The next world war tribes, cities, nations and ecological decline - Woodbridge, Roy M. (University of Toronto Press, 2004)
Includes bibliographical references and index
Part I: the enemy is ecological decline -- A shift in the angle of vision -- Provisioning societies -- Part II: from common genes to the global economy -- Round one: the spread of hunter-gatherer societies -- Round two: the rise and spread of agricultural societies -- Round three: urbanization -- Round four: from city-states to nations -- Round five: reliance on global business networks -- The organization and potential of round five -- Part III: the twenty-five year challenge to growth and social stability -- From egalitarian tribes to global inequity -- Ecological roadblocks to growth and poverty reduction -- The catalysts of calamity -- Part IV: the war to provision in the world -- Our common enemy -- Mobilizing nations for war -- Mobilizing the international community -- Round six: the age of global provisioning
Pre-occupied with the war on terrorism, we have lost sight of a more dangerous enemy of social peace and progress - the inability of the world's people to access the ecological goods and services they need to maintain and build their societies. By 2025, the combined demands of continued economic growth and the reduction of global poverty will require, annually, the ecological equivalent of three or four earths. Like the tribes, cities, and nations of earlier times, we can fight our neighbours for privileged access to declining ecosystem goods and services. This confrontation will inevitably pit the wealthy beneficiaries of the global economy against the billions of excluded, and lead to accelerated ecological collapse, the derailment of growth, and social chaos. The only alternative to this dismal prospect is to mobilize on a scale as if for war in order to meet this provisioning challenge on the battlefields of directed technological innovation