Guy McPherson's blog

Viral collapse

According to economists, the beauty of globalization is worldwide access to materials and cheap (or free) labor to bring the materials to powerful countries. We provide garbage, pollution, and low wages — or, in the “best” cases we enslave workers — and we obtain materials and finished goods. This is the rising economic tide that [...]

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Linking the past with the present: resources, land use, and the collapse of civilizations

We have ripped minerals from the Earth, often bringing down mountains in the process; we have harvested nearly all the old-growth timber on the continent, replacing thousand-year-old trees with neatly ordered plantations of small trees; we have hunted species to the point of extinction; we have driven livestock across every almost acre of the continent, baring hillsides and facilitating massive erosion; we have plowed large landscapes, transforming fertile soil into sterile, lifeless dirt; we have burned ecosystems and, perhaps more importantly, we have extinguished naturally occurring fires; we have paved thousands of acres to facilitate our movement and, in the process, have disrupted the movements of thousands of species; we have spewed pollution and dumped garbage, thereby dirtying our air, fouling our water, and contributing greatly to the warming of the planet. We have, to the maximum possible extent allowed by our intellect and never-ending desire, consumed the planet.

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Change has come

As waves of red ink from the Overdraft Ocean lap at the shores of The Check(book) Republic, the cry goes out: The economy must grow.

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