the cost of production But while technology keeps ahead of depletion, providing what appear to be ever-cheaper metals, they only appear cheap, because the stripped rainforest and the mountain of toxic tailings spilling into rivers, the impoverished villages and eroded indigenous cultures—all the consequences they leave in their wake—are not factored into the cost of production.

Natural capital includes all the familiar resources used by humankind: water, minerals, oil, trees, fish, soil, air, et cetera. But it also encompasses living systems, which include grasslands, savannas, wetlands, estuaries, oceans, coral reefs, riparian corridors, tundras, and rainforests. These are deteriorating worldwide at an unprecedented rate. Within these ecological communities are the fungi, ponds, mammals, humus, amphibians, bacteria, trees, flagellates, insects, songbirds, ferns, starfish, and flowers that make life possible and worth living on this planet.

Since the mideighteenth century, more of nature has been destroyed than in all prior history.While industrial systems have reached pinnacles of success, able to muster and accumulate human-made capital on vast levels, natural capital, on which civilization depends to create economic prosperity, is rapidly declining,1 and the rate of loss is increasing proportionate to gains in material well-being.

transformation of industry In the next century, as human population doubles and the resources available per person drop by one-half to three-fourths, a remarkable transformation of industry and commerce can occur.

Book Excerpts and Downloadable Chapters: "Without a fundamental rethinking of the structure and the reward system of commerce, narrowly focused eco-efficiency could be a disaster for the environment by overwhelming resource savings with even larger growth in the production of the wrong products, produced by the wrong processes, from the wrong materials, in the wrong place, at the wrong scale, and delivered using the wrong business models. "

Book Excerpts and Downloadable Chapters: "A key element of this theory was the idea that the economy was shifting from an emphasis on human productivity to a radical increase in resource productivity. This shift would provide more meaningful family-wage jobs, a better worldwide standard of living to those in need, and a dramatic reduction of humankind's impact upon the environment."

Natural Capitalism - Read the Book: "The first of natural capitalism's four interlinked principles, therefore, is radically increased resource productivity. Implementing just this first principle can significantly improve a firm's bottom line, and can also help finance the other three. They are: redesigning industry on biological models with closed loops and zero waste; shifting from the sale of goods (for example, light bulbs) to the provision of services (illumination); and reinvesting in the natural capital that is the basis of future prosperity. "

Natural Capitalism - Read the Book Natural capital refers to the natural resources and ecosystem services that make possible all economic activity, indeed all life. These services are of immense economic value; some are literally priceless, since they have no known substitutes. Yet current business practices typically fail to take into account the value of these assets—which is rising with their scarcity. As a result, natural capital is being degraded and liquidated by the wasteful use of such resources as energy, materials, water, fiber, and topsoil.

Environmentally sustainableFrom 1997 to 2001, sustainability experts most often selected transportation—well ahead of any other sector tested—as the sector of the national economy that had the furthest to go in order to be environmentally sustainable. This year, for the first time, energy has joined transportation in the eyes of experts as the sector furthest from sustainability.

Environmentally sustainableFrom 1997 to 2001, sustainability experts most often selected transportation—well ahead of any other sector tested—as the sector of the national economy that had the furthest to go in order to be environmentally sustainable. This year, for the first time, energy has joined transportation in the eyes of experts as the sector furthest from sustainability.

EU: Corporate Lobbying Grows - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Last month 50 NGOs wrote an open letter to the European Commission warning of 'the excessive influence of corporate lobby groups over EU policy making' that they say is approaching levels seen in the United States. The NGOs says all European commissioners and other Commission officials should be obliged to accept 'substantial and well-defined cooling off periods' to prevent what they call 'revolving door cases'."

EU: Corporate Lobbying Grows - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Social and environmental groups, although also increasingly represented in Brussels, fear they cannot match the financial and organisational power mobilised by industry lobby groups which offer expertise and advice to an overworked and increasingly pressured European Commission. 'The European Commission in general has a lot of work on its plate and there is a limit to how many people it can employ,' says Hoedeman. 'Because of this it is becoming increasingly dependent on corporate lobby groups for information. For example the directorate-general for trade in the commission actively seeks partnership and guidance from lobby groups.'"

