Deterioration

"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard."
— Gaylord Nelson
former governor of Wisconsin, co-founder of Earth Day

Is the environment a national security issue?
Levy, MA
International Security. Vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 35-62. 1995.

Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife.

This essay examines the idea that global environmental degradation is a security threat to the United States. It focuses on three distinct forms of connections between the environment and security, which is termed the existential, the physical, and the political. This article reviews each link and evaluates each on its own terms. All of these views pertain to links from processes of environmental degradation to deterioration in security positions. Connections that run in the opposite direction (from use of force to deterioration in environmental quality) are not discussed.

I think its interesting to think of environmental deterioration as a security threat to the US, or any country, because it gives my current project that much more of a statement- it kind of adds this precursor of a story to my images where nature is taking back over.  It makes me think about specifically what occurred in these places that I am creating, how they got to their absent state in the first place.