What will not happen is a nightmarish global war over resources.

Your 100 word quotation contains the only mention of terrorism in Jared Diamond’s 1400-word-long piece. If you want to take a swipe at ‘militant Islam’ or Islam in general, why not just do it?

I don’t think poverty is the sole cause of terrorism and I doubt if Jared Diamond does either. The 911 guyes were middle-class, etc.If he oversimplified, it was for lack of space or attention: the piece was not about the causes of terrorism.

I think economics usually does a role in causing war – of which terror is a tactic. Most people in most cultures won’t fight without a moral justification – though its form can vary greatly with culture and individual. (It is handy and common to have pre-packaged all-purpose moral justifications on the shelf.) But economics, while providing a reason for war, does not usually provide a satisfying moral justification. If your side fails to find a moral justification to fight, it doesn’t fight – at least not well.If your side doesn’t fight or doesn’t fight well, it might disappear. The worlds peoples are mostly descended from folks that fought if necessary and fought well if they fought at all.

Diamond isn’t saying the big gap between rich and poor is new. He’s saying now is different because now we are bumping up against multiple global limits. The poor simply cannot ever consume what we, the rich, consume today. Not by developing their countries and not by leaving them. In fact, we, the rich, will have to consume less for various reasons.

He says, “real sacrifice won’t be required.”

We’ll see. It’s true there are ways we rich can consume less while maintaining living standards. But it doesn’t follow all those who are destined to consume less will be clever or lucky enough to maintain their standard of living.

Ron