EU: Corporate Lobbying Grows - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "'Lobby groups succeed all too frequently in postponing, weakening or blocking sorely needed progress in EU social, environmental and consumer protections,' Olivier Hoedeman, research coordinator at the CEO told IPS. 'We believe such groups are leading the EU to becoming self-centred in international negotiations, including the EU's negotiating strategies within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade talks.' The European Parliament website lists 5,039 accredited lobbyists working for a range of familiar names such as McDonald's and Visa. The CEO puts the total number of lobbyists at somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000, and says two-thirds of these represent big business. "

EU: Corporate Lobbying Grows - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "There is an urgent need to regulate the 'murky world of corporate lobbying' in Brussels, say campaigners and social non-governmental organisations. The groups say corporate lobby groups, which include industrial associations, political consultants and cross-industry groups, are gaining 'far too much political influence' in the European Union (EU) decision-making process, and are calling for the European Commission, the EU executive, 'to curb the excessive influence' of such groups. 'The complex, often unaccountable EU decision-making procedures and the lack of a truly European public debate are obstacles to democracy, but provide fertile ground for corporate lobbyists,' says the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an Amsterdam-based campaign group which monitors the political influence of business. "

This Can't Go On Forever - So It Won't- Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "High oil prices are a drain on America, Europe, Japan, and other oil-importing countries. America's oil-import bill over the past year alone is estimated to have risen by around $75bn. If there were any assurance that prices would remain permanently above even $40 a barrel, alternative energy sources would be developed. But we are now in the worst of all worlds - prices so high that they damage the global economy, but uncertainty so severe that the investments needed to bring prices down are not being made. "

Oxfam America: Paris Forum: Millstone or Milestone? A slew of competing objectives and incentives mean that most aid is not spent on poor people, or in the poorest countries, and rarely responds straightforwardly to recipient demands (see box 1). The past half-century has witnessed the proliferation of official donors, out of all proportion to any increases in aid, creating an increasingly confused situation where the costs of coordination have steadily grown as the benefits to any single agency have diminished.

Oxfam America: Paris Forum: Millstone or Milestone? During the Cold War, this system mutated into a Babel of agencies, each with their own
projects and programmes, that are driven by a muddle of geopolitical, commercial and development objectives.
This legacy persists today. Aid is allocated inconsistently across sectors and countries, with much – perhaps most – of it spent in the donor countries on overpriced and inappropriate goods and services. Donor demands for demonstrable results and accountability have driven the creation of parallel systems for planning, implementing and reporting of projects and programmes. Byzantine donor procedures and conditions have distorted incentives and systems in aid dependent countries, and undermined local capacity, hindering with one hand where they have helped with the other.

Oxfam America: Paris Forum: Millstone or Milestone?First and foremost, they need to spend aid where it’s needed, on poverty reduction – rather than channel it to their own consultancy and infrastructure industries, and geopolitical allies. Cutting the red tape and intrusive conditions that accompany aid, using countries’ own systems and procedures, delivering what’s promised on time, and practising what is preached about transparency would together transform the impact of aid on poverty. The need for these changes is well understood. So far, it is political commitment rather than analysis that has been in short supply.

CNN.com - Most aid wasted, say agencies - Feb 28, 2005: "'First and foremost, they need to spend aid where it is needed -- on poverty reduction -- rather than channel it to their own consultancy and infrastructure industries and geopolitical allies,' the report said."

SciDev.Net: "A third change is the emergence of new arrangements that seek to create a market for 'international public goods' required principally by developing countries. For example, although new biomedical knowledge is needed to address diseases that mainly affect developing countries, such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, the financial circumstances of many such countries means that there is insufficient potential profit to be made for private companies to be willing to take the financial risks of developing vaccines on their own.
Yet the experience and scientific capabilities of private companies in developing drugs is essential for new and successful vaccines. As a result, new mechanisms have emerged, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation. These seek to create public-private partnerships (PPPs) that can mobilise the very best of international scientific expertise (even if the science on which these new partnerships are based is highly segmented), while at the same time providing the economic and financial incentives essential to secure private investment."

