The Other Hurricane: Has the Age of Chaos Begun? or Just How Fucked Are We?

another good Mike Davis article. I like this guy's angle. highly recommend checking out his book Dead Cities. one mouthful of a word: ghettogeomorphology. City of Quartz is also fantastic. His newest book is called Planet of Slums and I'm sure it's good but in the meantime check out this article please. courtesy of CommonDreams.


*first recorded south Atlantic hurricane in history*
(back in March of 2004)
...
was Catarina a "threshold" event, signaling some fundamental and abrupt change of state in the planet's climate system?
...research on global change is pointing toward worst-case scenarios.

All of this, of course, is a perverse tribute to industrial capitalism and extractive imperialism as geological forces so formidable that they have succeeded in scarcely more than two centuries -- indeed, mainly in the last fifty years -- in knocking the earth off its climatic pedestal and propelling it toward the nonlinear unknown.
...
The demon in me wants to say: Party and make merry. No need now to worry about Kyoto, recycling your aluminum cans, or using too much toilet paper, when, soon enough, we'll be debating how many hunter-gathers can survive in the scorching deserts of New England or the tropical forests of the Yukon.
...
The good parent in me, however, screams: How is it possible that we can now contemplate with scientific seriousness whether our children's children will themselves have children? Let Exxon answer that in one of their sanctimonious ads.