Thought provoking article at Seed Magazine: Science is Culture – Collapse on ecological suicide–ecocide.
At first, a critic, noting the obvious differences, might be tempted to object: “It’s ridiculous to suppose that the collapses of all those ancient peoples could have broad relevance today, especially to the modern United States. Those ancients didn’t enjoy the wonders of modern technology, which benefits us and which lets us solve problems by inventing new environment-friendly technologies. Those ancients had the misfortune to suffer from effects of climate change. They behaved stupidly and ruined their own environments by doing obviously dumb things, like cutting down their forests, overharvesting wild-animal sources of protein, watching their topsoil erode away, and building cities in dry areas likely to run short of water. They had foolish leaders who didn’t have books and so couldn’t learn from history, and who embroiled them in expensive and destabilizing wars, cared only about staying in power, and didn’t pay attention to problems at home. They got overwhelmed by desperate, starving immigrants as one society after another collapsed, sending floods of economic refugees to tax the resources of the societies that weren’t collapsing. In all those respects, we moderns are fundamentally different from those primitive ancients, and there is nothing that we could learn from them. Especially in the U.S., the richest and most powerful country in the world today, with the most productive environment and wise leaders and strong, loyal allies and only weak, insignificant enemies–none of those bad things could possibly apply.”
Via: Nouslife: Ecocide.