SciDev.Net: "A second critical change has been the transformation of our understanding of the way that knowledge is created, acquired, assimilated, used and diffused, by both enterprises and institutions such as hospitals and universities. Thirty years ago, it was widely assumed that there was a linear process leading from basic to applied research, then to design, to development, and finally to production. Each such step often had its own institutional arrangements or departments within enterprises and institutions.
This linear approach has now largely been abandoned in favour of a much more systemic approach. Many large corporations have merged their research activities with production departments. Networks linking scientific and technical activities both within and between institutions have become commonplace, including new forms of interaction between universities and business enterprises, and both within and between countries. "

SciDev.Net: "The first and most significant change has been the spread of globalisation. This has brought both new opportunities and new threats for the application of science and technology to the prospects of developing countries.
Fundamental changes are also taking place in the nature of the knowledge used in innovation. This in turn is leading to increasing specialisation by organisations engaged in different aspects of the innovation process.
There is, for example, a new international division of labour in which science-based production companies now frequently carry out research and development in one country, do design work in another, establish production facilities in a third, and manage global sales from a fourth."

Press Review for March 04, 2005: In Paris, Rich Countries Decide To Better Coordinate Development Ai China's urban population will reach 1.1 billion people by 2050 if the nation can remain on course to become a "high income country" in accordance with international norms, state press said Friday. "The only way to eventually solve China's problems in agriculture and rural areas is to reduce the farming population by getting them to move into the cities," Xinhua news agency said, citing a newly released report by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Such a development would mean that some 10 to 12 million farmers must move into urban areas annually in a migratory process that is expected to cost up to 16 trillion yuan ($1.9 trillion), or twice China's GDP in 2000, it said. According to statistics from the World Bank, the average rate of urbanization in high-, medium- and low-income countries were 75 percent, 62 percent and 30 percent respectively

Amazon.com: Books: Powerdown : Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World: "If the collapse of civilization as we know it is inevitable , perhaps, as Heinberg suggests, the best course for us is the preservation of books, the arts, etc., for use later in a post-collapse society. The sustainable energy program that Heinberg and many others suggest that we should pursue with utmost urgency seems unlikely to occur until the American people are faced with a severe oil shortage and massive price increases. Then the politicians will be forced to take real and responsible action. In the meantime we seem to be in a period of nearly endless resource wars with hundreds of billions of dollars each year diverted to this losing cause that indeed should be spent on alternate energy sources, better highways, and better health care, for all Americans. Considering the vast amounts we are spending in this overseas war effort, perhaps the terrorists have already won! "

Amazon.com: Books: Powerdown : Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World: "As Heinberg writes, Bush and his followers are incompetent, with their belligerent foreign policy, but Heinberg does give Bush credit for recognizing the looming oil depletion problem on our horizon. Heinberg writes in detail of all of this, saying that instead of using the war to solve this problem we should instead be cooperating with other countries and spending the vast sums of money we are wasting on the war on alternate energy sources. "

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): "What, then, are Diamond's 'reasons for hope'? He offers only two: first, that our problems are, in principle at least, solvable; and second, that environmental thinking has become more common in recent years. But for hope to be realized, he says, modern societies will have to make good choices in two areas. We will need 'courageous, successful long-term planning,' which, he says, is indeed being undertaken by some governments and political leaders, at least some of the time. What Diamond doesn't mention is that the single instance of long-term planning that might have made all the difference to the survival of our civilization-a sustained choice by the US to wean itself from fossil fuels, beginning in the 1970s at the time of the first oil shocks-was not followed through; as a result, economic crises and resource wars are now virtually assured."

