The United States is about to undergo a revolution that will make the French Revolution or the Cultural Revolution seem like a tea party.  Indeed, we have a "Tea Party" as a semi-political party!  Why do I say that?  I've been studying China and Chinese history.  The people of the US are ready for a change, as evidenced by the failure of both political parties to put forward viable presidential candidates.  We have candidates ready to carpet bomb foreign countries and citizens who don't believe in climate science.  Even worse, we have presidential candidates who deny scientific facts and a congress owned by corporations.  When the current politicians can no longer control the economy, something will break.  The people will want heads to roll for failing to "protect" us from ourselves.  Each new group of leaders is becoming more extreme.  Most of the world sees the US as the greatest threat to global stability. 

However, it will not be politics that starts this revolution.  It will be biology.  As we exceed the ability of earth to feed and clothe us, the current system will fall and the US will lead in the fall.  We seem to think we can keep demanding more from an environment that can no longer provide for everyone.  If we start demanding more food from other countries because our crops of failed, we will be taking food from starving people.  How can our crops fail?  California is already dry.  The Great Plains are getting hotter and drier as well.  As temperatures increase, we can produce fewer crops.  Ten years ago, an official Canadian government website predicted that by 2100, the climate here in northern Arkansas will move north into southern Canada, based solely on temperature.  If you heat up the central US it will dry out faster.  It was only about four years ago that the US corn crop nearly failed completely, for example.  It does not take much crop failure to bring on starvation.

As I've said before, biological systems seem to do fine until the food runs out.  Then, food cannot be found for anyone.  The best example comes from the fruit flies I once raised for use in biology labs.  I put mashed banana into a small vial and a few fruit flies.  In a week, the fruit flies had produced larvae that started to feed on the banana.  I added water occasionally and soon the population grew.  A second or third generation of flies were hatched.  Soon, the banana was filled with larvae and the bottle seemed full of flies. Then, if left to themselves, all the flies would be found dead.  The food had been consumed and they had starved.  I normally started a new crop in a new vial with new banana.  But any colony left unattended and only watered soon died.

People are like that.  Our vial is the planet earth.  If we keep consuming at unsustainable rates, we will have consumed all available food.  Then all the flies die in the vial, earth.  Unlike my lab, we don't have any other bananas to add to earth once we eat them all.  Maybe some time I will talk about the various problems, warming climate, already overfished seas, soil erosion, harvested forests.  As I have said before, it takes 10 acres of land to support one person.  Why?  Only 5% of that ten acres for each person on earth can be used for crops.  The rest is tundra, desert, mountaintops, or Antarctica, etc.  You can't grow wheat in the Sahara or in a dry valley in central California.  The problem?  We only have 6 acres per person now, not enough for each human.