PM compares climate change threat to collapse of the Roman Empire

The Prime Minister has said civilisation could collapse “like the Roman Empire” unless climate change is tackled.

He told journalists while travelling to this weekend’s G20 summit in the erstwhile imperial capital that the world may “go backwards” if a deal to tackle rising temperatures is not struck at the upcoming UN COP26 climate summit set to kick off in Glasgow this Sunday.

“Humanity, civilisation and society can go backwards as well as forwards and when they start to go wrong, they can go wrong at extraordinary speed,” he argued, adding: “You saw that with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire… “It’s true today that, unless we get this right in tackling climate change, we could see our civilisation, our world, also go backwards.”

In 476, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire was deposed after a succession of various military and economic crises.

However the Eastern or ‘Byzantine’ Empire was not dissolved for almost another millennia, and finally fell in 1453 after an Ottoman army stormed Constantinople.

Johnson read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, and has written several works on European ancient history.

In light of the Prime Minister’s remarks, celebrated scholar of Ancient Roman civilisation Professor Dame Mary Beard—who won a 2015 Intelligence Squared debate with Johnson on the merits of ancient Greece versus ancient Rome—said via Twitter:

“Oh dear, it IS nice to see politicians taking a historical perspective, but our PM saying that with the fall of Roman empire ‘humanity’ (all of it?) ‘became far less literate’ and ‘lost the ability to draw properly’ is… well.. wrong. Time for a re-match?”