This album is about ecological and societal collapse.

We are losing topsoil from industrial agriculture and climate change-induced extreme weather patterns. We have less than 60 harvests left, and crop yields will decrease to failure as global temperatures rise, while the crops themselves will hold fewer nutrients.

Insect biomass has decreased by 75% over the past 27 years. This includes pollinating insects that we rely upon for food. Climate change and pesticides are among the culprits.

Six out of the 10 worst mass shootings in the United States occurred within the past decade, and the top 2 occurred within the past 5 years. Meanwhile, the opioid epidemic continues, and deaths of despair are on the rise. American life expectancy is actually decreasing.

In 1972, the Club of Rome released a report based on computer simulations of our growth-based economy concluding that business as usual was unsustainable. The business-as-usual scenario would lead to overshoot and collapse. The report met criticism upon its release, but 30 years later, the report was found to be fairly accurate.

The IPCC states that we have until 2030 to reduce fossil fuel consumption by 45% and then until 2050 to reach net zero to mitigate the worst disasters from climate change. The IPCC is also widely regarded to be underselling climate change due to political pressures within the United Nations. Their estimates do not account for feedback loops including the release of permafrost methane or an ice-free Arctic, and they count the burning of wood coal as renewable energy, when in fact we are losing 27 soccer fields of forest per minute to deforestation. Renewable energy solutions have not helped; renewable energy has been a supplement rather than a substitute as we emit record levels of carbon year after year.

We are in an ecological emergency. We need the most extreme measures to have a habitable planet in the immediate future. Near-term human extinction within this generation is certainly a possibility. We are beginning to see the effects of climate change now with extreme weather events including Nebraska's flood and the fire in Paradise. The current global temperature only reflects carbon emissions from up to 20 years ago. The last time carbon dioxide levels were this high in the atmosphere was during the Pliocene epoch. The global temperature was 3 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer (ie, uninhabitable) above preindustrial times, and seas were 25 feet higher.

It does not matter where you live, what you do, who you know, or how much money you have. You are not safe.