Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Stability

As forty years of the impending possibility of nuclear war begins to fade away, it is being replaced by the threat of worldwide environmental ruin. In this insightful book, Norman Myers, one of the world's leading experts on the environment and the author of The Primary Source and The Long African Day, presents us with the dilemma which will surely dominate the next century: environmental breakdown. Ozone depletion, tropical forest destruction, topsoil erosion, cut-and-burn deforestation tactics, and farmland fertility decline are all having devastating effects on worldwide economies, health, and climate. These and a host of other environmental threats point us toward "ultimate security", for they tie in with associated problems such as overconsumption and wastefulness in the developed world. So great is the danger they pose that it has been described by many political leaders and military planners as, in fact, the greatest threat we face short of nuclear war. This unprecedented peril must be countered by unprecedented responses - responses altogether different from military measures. We cannot, writes Myers, dispatch battalions to turn back the deserts, we cannot launch a flotilla to resist the rising seas, we cannot send fighter planes to counter the greenhouse effect. Already wars have erupted and governments have toppled for primarily environmental reasons. The time has come when we can purchase more enduring all-around true security by safeguarding our environments than by engaging in military buildups. Environmental problems recognize no frontiers: winds carry no passports. Ultimate security will be security for us all or for none.