placing culture in context

Here are a few news items that popped up on the rader. There has been such a buzz in the business and bloggosphere regarding social media and its unlocking potential. Below are two news items on environmental change and human extinction, that really bring home some painful truths. We can argue about mankind evolving and changing for the better, but we have a very short window in which to apply our ingenuity to cool down this dust bowl and prevent a mass extinction event. Sounding alarm bells is the intention of this post. Sure the links here are not towing the official party line. The truth is that the evidence keeps mounting on an ecological and oil depletion front. The bottom post is an extreme perspective from an american outsider group.

1. Cities may be abandoned as salt water invades

Dozens of major cities around the world are at risk from a previously ignored aspect of global warming - the salt-pollution of underground water

"THE water supplies of dozens of major cities around the world are at risk from a previously ignored aspect of global warming. Within the next few decades rising sea levels will pollute underground water reserves with salt.

Long before the rising tides flood coastal cities, salt water will invade the porous rocks that hold fresh water. "Even if we can fix the coastline, this saline incursion will increase," says Vincent Post, a hydrogeologist at the Free University, Amsterdam. The problem will be compounded by sinking water tables due to low rainfall, also caused by climate change, and rising water usage by the world's growing and increasingly urbanised population.

Underground water is the largest reserve of fresh water on the planet. Most cities use groundwater where possible because it is less prone to pollution than river water. Many people have no alternative: more than 2 billion depend on it, including most. "
...new scientist...2005

1. Back to the Ancient Future

"One of the hologram’s great illusions is that Industrial Civilization is evolutionary -- that it advances forever. Industrial civilization does not evolve. In the overall history of man it is extremely short and completely unsustainable. It is a one-time biological drama that rapidly consumes the necessary physical prerequisites for its own existence, the ecology and resources of the planetary gravity well in which it is trapped."
the dissident voice and their post