Can we see beginnings of state failure in the US and Europe?

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.springer.com/gb/about-springer/media/press-releases/corporate/can-we-see-beginnings-of-state-failure-in-the-us-and-europe-/12010100

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Can we see beginnings of state failure in the US and Europe?[/font]

[font size=4]New book highlights potentially catastrophic outcomes in new era of energy decline | Presents an empirically-grounded theoretical model of the complex interactions between biophysical processes and geopolitical crises[/font]

Heidelberg | New York, 24 January 2017

[font size=3]The United States and Europe face an increasing risk of state failure in coming years due to the escalation of interlinked environmental, energy and economic crises. This warning is set out in Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence by Dr Nafeez Ahmed, published by Springer as part of the book series Springer Briefs in Energy Analysis. The study pinpoints net energy decline as a primary factor in the critical vulnerability of the global financial system.

The author claims that states can begin to fail within 15 years of a country’s main sources of energy and economic revenue becoming jeopardised. Resource factors have led to failing states – such as Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt and Nigeria – in the Middle East and Africa, where prolonged domestic unrest, civil war and terrorism have become endemic. Within the next decades, similar impacts could hit closer to home: Energy shortage as well as climatic change impacts will drive an increasing number of refugees towards the US and Europe, where climatic impacts will have caused additional domestic agricultural crises. The combined strain on national economies will make outbreaks of civil unrest highly likely.

“While some of the outcomes are unavoidable, their worst effects can still be mitigated – although this requires serious alternatives to business as usual”, the author says.

The study develops an empirically-ground theoretical model of the complex interaction between biophysical processes and geopolitical crises, demonstrated through a wide range of detailed case studies of historic, concurrent and probable state failures in the Middle East, Northwest Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Europe and North America. It presents a concise, systematic analysis of the key factors behind the acceleration of civil unrest across the world, and its major strategic and societal implications using a unique transdisciplinary methodology.

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http://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783319478142

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility! nt

[pscot]

2. New Yorker has this on Doomsday prep for the super rich

Steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery. He underwent the procedure not for the sake of convenience or appearance but, rather, for a reason he doesn’t usually talk much about: he hopes that it will improve his odds of surviving a disaster, whether natural or man-made. “If the world ends—and not even if the world ends, but if we have trouble—getting contacts or glasses is going to be a huge pain in the ass,” he told me recently. “Without them, I’m fucked.”

...He is less focussed on a specific threat—a quake on the San Andreas, a pandemic, a dirty bomb—than he is on the aftermath, “the temporary collapse of our government and structures,” as he puts it. “I own a couple of motorcycles. I have a bunch of guns and ammo. Food. I figure that, with that, I can hole up in my house for some amount of time.”

Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Fresh Air had an interesting item on this

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/25/511507434/why-some-silicon-valley-tech-executives-are-bunkering-down-for-doomsday