Whether or not you believe in man-induced global climate change or not, there are fewer forests, millions and millions of acres of once arable land are now desert, water shortages and flooding are changing how land can be used, glacial ice is melting at unprecedented speed, there is a Northwest Passage now, tides are rising everywhere, superstorms are the norm, oceans are losing their biological abundance and vast fires rage mercilessly in terrifying numbers. And as the global human population grows, extinction is the lot for so many other species. The net collision of people and changes in the use and value of the land upon which they live, the altered ecosystem around them, has produced migration, conflict and deep economic/political dissatisfaction the world over.
We know that the millions of displaced farmers in Syria and Iraq empowered ISIS and will continue to fuel that hotbed of angry militancy. Iran’s recent protests were all linked to failures of farms drying up and blowing away. Parallel stories rage through much of Africa, from the Arab north deep into the sub-Sahara and beyond. Cape Town, South Africa will be the first major modern city in the world that will soon run completely out of water other than from armed conflict.
The result has been some of the earth’s most rapid and extensive mass migrations. Poverty alone used to be the driving force of most migration patterns, laced with avoidance of war and downright fear. Now the movement is increasingly based on the failure of the land to support the people who live there, even the disappearance of the land itself. Those trapped now have two choices: move or die.
Most habitable places on earth are inhabited. So when one region fails to support its population, movement necessarily entails people descending on areas already filled with existing people. When more people live within an ecosystem of relatively constant or dwindling resources, the allocation of foodstuff and resource-contributions to life-quality per capita drops, often precipitously. And desperate people with little left to lose generate a litany of volatile conflicts and flashpoints, generating obvious defensive responses.
Those with power, particularly legacy incumbents who have shaped their societies laws and structures to their benefit at the expense of others, have grabbed for what they can, oblivious to the longer-term consequences. “Let them eat cake” insularity has created a level of economic polarization that the world has not seen since the Dark Ages.
All around the globe, as these migrating forces have pressed to survive, entering into first world lands facing that income polarization without solution, they have been met with a surge of nativist, populist, racist and exclusionary backlash. While the United States might have thought it was above it all, watching Europe squirm and Africa churn from a distance, we found ourselves embroiled in Middle Eastern wars and escalated our rather benign immigration malfeasance with Latin America in a career-enhancing, blame-driven assault on a whole lot of hard-working undocumented aliens doing work most Americans, regardless of poverty, are loath to perform. While these slogan-driven populist efforts offer seemingly logical solutions, they never work, and the situation simply deteriorates further by reason of the distraction from dealing with the real causal issues.
The pattern is becoming all-to-familiar: resource-ravaged third world nations, riddled with corruption and cronyism brutally deployed, explode in conflict, sending their populations literally dying to escape to nations with more tangible rules of law, countries with hope and opportunity. And then those self-same “civilized” nations slowly purge the humanitarian laws and values that made them what they are to drive those migrants out. It has been a cacophony of desperation and rage generating desperation and rage… and still the population grows and the resources dwindle. Dissatisfaction and hostility just spiral without end.
With the forces of income polarization, resource depletion, environmental loss and destruction, and population growth colliding, the world is changing. Civilized America has elected a racist populist demagogue who cannot even keep his own White House staffed. Russia is run by an autocrat with an iron hand. China now has a leader for life. Alt-right parties are slowly rising again, at first in Eastern Europe, but then in France, Germany, Denmark, Austria, even the UK… and now Italy, the land of pizza, pasta, fashion and Ferraris, joins the fray. The March 6th Los Angeles Times fills in these latest details:
“A pair of populist parties that rode a wave of voter anger over jobs and immigration in Italy’s general election on Sunday [3/4] are now pressing to form governments after the election day collapse of the traditional parties that have dominated Italian politics for years.
“Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right, anti-immigrant League party, claimed he had ‘the right and the duty’ to lead a government after taking about 17% of the vote, which put him in pole position in a broader coalition that led voting with 37%.
“Salvini was challenged on Monday by Luigi Di Maio, head of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, who said his party was ‘the absolute winner’ after it drew 32.6% of votes, making it the largest single party… ‘We feel we have the responsibility to create a government,’ Di Maio said.
“But neither Salvini’s coalition, which includes former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, nor Five Star reached the 40% threshold needed to win a working majority in Parliament, meaning weeks of negotiations and tough talks will be needed to thrash out a viable coalition.
“The explosion of populist sentiment in Italy — the two parties together received almost 1 in 2 votes in the election — emphatically ends a brief period of calm for mainstream governments in Europe after Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union.
“Last year, France’s Emmanuel Macron held off a challenge from right-wing firebrand Marine Le Pen to become president, while on Sunday, after five months of talks, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was able to pull together a working coalition amid rising anti-immigration sentiment in her country.
“‘In Italy, the political system in Italy is instead restructuring around populists who will become the new establishment,’ said Giovanni Orsina, deputy director of the school of government at LUISS University in Rome… ‘Italian voters have accelerated a process that was underway,’ he added… The voting outcome was applauded by former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who visited Rome for the election and described it as an ‘earthquake.’ Bannon said the vote was ‘even more stunning than I thought it was going to be.’” Too many icebergs with too many tips… so much trouble still below the surface.
If you think the world is unstable today, note that all of the above negative environmental, political and economic trends are merely accelerating. As the world argues with itself over whether these forces are real, we are not doing a whole lot to stop the real damage.
I’m Peter Dekom, and simply put, “you ain’t need nothin’ yet.”
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