Planetary Collapse?

[swag]

Interview with Jared Diamond, UCLA Geography professor, author of Collapse. (Obfuscatory, even desultory response at end of interview by Jerry Taylor of the free market fetishist Cato Institute).

excerpt:

Jared Diamond: Of course we are in overshoot and everybody knows that we are in overshoot -- and we are overshooting the things that people talk most about. First thing we're running out of is oil, and everybody knows it. Second thing we're running out of is water. Something like 70 percent of the fresh water in the world is already utilized. Topsoil -- we're exploiting it and it's running off into the ocean. We've already exhausted something like maybe half of the topsoil that was originally in the Great Plains. And then fish and forests...

RYSSDAL: Is the rate of use increasing? Are things getting worse more quickly than they did 20 years ago?

Diamond: Yes, things are getting worse more quickly, for obvious reasons -- namely, the human population is increasing, and worse yet, average consumption rates are increasing. That's to say, out of the world's six-and-a-half-billion people, the majority are in the so-called Third World, but they are working hard to catch up.

RYSSDAL: The same way that I would imagine there's no one thing you can point to where you'd say that's the tipping point of decline, is there one thing that can be done to reverse that decline?

Diamond: Yes, and that is to stop looking for the one thing that we could do to reverse the decline. The reason is that there are about a dozen major problems and we got to solve them all. If we solve 11 of those problems, but we don't solve the water problem, we're finished. Or if we solve 11 of those problems but we don't solve the problem of topsoil and agriculture, we're finished. So we've got to solve all 12 problems and not look for that one problem that's most important.

[JeffR]

1. Thanks for posting this

I read Guns, Germs and Steel and am partway into Collapse. This man understands what he's talking about. We'd all better start paying very careful attention to him.

[fenriswolf]

2. damn straight

and its hard enough to get one of the topics as a priority (global warming) but mention another problem (population, consumtion, water) and you are a kook and an imbecile. I mean really, i see someone on lunch spending it in their car listening to the radio and just wasting gas like we have an unlimited supply and it doesnt hurt the environment, how often do you think people like this think that maybe they should not shower for 20 min everyday or even everyday? or that maybe if its yellow its mellow? the world and everyone in it needs to have a drastic change of lifestlye if we are to avert a major population downturn.

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

3. I've got my crossbows

and alcohol dirtbike, and I can have a mohawk in no time! Be prepared!

[bahrbearian]

8. My Sword against your dirt bike.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Nature has a sometimes unpleasant way of making adjustments. K&R

Especially for those species that insist on eating the host.

[TalkingDog]

5. As I always say: It may be harsh, but inevitably it's a self-solving problem.

You can't kill a planet.

And you'd have to pretty much destroy a planet to kill all the life on it.
Look at the dinosaur extinction. The top half of the food chain, gone (in geological terms) in a fell swoop.

Nasty and brutish? Yes. But know that I'm not making a moral or ethical judgement about this possibility. I'm simply stating a very obvious fact.




My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

[sendero]

38. You are right...

... the earth will take care of itself.

[TroubleMan]

6. Here's a video that breaks down the math on what you're saying.

A popular lecture given by Dr. Albert Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Colorado at Boulder, in this video speaking at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in 2004. It's the best video I've ever seen on DU:

(realplayer stream)
http://edison.ncssm.edu/programs/colloquia/bartlett.ram

If you don't like realplayer (like me), use the K-lite codec pack and media player classic:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite_Codec_Pack.htm
It can replace realplayer, windows media player, quicktime, and many more.


Here's the original thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=266x97

[cali]

7. These problems don't have solutions

so it's pointless worrying about it. Species that overpopulate beyond the environmental limits, always suffer a crash. I don't see why people find it surprising. It may be a decade from now, or 50 years from now, but sooner or later there will be a massive human die off.

[warren pease]

10. Actually, if you read "Collapse," you'd find Diamond has a bunch of recommendations...

The problem lies in generating the political will to implement them.

For instance, it's considerably cheaper for industrialized countries to simply give China a half-billion energy efficient refrigerators than it would be to pay for the health care needs of people poisoned by polluted air that's created by the additional coal-fired power plants needed to deliver electricity to a half-billion inefficient refrigerators.

Tell that to the average US taxpayer, however, and they start counting the change in their pockets instead of looking long-term.

