Global Delusion

This is a smart review essay by John Gray on what he terms "the other side" of globalization, namely the more destructive and negative consequences of rapid modernisation.

Contra the more utopian renderings of what globalization will bring, Gray argues that our future is likely to be shaped more by forces of resource depletion and ecological devastation, rather than any benign universalizing tendency:

Models of economic development that anticipate societies converging in a harmonious universal system have deep roots in Western thinking. It is not surprising that they should have been revived in theories of globalization in the aftermath of the cold war; but they reflect the conditions of the nineteenth century, when the environmental limits of industrial expansion were hardly suspected. They fail to take account of the fact that industrialization on a global scale intensifies scarcity in vital natural resources while triggering a powerful ecological backlash. These developments, which form the other side of globalization, will shape its future course.

Worth a read. Earlier in the essay, Gray references a 2003 Pentagon report on climate change and ensuing resource conflicts, which hasn't seen much light of day recently. That's worth a second look, too.