A new study by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has claimed that only a few decades are left for our current civilization before it collapses. Mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center wrote a report along with her team of natural and social scientists. The report said that there are fixed numbers of days for modern civilizations, and there is nothing to blame on climate change, or a potential World War III.

They cited five major reasons for the social collapse, comprising of population, climate, water, agriculture and energy. According to the report, within the last 5,000 years, all societal collapses have been a result of the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity as resources were overstretched. Also, the economic stratification of society into Elites and poor in Masses caused the social collapse.

The flow of resources accessible to Masses is controlled by the 'Elite' population, which in turn allows Elites to accumulate a great amount for themselves. It is more than enough to strain natural resources.

Motesharrei's team is of the firm belief that this will become the cause of societal collapse at the end of civilization.

Technology cannot be the panacea of all problems and civilization is certainly the one that technology will not be able to address. On the contrary, technology has exacerbated the problem. Efficiency of resources use can be improved by technological change, but it also raises per capita resources.

Elites themselves are solution to the problem but they would have to take the imitative to restructure society. "The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth", said Motesharrei.

Studies by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science have also warned that a perfect storm could be created within 15 years due to the convergence of food, water and energy crisis.