The Emperor Has No Clothes A Practical Guide for Environmental and Social Transformation by John Hagen Read Free Book Online Page B

billion aircraft carrier or greater numbers of
stealth aircraft simply isn’t useful for this application.
Fostering greater international cooperation would be though, and
perhaps if we practiced a less aggressive international policy it
would take some of the wind out of the terrorists sails.
    From the current perspective how have the
fears of communism played out? China which was one of the greatest
communist Bogey Men during the cold war has turned out to be our
largest trading partner. Viet Nam is also a peaceful trading
partner and the domino theory used to justify the war with Viet Nam
simply didn’t take place.[13]
    13. The domino theory
indicated that if Viet Nam became a communist state the entire
region would like a row of dominoes progressively knocking
succeeding adjacent dominoes over.
    Of course the United States is still being
threatened by communist Cuba, and the sanctions are still being
maintained. Don’t you feel threatened by Cuba? Also, why is Cuban
communism bad and Chinese communism now OK?
    To sum up, it seems that what is really the
threat is one to the bottom line of the military industrial
complex, no Bogey Man no justification for huge defense
expenditures and profits!

    ~~~~~~~~~~

Chapter 2
Tracks

To be or not to be that is the
question?
    Hamlet by William Shakespeare

    In this chapter we will consider a number of
societies and the most predominant factors that affected their
viability. The fundamental reason for a societies collapse, is an
inability of the members of the society to produce appropriate
responses to changes occurring in it's environment. The
contributing factors that underlay the maladaptive responses are,
rigidity arising from ignoring obvious problems, and flawed
appraisal of the situation. The most common underlying motivation
for this type of thinking is persistent ignorance, which arises
from being excessively invested in maintaining the status quo
and/or an ideology. The result, is an inability to realistically
evaluate the relative importance of options.
    The first set of case studies: these
are comprised of societies that collapsed as a result of an
inability to match the size of the population to the resource
base.
    Easter Island is located 3,500 km west
of the coast of South America and is one of the most remote islands
in the Pacific Ocean. It was originally colonized around 300 – 400
CE by Polynesians. [14
    14. This date is the
generally accepted value but is not firm, the earliest radio carbon
dating is from 700-800 CE.
    Using pollen analysis, tree casts, and plant
remains, it is known that prior to the arrival of the Polynesian
colonists the island was heavily wooded with tall trees and woody
bushes, composed of 16 plant species, the majority of them being
trees. The largest and most abundant trees were a now extinct
species of palm Paschalococos Dispertie, and is closely related to
the Chilean Wine Palm. The Chilean Wine Palm is still found in
South America where these trees grow to be 19.8 meters (65 feet)
tall with a trunk diameter of 1m (3 feet). The Paschalococos Palm
trees found on Easter island were the largest type of palm tree,
casts of trees that were buried in material from volcanic eruptions
have been found that are as large as 2.13 meters (7 feet) in
diameter. The sea surrounding the island had numerous fish species
and significant populations of porpoises. The underwater profile of
the base of the island slants down steeply causing the water to
deepen quickly thereby, significantly limiting fishing directly
from shore. The climate of the island is mild and receives adequate
rainfall, enough to sustain agricultural food production. The
surrounding ocean also could be used to provide additional food
from off shore fishing. All in all, one could say that Easter
Island was well suited for human occupation. The greatest
disadvantages for a human population was its isolation which
precluded oceanic trade and its small size (163.6