All of Earth’s systems are complex, which means they do not respond to change in linear and steady ways. They absorb stress up to a certain point, th… - George Monbiot

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All of Earth’s systems are complex, which means they do not respond to change in linear and steady ways. They absorb stress up to a certain point, then suddenly collapse. If one goes down, it can trigger the collapse of others: during previous mass extinctions, collapse seems to have cascaded from one ecosystem and Earth system to the next.

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About George Monbiot

George Joshua Richard Monbiot (born 27 January 1963) is a journalist, author, and environmental and political activist in the United Kingdom who writes a weekly column for The Guardian newspaper.

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Alternative Names: George Joshua Richard Monbiot

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Fascism has been famously described as "a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place". You don't have to succeed in generating a new movement committed to a campaign of violence to create a monster much bigger than you are: a monster that will close down the last chance of saving Earth systems. If you are going to take a physical shot at capitalism, you had better not miss.

[T]he Earth’s systems are highly complex, and complex systems do not respond to pressure in linear ways. When these systems interact (because the world’s atmosphere, oceans, land surface and lifeforms do not sit placidly within the boxes that make study more convenient), their reactions to change become highly unpredictable. Small perturbations can ramify wildly. Tipping points are likely to remain invisible until we have passed them. We could see changes of state so abrupt and profound that no continuity can be safely assumed. Only one of the many life support systems on which we depend – soils, aquifers, rainfall, ice, the pattern of winds and currents, pollinators, biological abundance and diversity – need fail for everything to slide.

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As a general rule, though there are dissidents, fisheries science is not so much an academic discipline as a branch of accountancy. It works on behalf of government and industry, and has many failures to its name: frequently setting higher catch rates – often with unjustified precision – than fish populations can sustain. Even so, governments ... routinely set quotas higher than the scientists recommend. Then they fail to enforce the rules, ensuring that even more fish than they allow are taken. Then everyone wonders why fish populations collapse. Sorry, not populations, "stocks". Fish, in this schema, exist only to be exploited.

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