« Court Dismisses Lawsuit Challenging FISA Amendments Act Unconstitutional Spying Law Jeopardizes Americans' Privacy | Federal deficit higher in July, $1.27T this year » |
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/aug/17/environment-climate-change
The collapse of civilisation will bring us a saner world, says Paul Kingsnorth. No, counters George Monbiot – we can't let billions perish. Dear George On the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy's gross domestic product... in the last inch or so – around 1950 – it veers steeply upwards... The root cause of all these trends is the same: a rapacious human economy bringing the world swiftly to the brink of chaos.