It's never pointless to "worry" about these issues. In fact, when worrying translates into political action on a large enough scale, politicians suddenly find the political will to implement some of these solutions, even though they're dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing for once in their amoral little lives.


wp

[cali]

11. perhaps. and thanks for pointing that out, but my larger

point still stands, don't you think?

[Lorien]

13. No.

While worrying about it solves nothing, taking action does. There ARE solutions to these problems. Read the book.

[cali]

15. Sorry. It's simply a fact that when a species

despoils it's environment or outgrows it, that the species crashes. There's not much argument about this.

[tkmorris]

16. But in EVERY single case where that happened

You are talking about a species that had no ability whatsoever to alter it's environment in a positive way. If human beings restricted themselves to the methodologies of the other animal species that have suffered such a fate we would never have made it this far.

In the animal kingdom, man is unique. We CAN certainly crash and burn, but it is not a given that it must be so.

[The2ndWheel]

53. But in every single case where that happened

We've ended up making things worse, requiring further expansion, requiring more efficient ways to sustain the unsustainable, which made things worse, which required further expansion, which required more efficiency, which made things worse, etc, etc, etc.

"You are talking about a species that had no ability whatsoever to alter it's environment in a positive way"

...for a single species. You forgot to add that at the end. Yes, every species does that to a certain degree, but, "If human beings restricted themselves to the methodologies of the other animal species that have suffered such a fate we would never have made it this far.", we don't like certain degrees. We don't get to do things on a global level and have no negative impact. I don't give a damn how "green" we are. We don't get off that easy. If we want everything we have, we're going to fuck over the rest of life. We can't have it both ways. If we want the environment under our control, that must mean the rest of life has no say.

[bettyellen]

21. no arguement- IF you are likening humans to dinos. Otherwise, I'd have to argue

a lot of us humans are smarter than that. To belive all is over before it's started, to be married to result and distain process is to live in darkness and inertia.

[roxnev]

32. I will believe you

If you will explain G.W. Bush

[Odin2005]

27. Humanity isn't just any species.

Throughout history environmental crises have had, in general, a stimulating effect on human societies as a whole. The first civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia emerged as a result of the desertification of the Middle East 6,000 years ago. Soil erosion caused Classical Athens to shift from an agricultural to a capitalist-commercial economy.

[warren pease]

28. So we're smart enough to create this mess, but too dumb to fix it?

I think we're plenty smart enough to resolve, or at least ameliorate, many of the thorniest environmental problems we're now facing. As I mentioned above, Diamond has many suggestions for applying technologies that exist right now, rather than requiring 10 years of R&D before they're ready for reliable usage.

He's also got a chapter that summarizes (if I remember the number correctly) 18 human-caused stress factors now afflicting the planet, any of which is a disaster in its own right. Combined and unaddressed, they represent inevitable and massive species crashes as the J-curve predicts when populations reach and then exceed carrying capacity. And it's not just us; we'll take down a lot of the innocents along with us.

It makes me insane to consider the mass die-out of, say, koala bears because of global climate change. But a rise of just a few degrees average annual temperature can cause increases in desertification due to constant drought, soil salinity from rising sea levels and forest fire intensity. These, along with lack of land-use restrictions, can modify Australian eco-subsystems such that the eucalyptus stands where koalas feed either burn, are poisoned by salt intrusion, bulldozed by developers or killed by drought.

These were all preventable outcomes when I first heard about "The Greenhouse Effect" back in school 30 or so years ago. But because we entrust the solutions to these kinds of massive problems to politicians and political appointees who wouldn't know a peer reviewed paper if it bit them in the ass, we're stuck with turning a problem that requires hard choices and reliable data on which to base those choices over to those least qualified to deal with it.

So we have lunatics denying birth control information to women in countries with exploding birth rates because abortion is listed among the choices women have to deal with unwanted pregnancy. We have professional liars who pollute a scientific discussion with phony research, preposterous claims of innocence on the part of fossil fuels suppliers and users (which would be nearly all of us) and, the latest tactic, insane assertions that a rise in global temperatures would actually be a GOOD thing.

So fuck habitat destruction. Fuck desertification of former farmland in the US midwest. Fuck the devastation caused by 20 Katrina-class hurricanes each year. Fuck the polar bears drowning in the arctic sea. And fuck the koalas starving to death in the Australian outback.

