[These nine clues] are noteworthy not so much
because they foretell specific catastrophes as
because they are symptomatic of ever-increasing
instability or volatility in fundamental aspects of
modern life, ranging from the world’s financial
markets to the systems that run the biosphere.
Volatility, the loss of diversity, a narrowing base –
these phases recur in characterizations of the
financial system, food practices, and ecology.
Nor are the symptoms of the coming chaos
developing in isolation from one another. Climate
change threatens to exacerbate the problem of
epidemics, the loss of biodiversity, and the stability
of the world food system. The loss of biodiversity
increases the volatility of the food system as well,
since geneticists still depend on ancestral forms of
crops for the genetic resources to breed into plants
resistance to blights and pests. Climate change,
volatility in the food system, and instability in the
global economy all affect human migration, which in
turn affects the stability of nations and regions. Thus
the interplay of these symptoms of instability will
very likely amplify overall instability in the decades to
come. (1998: 134-5)