People read prediction of environmental problems like climate change or biodiversity loss and think the problems we face will be from things like crop failure or heat exhaustion from a warmer globe or lack of plants from honeybees dying.

Those results won’t cause the most suffering. They will provoke what causes the suffering, but fighting between people and societies will cause the most suffering.

I’ll illustrate. Say crops start producing smaller yields globally. Before people start starving, people will realize a resource is dwindling. While we live in mostly democratic societies, every nation also has systems that give different people different levels of access to resources when they become scarce. In other words, we live in dominance hierarchies, at least to some extent. Some people have higher rank than others. The state originally developed millennia ago in part to implement systems to protect that rank.

When resources become scarce, those with rank will make sure they get enough. As resources dwindle, increasing numbers of people within nations and nations in general will get less. Conflict between people’s interests will lead to physical conflict over access to resources. That physical conflict will cause the greatest suffering, from violence and war. It will happen before the suffering from, say, starvation would.

I used an example of running low on food, but complementary processes will happen from lack of access to water, clean air, etc.

I came across a story of a man, John Peters, in the US Revolutionary War who didn’t want to fight but couldn’t prevent becoming involved. He ended up killing an enemy in battle who was a childhood friend, as documented in the quote below. If you think such circumstances wouldn’t befall you or people you love, you’re dreaming.

(I used the term “civil” to describe this case not because I confused the Revolutionary War with the Civil War but because a war between citizens of one nation or colony is a civil war, which we will face if our culture keeps growing internal division, such as through the nonenforcement of the Constitution. The US government is not only not preventing the deprivation of life, liberty, and property without due process of law, it gains power, size, and revenue from permitting that deprivation.)

It turns out the Ken Burns documentary on the American Revolution covered Peters. The video excerpt on this page John Peters … An Enemy to Congress? illustrates his inability to avoid being sucked into the conflict despite having been “the most respected man in his small settlement until the First Continental Congress.”

From the page Loyalist John Peters:

John Peters’ account of the Battle of Bennington shows a seldom noted aspect of the Revolutionary War: the bitter civil conflict among neighbors and relatives:

“A little before the Royalists gave way, the rebels pushed with a strong party on the front of the Loyalists which I commanded; as they were coming up, I observed a man fire at me, which I returned.  He loaded again as he came up, and discharged at me again, crying out: ‘Peters, you damned Tory I have got you!’  He rushed on with his bayonet which entered just below my left breast, but was turned by the bone.  By this time I was loaded and I saw it was a rebel captain, Jeremiah Post by name, an old playmate and school-fellow, and a cousin of my wife. Though his bayonet was in my body I felt regret to destroy him….”

• ← A rat and plastic in Washington Square Park, of the many due to garbage and litter
• 845: Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon: The War on Cars and Life After Cars →