Next Generation May Be Doomed To 'Global Somalia'

[indigobusiness]

By Steve Connor
Science Editor
The Independent - UK
1-22-5


An environmental collapse that would transform the world into a "global Somalia" could begin in 50 years if we fail to do anything about it, a world authority on the rise and fall of civilisations warned yesterday. Professor Jared Diamond, of the University of California, Los Angeles, said society was on the brink of irreversible decline unless 12 major environmental problems were tackled.

Professor Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has spent many years studying the reasons why some societies in history thrived and others slipped into decline. He cited present-day Somalia as among several places where environmental degradation has already helped to trigger a collapse of government and the rule of law.

"Conditions of Somalia will spread," he said. "Somalia is an example of a worst-case scenario. State government has collapsed; it is a dry landscape, difficult to manage and, not surprisingly, it has problems of environmental degradation.

"There are plenty of countries where state government is moving towards collapse ... We will be living in a global Somalia if we don't do anything about it. My children, who are 17 years old, will be living in a global Somalia unless we solve our problems."

snip

"If we continue doing the things we are doing now the outcome, which is not the worst-case scenario but the actual outcome, would be that we don't arrive at the end of the century," Professor Diamond said. "Most of our problems are ones with 30- to 50-year time fuses. That is the rate at which we are exploiting the world ... So if we carry on we do not arrive at the end of the century with a First-World lifestyle."

snip

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603040

[poe]

1. Jared Diamond knows his stuff

much of the world is already there. do not be afraid of the level of change we all need to make. learn to save seeds. learn to cut your energy patterns drastically. only massive civil disobedience can stop the devastation of our biosphere. the rest of the world is waiting for the american people to wake up and act up.

[GAspnes]

2. His logic is impeccable. We're in trouble, folks.

The first example he gave to illustrate the sorts of problems communities accumulate was the American State of Montana. Not many years ago, it was one of the wealthiest in America, wealth based on copper mining, forestry and agriculture. Now it's very poor. Mining has gone, leaving terrible environmental damage, 70% of the children in Montana are on Food Aid, logging and farming are in decline. What happened was that the mining, forestry and agriculture which earned so much wealth, became destructive. Montana now has terrible forest fires, desalinization, erosion, weeds and animal diseases, and population decline.

Jared Diamond: If Montana were an isolated country, Montana would be in a state of collapse. Montana is not going to collapse, because it's supported by the rest of the United States, and yet other societies have collapsed in the past, and are collapsing now or will collapse in the future, from problems similar to those facing Montana. The same problems that we've seen throughout human history, problems of water, forests, topsoil, irrigation, desalinization, climate change, erosion, introduced pests and disease and population; problems similar to those faced by Montanans today are the ones posing problems in Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Australia, Nepal, Ethiopia and so on. But those countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan etcetera have the misfortune not to be embedded within a rich country that supports them, like the United States.

http://eces.org/articles/000544.php

That about covers it. And, as he says, each of those problems has be addressed. Miss one, and the others won't hold us up.