Since the 2008 financial crash, the world has witnessed an unprecedented outbreak of social protest in every major continent.
Beginning with the birth of the Occupy movement in the US and Western Europe, and the Arab Spring, the eruption of civil unrest has continued to wreak havoc unpredictably from Greece to Ukraine, from China to Thailand, from Brazil to Turkey, and beyond. In some regions, civil unrest has coalesced into the collapse of incumbent governments or even the eruption of a prolonged state of internecine warfare, as is happening in Iraq-Syria and Ukraine-Crimea.
To what extent is this apparent heightening of geopolitical instability new? Increasing public dissatisfaction with government is correlated with continued government difficulties in meeting public expectations. Yet while policymakers and media observers have raced to keep up with events, they have largely missed the deeper causes of this new age of unrest—the end of the age of cheap fossil fuels, and its multiplying consequences for economic growth, industrial food production, and the Earth’s climate stability."
From "Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence (SpringerBriefs in Energy) by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
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