Why Our Sky Sometimes Does Start Falling

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:


Why Our Sky Sometimes Does Start Falling
APRIL 20, 2014

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be able to demonstrate the link between inequality and catastrophic environmental change. But a little help from rocket scientists can certainly help.

By Sam Pizzigati


The sky, we all learn as children, is not falling — and never falls. Only silly Chicken Littles prattle about “precipitous collapses.”

Only silly Chicken Littles, apparently, and applied mathematicians.

One of those mathematicians, the University of Maryland’s Safa Motesharrei, has joined with two colleagues to publish a new paper that sees the “precipitous collapse” of our global order as a distinct possibility.

.....(snip).....

These collapses, Motesharrei and his collaborators note, naturally raise the question whether we today remain “similarly susceptible.” Or can our modern civilization, with all our “greater technological capacity, scientific knowledge, and energy resources,” survive whatever did in our sophisticated predecessors?

And what did do in these predecessors? In previous collapses, we see some similar patterns. The doomed societies overextended themselves environmentally. They depleted their natural resources at an unsustainable pace — and failed to see, despite their sophistication, the warning signs of their impending implosion. They soldiered on, oblivious to the danger. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/sky-sometimes-start-falling/#sthash.00AfTBwH.dpuf