Lecture & discussion on Waldron Island, 10 July MMX.

Where are Earth’s resources coming from, and where are they going?

Regional fluxes of fuels and mining products in 2007. Figure compiled using 2007 WTO statistics. {realfuture.org}

“[...] the transformation of European civilization is analagous to the transformation confronting developing countries around the world today”

- Joseph E. Stiglitz, In: Polanyi, K. (1944, republished 1994), The Great Transformation

!Nefarious Dogma!

Earth at night

Global shipping

{Halpern et al. (2008), ‘A Global Map of Human Impact on Marine Ecosystems’, Science, 319, p. 948-952}

Incredible paper: Putnam, R. (2006), ‘E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century’, Scandinavian Political Studies, 30, 2, p. 137-174. Draw your own conclusions!

'Europe Supported by Africa and America', William Blake (woodcutting, 1796)

1. Introduction

Presented with a choice, an overwhelming majority of the ~6.5 billion humans alive today would opt to reside in relative comfort amongst the industrialized minority. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the migratory fluxes ‘braindraining’ the ‘developing world’ and the considerable risk to which an ever-increasing number of people knowingly expose themselves in a concerted effort to gain a foothold in ‘the developed world’. In this essay, I wish to briefly propose that there exist theoretical – as opposed to historical – grounds for the seemingly stable patterns of sharp discontinuity that so persistently pervade the distribution of global wealth.

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Check out my course website:

http://www.realfuture.org/GIST/course.html