Human ecology, process philosophy and the global ecological crisis

According to the most advanced studies of global warming and its effects, 'Large swaths of the planet will be plunged into misery by climate change in the next 50 years, with many millions ravaged by hunger, water shortages and flooding... [P]arts of the Amazon rainforest will turn into desert by 2050, threatening the world with an unstoppable greenhouse effect.... Land temperatures will go up 6oC by the end of the next century.' (Brown, 1998). How can we explain a civilization able to generate such destruction? [Introduction]