Antisocial Responses to Scarcity

Discussion

Asher Miller and Richard Heinberg:

"Social scientists studying modern human responses to natural disasters or to sudden collective deprivation have noted a typical pattern of behavior: initially, people pull together.95 They share what they have, volunteering their efforts to help neighbors and strangers. However, if scarcity continues for many months or years, then cooperative behavior gradually dwindles, and each individual’s circle of trust diminishes significantly.

Often, scarcity can lead to violence—both within and between societies—though the linkage is usually indirect.96 For example, in Pakistan, rapid population growth, environmental degradation, and inefficient farming practices caused increasing scarcity of both cropland and water by the early 1990s.97 A resulting urban influx of migrants altered the ethnic balance in the cities, leading to long-running conflict.

Sometimes, leaders stoke the fires of war with other nations in hopes of obtaining control of scarce resources or simply as a way to maintain domestic cohesion. Archaeologists and historians have noted that earlier societies experienced higher levels of warfare when faced with resource shortages brought about by population growth or persistent drought.

Other times, elites compete among themselves, leading to factional division and civil war. Examples that emerge from historical studies of environmentally-driven civil conflict include the Chiapas rebellion, the Rwandan genocide, violence between Senegal and Mauritania, civil conflict in the Philippines, and ethnic violence in Assam, India. In civil disputes such as these, minorities nearly always suffer the worst casualties.

Foreseeable triggers for future conflict center on the impacts of climate change, population growth, resource scarcity, and environmental degradation. At the same time, in recent decades the means of conflict have proliferated, as weapons have grown more numerous, deadly, and sophisticated—now including (globally) an estimated one billion guns, 14,000 nuclear warheads, and new cyberweapons capable of crippling power grids or energy and water supplies for entire nations."

(https://www.postcarbon.org/publications/welcome-to-the-great-unraveling/)