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June 21, 2009
Over at Open Democracy Ross Perin says that Detroit is dying. With the erosion of traditional manufacturing Detroit is a shrinking city.
As the US auto industry sinks---the manufacturing isn't coming back--the industrial city in Michigan becomes a site of ruins. Ross Perin observes:
The city's thousands of homeless wander the few parks; thousands more squat in vacant buildings. A little farther out, the authorities have lavished less attention; whole districts of the city molder half-empty, and condemned towers of public housing await demolition. This may be the ultimate stage of inner city blight: grassy, silent lots and the peaceful ruins of stately homes. No gun-toting criminals, no noxious industry, no overcrowded housing projects--in fact, no one in sight at all.
Like the decline in mass media newspapers Detroit 's decline signifies the end of the model of economic security and widening prosperity for structured around the industrialization and manufacturing dependent on cheap fuel. It indicates that those nations with the highest percentages of their working populations able to do symbolic-analytic tasks will have the highest standard of living and be the most competitive internationally in a warmed up world.
But there is also an ecological fallout from the old industrial age. The self-regulating mechanism of the earth system means that the myriad feedback mechanisms and processes are coming together to amplify the warming being caused by human activities such as transport and industry through huge emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Inaction---Kyoto was 11 years ago and virtually nothing's been done except endless talk and meetings---- has meant that it is now a question of surviving what is an inevitable hotter climate than it is today. This is working to secure energy and food supplies in the global hothouse, and build defences against the expected rise in sea levels.
This is relevant to Australia because it already has extensive arid and semi-arid areas, relatively high rainfall variability from year to year, and existing pressures on water supply in many areas. Rising temperatures will mean agriculture may become nonviable in certain areas, water supplies may fail for some cities; rising sea levels will destroy low-lying coastal areas whilst modern urban infrastructure will face risks from powerful extreme weather events.
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Robert Reich argues that too many of American kids:
My impression is that the same thing is happening here in Australia.