[] The Upside of Down - Thomas Homer-Dixon

'In The Upside of Down, political scientist and award-winning author Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that converging stresses could cause a catastrophic breakdown of national and global order — a social earthquake that could hurt billions of people. But he shows that this outcome isn't inevitable; there's much we can do to prevent it. And after setting out a general theory of the growth, breakdown, and renewal of societies, he shows that less severe types of breakdown could open up extraordinary opportunities for creative, bold reform of our societies.

Homer-Dixon contends that five "tectonic stresses" are accumulating deep underneath the surface of today's global order:

• energy stress, especially from increasing scarcity of conventional oil;
• economic stress from greater global economic instability and widening income gaps between rich and poor;
• demographic stress from differentials in population growth rates between rich and poor societies and from expansion of megacities in poor societies;
• environmental stress from worsening damage to land, water forests, and fisheries; and,
• climate stress from changes in the composition of Earth's atmosphere.

Of the five, energy stress plays a particularly important role, because energy is humankind's master resource. When energy is scarce and costly, everything a society tries to do — including growing its food, obtaining enough fresh water, transmitting and processing information, and defending itself — becomes far harder.

The effect of the five stresses is multiplied by the rising connectivity and speed of our societies and by the escalating power of small groups to destroy things and people, including, potentially, whole cities.

Drawing parallels between the challenges we face today and the crisis faced by the Roman empire almost two thousand years ago, Homer-Dixon argues that these stresses and multipliers are potentially a lethal mixture. Together, they greatly increase the risk of a cascading collapse of systems vital to our wellbeing — a phenomenon he calls "synchronous failure." Societies must do everything they can to avoid such an outcome.

On the other hand, if people are well-prepared, they may be able to exploit less extreme forms of breakdown to achieve deep reform and renewal of institutions, social relations, technologies, and entrenched habits of behavior. This is likely our best hope for a prosperous and humane future.'

Excerpts from The Upside of Down >

Thomas Homer-Dixon is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and Scientific American. His book, The Ingenuity Gap, won the 2001 Canadian Governor General Award for Non-Fiction.

http://www.theupsideofdown.com/theargument.html

' Excerpts from The Upside of Down

Prologue: Firestorm
San Francisco, Thursday, April 19, 1906

The wind had shifted. Now the inferno turned its attention westward. Block by block, it savaged some of the city's finest houses. As the mayor, chief of police, and members of the municipal council retreated from building to building before the flames, they decided the city would make one last stand.

The final line of defense, they announced, would be Van Ness Avenue — a broad residential boulevard bisecting San Francisco from north to south. The street lay directly in the fire's path: if they could use it as a firebreak, they might be able to halt the advance. But if this last effort failed, what remained of the city would surely be lost.

Early the previous day, an enormous earthquake had shattered the city's core, snapping cast-iron water mains like twigs, toppling thousands of chimneys, and upending coal-burning stoves and boilers. Electrical utility poles fell over, bringing down live wires in showers of sparks. Gas lines ruptured. Kerosene and oil poured out of burst fuel tanks. In seconds, sparks and fuel combined, and dozens of fires exploded across the city. Then, energized by the wood in the city's buildings, small fires coalesced into mighty firestorms. Even when firefighters could maneuver around the piles of earthquake debris in the streets, they found no water in the hydrants.

By noon on the 19th, the fire had destroyed almost ten square kilometers of the city east of Van Ness Avenue. The financial district, Market Street, and the district south of Market were smoking ruins...'

http://www.homerdixon.com/podcasts/audio/podcast-2006-11-05-78174.mp3

http://www.homerdixon.com/ingenuitygap/tour.html

http://www.homerdixon.com/download/thomashomerdixon2-high.mpeg

http://www.homerdixon.com/podcasts/audio/podcast-2009-06-08-49421.mp3