By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.
Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? | Nafeez... - 0 views
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These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."
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The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency: "Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."
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Reuters AlertNet - CLIMATE CHANGE BLOG: Does poverty equal vulnerability? - 0 views
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'poor people are the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change'
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But is it the state of being poor that makes people vulnerable to climate change, or the processes that lead to their impoverishment?
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if you have access to a clean and healthy environment that provides for your needs - meaning you don't need two dollars a day (or perhaps even one) - then you aren't living in poverty!
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Biodiversity loss matters, and communication is crucial - SciDev.Net - 0 views
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at root is the conflict between the need to radically change our use of natural resources and the desire to maintain current forms of economic growth
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enhancing the media's ability to communicate messages emerging from the underlying science
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governments signed up to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have missed their 2010 target, set in 2002, of achieving "a significant reduction in the rate of biodiversity loss"
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