Text: László Antal Z.

As a rule, a few decades are only a brief period in the lives of societies. It shall be our task later on to analyse the success or failure of the relationship between climate change and the ability of societies to adjust to these changing conditions characteristic in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as well as to establish the reasons as it must be seen in perspective. However, I have decided to make such a „short-term” survey of the issues concerned as the population growth and the acceleration of consumption has been causing more and more, deeper and deeper wounds on our already wounded planet in the past few decades. Based on forecasts made by ecologists and climate researchers we are to expect the ever-increasing frequency of extraordinary weather conditions to prevail in the next years and even decades. As a result, it is an especially important question whether or not the well-developed industrial countries are able to stop these destructive tendencies and have the potentials to get adjusted to the rapid ongoing changes of nature. The „diagnoses” made so far of the ecological conditions of planet Earth reflect the increasing risks involved in this situation, concerning not only the climate change but other areas of life here as well. These results seem to establish that, within the framework of the prevailing social and economic paradigms, well-developed industrial countries cannot stop the threatening tendencies which they have triggered themselves back in the age of the industrial revolution.