Quote

You want calamities? What about the Ice Age?

We are more disturbed by a calamity which threatens us than by one which has befallen us.

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Almost all these hotspots around the world, most have been destroyed to the point where there is no wildlife and very little of the natural world left.

People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.

Devastation could arise insidiously, rather than suddenly, through unsustainable pressure on energy supplies, food, water and other natural resources. Indeed, these pressures are the prime 'threats without enemies' that confront us.

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

Beyond Iraq, I am also profoundly worried about the continuing meltdown of Syria, which is a geopolitical Chernobyl. Until it is capped, it is going to continue to spew radioactive instability and extremist ideology over the entire region.

I once saw a lump of Greenland breaking off into the sea and moving south, which of course will affect the atmosphere and us generally, and it'll happen more and more.