The Tipping Point: “Civilizations often fall quite suddenly”

And when we fall, we will fall into... bankruptcy?

While rereading A Short History of Progress (see Read This, side margin, for more details) I came across the following paragraph, and it seemed timely because of the climate change talks in Copenhagen:

“Civilizations often fall quit suddenly - the House of cards effect - because as they reach full demand on their ecologies, they become highly vulnerable to natural fluctuations.

["The big gulp": illustration by GAH]

“The most immediate danger posed by climate change is weather instability causing a series of crop failures in the world’s breadbaskets. Droughts floods, fires and hurricanes are rising in frequency and severity."

I’m not sure what the author, Ronald Wright, means by ‘quite suddenly’ but earlier in the book he writes about the demands modern day populations have placed upon the ecology.

For example, he writes:

“If civilization is to survive, it must live on the interest, not the capital, of nature. Ecological markers suggest that in the early 1960s humans were using about 70 per cent of nature’s yearly output; by the 1980s, we’d reached 100 per cent; and in 1999, we were at 125 per cent. Such numbers may be imprecise, but their trend is clear - they mark the road to bankruptcy.”

As I’ve said in the past, we’re eating our planet too quickly.

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Reduce spending, save money, pay off debts.

Live small and prosper.

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