must pay for what one wants. however, when we examine the most approved method of financing war we find that it is based on a general reluctance to foot the bill. every war is fought with current production — there is no way of shooting off guns that have not yet been made or of feeding soldiers with food that will be raised by the next generation — and in a real sense every war is conducted on a pay - as - you - fight basis. but the producers of the means of war seem to put a lower value on it than do the management, for they demand receipts for what is taken from them to prosecute the war, receipts which become a claim on future production, not only as to their face value but also as to the interest which patriotism demands ; it is possible that if the state raised all the costs of war by taxes, issued no bonds or even issued only non - interest - bearing bonds, the war might be called off, which would be proof enough that society puts little worth on its political purposes. the economic consequence of the most approved method of financing wars is that a lien on the future production of the nation is established, and nearly always it is a permanent lien. that is, for all time to come, or as long as the state stays in business, the housewives ' pantries must contribute to the cost of a nation ' s past " protective " wars. but war, and the preparations for it, is attended with a charge that has nothing to do with protection and is a load that increasingly hampers society in its search for a better life. that is the power which the state acquires during war and does not relinquish when it is over. when the enemy is at the city gates, or there is a general fear that he is coming, the individual abdicates his self - reliance and places himself unreservedly under the direction of the captain ; he gives up his freedom in order to attain freedom. or so he thinks. but it is a matter of record that what he gives up is never fully returned to him, that he must fight his own captain to get back his natural heritage. the state jealously guards the power over society which it has acquired during a climate of fear. to prove the point, we need not review the history of ancient rome, where a succession of protective wars ended up in the servitude of the people to the emperors ; we need only list and add up the interventionary powers acquired by the american state during the wars it


the following html text is provided to enhance online readability. many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to html. please use the page image as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy. engineering and environmental challenges : technical symposium on earth systems engineering the term lupang pangako means promised land — the sardonic name given to a garbage dump outside the city of manila inhabited by almost 100, 000 people. i visited lupang pangako about 15 years ago in a different life as a geologist, and the place really is hell on earth. as you drive through the promised land, you see stygian mists rising from the hillsides, the mountains of garbage, and if you look closely you see movement everywhere in the distance. you soon realize that the mountains are covered with people scavenging for their livelihoods. you may remember that in july 2000 torrential typhoon rains caused a huge landslide in the promised land that buried more than 200 people under a mountain of garbage. to me, this horrific event provides a powerful indicator of how we should be thinking about the impacts of climate on people and about human adaptation. the problem was not whether the typhoon was an above - average or below - average event. it was not a problem whose root causes could be revealed through a better understanding of anthropogenic climate change. the problem was that 100, 000 people were living in poverty so deep that they could survive only by culling garbage. the results of humanity ’ s mistreatment of the environment fall disproportionately on poor people, on developing countries, and on tropical regions. although these impacts are most severe in their chronic forms, they are most spectacular in their catastrophic versions, such as this landslide. as figure 1 shows, the number of disasters has risen sharply throughout the world in the last 30 years, most markedly in the developing world. this trend does not reflect a changing climate ; it reflects changing demographics — growing numbers of poor people living in urban areas, living in coastal regions, living on garbage dumps. unlike changes in climate, this trend is something we can control. these are not natural disasters ; these are intersections of natural phenomena and complex sociopolitical and socioeconomic processes. the number of disasters will continue to rise because we know that demographic trends are pointing toward more urbanization and greater numbers of impoverished people moving from agrarian areas to cities — often to areas in harm ’ s way. megacities like jakarta and manila that have nearly 10 million people apiece are subject to typhoons, volcanoes,