A fallen statue of a Pharaoh head before the Great Temple, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the Nubian Monuments.
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Goliath’s curse: Climate, Inequality, and Societal Collapse

As soon as inequality in resources tipped over into inequality in power, Goliath-like states and empires, with vast bureaucracies and militaries like our own, began carving up and dominating the globe.

What brought them down? Compounding inequality and concentrations of power, says Luke Kemp, research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

According to Kemp — nicknamed “Dr. Doom” by some of his colleagues — we now live in a single, global Goliath. In this talk, recorded at BESI on September 30, 2025, Kemp explore the ways growth-obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, Big Tech, and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war.

About the speaker

Luke Kemp is a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge. He has a background in human geography, international relations and economics, all of which he tutored or lectured in at the Australian National University (ANU). His research has been covered by media outlets such as The New York Times, BBC, and The New Yorker.