Ecological Degradation Past and Present
* Book: Ecological Degradation Past and Present. A Trilogy. SING C. CHEW. Rowman & Littlefield, 2008
URL = https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780759112032/Ecological-Degradation-Past-and-Present-A-Trilogy
Description
"In his trilogy of environmental studies —
- World Ecological Degradation,
- The [Recurring Dark Ages]], and
- Ecological Futures
— Sing Chew surveys 5,000 years of human history and finds a distinctive, recurring pattern: Civilizations that amass vast wealth do so by exhausting their environment, thus sowing the seeds of their collapse. Again and again, Chew observes, periods of over-accumulation are followed by extreme environmental degradation, the collapse of social systems, and a Dark Age. Today, at the beginning of the third millennium A.D., we are in the midst of a period of unprecedented accumulation, this time on a global scale, and we are experiencing worldwide environmental degradation, from the ozone layer to the rain forest. If past is prologue, Chew warns, then modern mankind may face a broad collapse of social systems and an unsettling future."