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): "problem is not merely that politicians are being bought and sold by corporations (this has been going on for decades), but that the entire system has been hijacked by partisans who pride themselves on making decisions solely on the basis of ideology and in supreme disdain for 'reality.' At the same time, the US electoral system has been eviscerated and commandeered by a single party (using various forms of systematic fraud that have now become endemic), so that a peaceful rectification of the situation by a vote of the people has become virtually impossible. Moreover, the American media have been so cowed and co-opted by the dominant party that most of the citizenry is blissfully unaware of its plight and is thus extremely unlikely to vigorously oppose the current trends. Diamond shows some limited awareness of this truly horrifying state of affairs, and he realizes that wise political leadership would be essential to the avoidance of collapse. Yet he refuses to draw the obvious conclusion: the most powerful of the world's current leaders are every bit as irrational as the befuddled kings and chiefs who brought the Maya and Easter Islanders to their ruin."

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): "3. Averting collapse would require changes that must be championed and partly implemented by political leaders: unprecedented levels of national and international cooperation would be needed in order to allocate essential resources in order to avert deadly competition for them as they become scarce, and our economic and monetary systems would have to be reformed despite pressure from the entrenched interests of wealthy elites. "

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): " In his book The Limits of Business Development and Economic Growth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), business strategist Mats Larsson makes the point that most of technology and business development in the past has had as its goal the reduction of time and cost in manufacturing. But nothing can be done at less than no time or at less than no cost. He cites the example of the printing and distribution of books and other written media: with these, Gutenberg famously reduced time and cost. Now, the Internet enables the electronic reproduction and distribution of books, films, and music at almost no cost and in almost no time. Similarly, labor cost in China is probably now at close to the absolute theoretical minimum. Larsson's conclusion is that economic growth is perilously close to its ultimate bounds, even when resource constraints are not factored into the calculation."

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): "At least four independent studies now forecast that the global oil peak is likely to occur as soon as 2005 and probably before 2010, which means that there will not be enough time to invest in replacement energy sources before the decline begins; nor can we be assured that adequate replacement energy sources exist. In the estimation of a growing chorus of informed observers, the oil peak is likely to be a trigger for global economic crisis and the outbreak of a series of devastating resource wars."

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): "Indeed, Diamond predictably devotes the last section of his last chapter to 'reasons for hope,' leaving the reader with evidence for thinking that collapse will not occur in our own instance after all. This excuses him from asking a question that appears to be tugging at more minds, and with more urgency, every day: What if it's already too late? Yes, if collapse can be averted, we should of course be working toward that end. But suppose for a moment that we have passed the point of no return, and that some form of collapse is now inevitable. What should we be doing in that case?"

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): "Diamond's essential message-that our very persistence as a civilized society may depend upon well-led efforts to reduce the negative impact of our economic processes upon nature-is one that more people desperately need to hear. The author artfully skewers classic one-liner objections such as, 'The environment has to be balanced against the economy,' 'Technology will solve our problems,' and 'If we exhaust one resource, we can always switch to some other resource meeting the same need.' Collapse draws the reader into rich and fascinating discussions of specific modern instances in which collapse in some form already has occurred, is occurring, or is likely to occur-Rwanda, Haiti, and Montana-showing in each instance how political and economic events, emerging from underlying environmental crises and constraints, can lead to economic reversal, social disintegration, or even genocide."

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): "Diamond argues that our modern global industrial society is creating some of the very same sorts of environmental problems that caused ancient societies to fail, plus four new ones: 'human-caused climate change, buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages and full human utilization of the earth's photosynthetic capacity.' Echoing the conclusions of the Limits to Growth study of 1972, Diamond notes that many of these problems are likely to 'become globally critical within the next few decades.'"

EnergyBulletin.net | Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book): "'Despite these varying proximate causes of abandonments, all were ultimately due to the same fundamental challenge: people living in fragile and difficult environments, adopting solutions that were brilliantly successful and understandable in the short run, but that failed or else created fatal problems in the long run, when people became confronted with external environmental changes or human-caused environmental changes that cities without written histories and without archaeologists could not have anticipated.'"

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human RaceIf the history of the human race began at midnight, then we would now be almost at the end of our first day. We lived as hunter-gatherers for nearly the whole of that day, from midnight through dawn, noon, and sunset. Finally, at 11:54 p. m. we adopted agriculture. As our second midnight approaches, will the plight of famine-stricken peasants gradually spread to engulf us all? Or will we somehow achieve those seductive blessings that we imagine behind agriculture’s glittering façade, and that have so far eluded us?

