Demise

Abstract: For generations, pundits have predicted the demise of cities. Given decreasing transportation and communication costs, the ease with which social and economic exchanges would be conducted would mak...

Abstract: Jeremy Rifkin argues that we are entering a new phase in history - one characterized by the steady and inevitable decline of jobs. The world, says Rifkin, is fast polarizing into two potentially irreconcilable forces: on one side, an information elite that controls and manages the high-tech global economy; and on the other, the growing numbers displaced workers, who have few prospects and little hope for meaningful employment in an increasingly automated world. The end of work could mean the demise of civilization as we have come to know it, or signal the beginning of a great social transformation and a rebirth of the human spirit.

Abstract: Understanding a conservation system means understanding not only the nature of what is being conserved, but also the viewpoint of the conserver. Knowledge of this second element is essential if we are to comprehend a system of resource management employed by a people whose perception of their environment differs from our own. Watt (83) has said that a prudent civilization should take seriously the ideas of other civilizations about resource use. "Over the short term," he states, "the ideas of civilization A might appear vastly superior to those of civilization B. But over the long term it could turn out that the apparently 'primitive' practices of civilization B were based on millenia of trial and error and incorporated deep wisdom that was unintelligible to civilization A.'' The following is an account of the rise and decline of a millenia-old system of controlled exploitation of marine resources that incorporates a wisdom Westerners are only now beginning to appreciate after having brought about its widespread decay. The inhabitants of Oceania [defined here as the islands of Polynesia (excluding New Zealand), Melanesia (excluding New Guinea), and Micronesia] traditionally obtained the bulk of their protein from the sea. They often had no alternative. Population densities commonly reached several hundred people per square mile and sometimes climbed to more than one thousand per square mile. On some islands the land (often consisting of calcareous soil with little humus) barely supplied their vegetable needs. Terrestrial food supplies were not only limited, but also precarious. On many islands typhoons, droughts, and tsunamis periodically destroyed them. Warm, hu-

Abstract: Abstract Why do mass extinctions occur? The demise of the dinosaurs has been discussed exhaustively, but has never been out into the context of other extinction events. This is the first systematic review of the mass extinctions of all organisms, plant and animal, terrestrial and marine, that have occurred in the history of life. This includes the major crisis 250 million years ago which nearly wiped out all life on Earth. By examining current paleontological, geological, and sedimentological evidence of environmental changes, the cases for explanations based on climate change, marine regressions, asteroid or comet impact, anoxia, and volcanic eruptions are all critically evaluated.