we aspire to world peace in the age of peak people, and wish to avoid future nuclear conflicts, we first need to reinvent the structures that cause war.
READ MORE:
As the megathreats bear inexorably down on all humanity, the likelihood that failing national governments will take refuge in war escalates.
Faced with problems they cannot solve, and populations increasingly impatient at their incompetence, more leaders will fall back on the "Galtieri solution" - when in doubt start a war, and the mugs will rally round the flag.
The vital thing to realise is that nations do not have any answers to the existential crisis now facing humanity.
They are too selfish, too parochial, too competitive, too argumentative, too anachronistic.
They need to get out of the way. People who cling to nationalistic ideals need to grow up and face reality.
To solve a crisis of the magnitude of the one all humans are facing requires universal goodwill and co-operation, not petty inter-nation squabbling on the 19th century model.
As things stand, nations are now a direct obstacle to the survival of civilisation. They will be the chief cause of its downfall.
The nation-state is dead. It belongs in the dustbin of history, along with monarchies, empires and other expressions of glorified greed.
Only becoming one people, on one planet, can save us.
- Julian Cribb is a Canberra science writer and author. His latest book is How to Fix a Broken Planet.