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race: "'Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years,' says Armelagos, 'but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to survive.'"

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race: "For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It�s a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it�s nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive."

Jared Diamond on The Paula Gordon Show: "Biology and geography (not superior humans) determined who domesticated animals and plants, who developed what technology and who could survive the diseases that evolved alongside domesticated animals. "

People's Daily Online -- Full text of Human Rights Record of the US in 2004: "The United States is the No. 1 military power in the world, and its military spending has kept shooting up. Its fiscal 2005 defense budget hit a historical high of 422 billion US dollars, an increase of 21 billion dollars over fiscal 2004. As the biggest arms dealer in the world, the United States has made a fortune out of war. Its transactions of conventional weapons exceeded 14.5 billion dollars in 2003, up 900 million dollars year-on-year and accounting for 56.7 percent of the total sales worldwide."

People's Daily Online -- Full text of Human Rights Record of the US in 2004: "According to a report of the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2004, a study on the fall of 2003 by Arthur Kennickell of the Board of Governor of the Federal Reserve System showed that the nation's wealthiest 1 percent owned 53 percent of all the stocks held by families or individuals, and 64 percent of the bonds. They control more than a third of the nation's wealth. ( US Led a Resurgence Last Year Among Millionaires World-Wide, The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2004). In Washington D.C., the top 20 percent of the city's households have 31 times the average income of the 20 percent at the bottom. "

People's Daily Online -- Full text of Human Rights Record of the US in 2004: "In the elections, political parties and interest groups not only donated money for their favorite candidates, but also directly spent funds on maximizing their influence upon the elections. In Maryland, some corporate bosses donated as much as 130,000 US dollars. In return, the candidates after being elected would serve the interests of big political donators. The Baltimore Sun called this 'Buying Power' (see 'Buying Power', The Baltimore Sun, April 5, 2004). Due to the fact that local judges in 38 states need to be elected, quite a number of candidates began campaign advertising and looking for big donators. "

People's Daily Online -- Full text of Human Rights Record of the US in 2004: "In the elections, political parties and interest groups not only donated money for their favorite candidates, but also directly spent funds on maximizing their influence upon the elections. In Maryland, some corporate bosses donated as much as 130,000 US dollars. In return, the candidates after being elected would serve the interests of big political donators. The Baltimore Sun called this 'Buying Power' (see 'Buying Power', The Baltimore Sun, April 5, 2004). Due to the fact that local judges in 38 states need to be elected, quite a number of candidates began campaign advertising and looking for big donators. "

Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias: "A new study has found that when it comes to U.S. media coverage of global warming , superficial balance�telling 'both' sides of the story�can actually be a form of informational bias. Despite the consistent assertions of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that human activities have had a 'discernible' influence on the global climate and that global warming is a serious problem that must be addressed immediately, 'he said/she said' reporting has allowed a small group of global warming skeptics to have their views greatly amplified. "

developpement durable:Depuis que le capitalisme est apparu et s’est traduit par un développement technique et matériel d’une rapidité sans précédent dans l’histoire de l’humanité, les formes du compromis entre capital, travail et Etat ont été très diverses : l’Etat peut se révéler prédateur et casser les mécanismes permettant l’accumulation, comme on le voit dans bien des pays en développement ; il peut aussi, avec la complicité du capital, mettre la capacité d’innovation du capitalisme au service d’une politique de puissance dévastatrice, comme l’histoire du siècle dernier nous l’a montré tragiquement ; il peut enfin déboucher sur un équilibre plus satisfaisant, quand l’action de l’Etat démocratique, associée au mouvement social librement organisé, contraint le capital à accorder des salaires plus élevés et des garanties sociales. Etabli au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale dans les pays riches, ce compromis dit « fordiste » a permis d’éviter que la dynamique inégalitaire du capitalisme ne détruise la société. Cet équilibre est aujourd’hui menacé par la mondialisation et la montée du néolibéralisme qui l’accompagne. Il reste néanmoins, même sous une forme dégradée, au cœur de notre modèle social et politique.

