Effectively, the environment is the ‘shock absorber’ for human activity, and, most particularly, economic and military activity. Since this is never examined, many if not most of the things we ‘get from the environment’ seem to be ‘free’. The source of most profit, however, lies hidden in environmental and organismal damage. That is to say, these costs (of acquisition or manufacture of goods, their transport, associated services, disposal, storage, etc.), as they are never accounted, can be -anything at all- and, generally, no one will take any notice. Therefore it should be obvious that the more desperate the political or economic situation, the less likely the environment and its anciently co-evolved constituents and relationships are to survive unscathed, or to survive at all. In fact, one can foment economic or political situations specifically to take advantage of this fact, and convert otherwise protected environments into rapidly expendable cash, which may then equate with nearly any other form of power for any end whatsoever.