People's Daily Online -- China's divorce rate 21.2% up in 2004: "China saw 1.613 million couples divorced in 2004 while 8.341 million couples registered to marry that year, according to statistics of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Compared with the statistics of 2003, 282,000 more couples divorced with an increase rate of 21.2 percent while 227,000 more couples got married in 2004. "

In the 21st century there can be no effective power without legitimacy; in turn, globalization is ensuring that there can be no legitimacy without recognizing the inherently equal value of human beings across the globe. Together, the United States and the European Union account for about 55 percent of world GDP and two thirds of global military capability. Together, they are also a formidable source of ideas, art, culture, and science. But they can no longer be omnipotent. Their populations together represent less than 14 percent of the world population today and will account for no more than about 10 percent by 2020. This in itself should be sufficient to disqualify any argument that Europeans and Americans can simply rule the world. Legitimacy requires that it is the United Nations, not NATO, which must provide the framework for world security.2 The same sense of legitimacy requires that international economic institutions such as the IMF, World
Bank, and WTO be part of an architecture of global governance that takes into account the resources of the wealthy while providing sufficient
weight and decision-making power as well to the large populations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.The developing countries and their people
must perceive international economic institutions as also their own. The leadership of the United States and Europe is needed to build
global governance, and no one is questioning that they will have a determining weight for years to come in any institutional structure that can and will function at the global level.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Age of ancient humans reassessed: "Two skulls originally found in 1967 have been shown to be about 195,000 years old, making them the oldest modern human remains known to science. "

t r u t h o u t - Jared Diamond | The Ends of the World as We Know Them: "Do we have cause for hope? Many of my friends are pessimistic when they contemplate the world's growing population and human demands colliding with shrinking resources. But I draw hope from the knowledge that humanity's biggest problems today are ones entirely of our own making. Asteroids hurtling at us beyond our control don't figure high on our list of imminent dangers. To save ourselves, we don't need new technology: we just need the political will to face up to our problems of population and the environment. "

t r u t h o u t - Jared Diamond | The Ends of the World as We Know Them: "Could this happen in the United States? It's a thought that often occurs to me here in Los Angeles, when I drive by gated communities, guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools. By doing these things, they lose the motivation to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security and public schools. If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people, gates will not keep the rioters out. Rioters eventually burned the palaces of Maya kings and tore down the statues of Easter Island chiefs; they have also already threatened wealthy districts in Los Angeles twice in recent decades. " ...In contrast, the elite in 17th-century Japan, as in modern Scandinavia and the Netherlands, could not ignore or insulate themselves from broad societal problems.... In this New Year, we Americans have our own painful reappraisals to face. Historically, we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that's no longer viable in a world of finite resources. We can't continue to deplete our own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the world. ... Historically, oceans protected us from external threats; we stepped back from our isolationism only temporarily during the crises of two world wars. Now, technology and global interconnectedness have robbed us of our protection. In recent years, we have responded to foreign threats largely by seeking short-term military solutions at the last minute.

null: "What lessons can we draw from history? The most straightforward: take environmental problems seriously. They destroyed societies in the past, and they are even more likely to do so now. If 6,000 Polynesians with stone tools were able to destroy Mangareva Island, consider what six billion people with metal tools and bulldozers are doing today. Moreover, while the Maya collapse affected just a few neighboring societies in Central America, globalization now means that any society's problems have the potential to affect anyone else. Just think how crises in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq have shaped the United States today.
Other lessons involve failures of group decision-making. There are many reasons why past societies made bad decisions, and thereby failed to solve or even to perceive the problems that would eventually destroy them. One reason involves conflicts of interest, whereby one group within a society (for instance, the pig farmers who caused the worst erosion in medieval Greenland and Iceland) can profit by engaging in practices that damage the rest of society. Another is the pursuit of short-term gains at the expense of long-term survival, as when fishermen overfish the stocks on which their livelihoods ultimately depend.
History also teaches us two deeper lessons about what separates successful societies from those heading toward failure. A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions. That's why Maya k"