Fuck all that because the new Northwest Passage will reduce shipping costs and allow oil tankers to avoid the Panama Canal. Fuck all that because millions of square miles of permafrost in northern Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan will melt and become prime farmland, making adventurous real estate speculators rich in the process and opening up new markets for Monsanto, John Deere, Chevron and the rest of the filthy polluters and GMO creators who've poisoned much of the US' farmland and water table. Fuck all that because formerly cold, wet, inhospitable countries can now develop their tourist businesses.

And on and on and on. Global catastrophe cast as economic and cultural boon, and fuck species extinctions, carrying capacities, J-curves and all the rest of that gloomy scientific garbage. Give us outdoor concerts in Nome; give us golf resorts around Hudson Bay; give us more tanning salons so we can look good at the new pleasure domes in the Yukon.

Just don't give us all that crap about the drowning baby polar bears and the starving baby seals and the extinction of the walrus. We don't want to hear it.

And doesn't that just speak wonders about the characters and values of people today.


wp

[riverdeep]

47. Nice post.

I agree with so much of it. Especially the part about being occasionally driven crazy thinking about all that will perish. The only planet KNOWN to contain such amazing life, and we're so myopic. But I don't think farmers or developers are going to be so enthusiastic about the melting of the arctic permafrost. When the permafrost melts, it creates a space between the bedrock and the surface soil area. This creates sinkholes that can be massive and are, of course, quite unpredictable. It's already taken a toll on many structures in Alaska already, and it's only sure to increase.

[warren pease]

51. Thanks a bunch. You just saved me a ton of money....

...that I was going to spend on prime permafrost/nascent pasture land just south of the Great Slave Lake. Sinkholes, eh?

At the very least, I owe you a :beer: or two.



wp

[riverdeep]

67. You're welcome for the heads-up.

I can't say I'm familiar with that particular spot, it may be perfectly fine, but it doesn't hurt to investigate. I do know in Alaska it's become a concern. One of the world's top researchers on permafrost, Vladimir Romanovsky of U of Alaska Fairbanks, took this picture of a sinkhole on the parking lot of U of Alaska's Geophysical Institute.



http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_romanovsky.html

He told them not to build there, BTW.



Here's an entire Inuit village that is sinking-



"Kipnuk elders and University of Alaska scientists say the village is sinking because it sits atop thawing permafrost."

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2005/2005-12-20-03.asp

[riverdeep]

68. Oh, and as for wild koalas, maybe they have some hope yet.

"While other nations are debating how best to tackle a somewhat nebulous future scenario of climate change, for Australia that future is today. And this country—with the biggest per capita carbon footprint of any developed nation in the world—is now emerging as an exemplar for sweeping environmental reform. Rising social concerns about water have created a greater awareness of global warming, which has, in turn, prompted a broad political response. Scientifically informed solutions to both the water and climate dilemmas are being rolled out for the first time on a national stage. As experts predict crises akin to Australia's "Big Dry" in many other parts of the world, how this nation responds will reveal much about our collective ability to reverse course on climate change."

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/10/the_climate_crucible.php

edit: I don't know if I agree that this is the first time environment has figured heavily in the public policy of a nation. Scandinavian countries have been environmentally aware for some time, with entire towns in Sweden now being planned and built green.

[Whisp]

58. thank you, wp. thank you, thank you thank you. nt

[roxnev]

30. had to say it

In all of the numbers they forgot G = greed, S = stupidity. And tat is the problem

[Ignis]

36. Great point. Diamond makes this clear in Collapse.

It's really an amazing book, and it doesn't sink one into either depression or fatalism as much as the title would lead you to believe. Diamond spends the last few chapters of the book going into great detail about how these problems are not inevitable, and how contemporary, globalized civilizations have many more resources at their disposal to counteract the environmental problems facing us before we ... well, Collapse.

But it can't happen on an individual level, because of the tragedy of the commons. NOW is the time for leaders to step forward and frame the debate in such a way that Joe Taxpayer can see the greater picture.

PS: Run, Al, Run!

[wuushew]

12. So you are an advocate of fatalism?

:shrug:

I don't think that attitude brings out the best in humanity.

[The Doctor.]

23. Ben Stein.

I saw a commercial for fish on the telly once, this was a few months back. I don't remember many of the details except that the presenter/narrator was Ben Stein. At the end of the commercial he said; "Eat all you want, there's plenty out there."

I thought, "What the hell is wrong with him?", but even then I had already known he was a neo-con.

There are a large number of powerful people who, I believe, are trying to drive humanity off a cliff as the best way to clean the slate and try again. I'm sure that they have prepared their sanctuaries and are just trying to open up the throttle. The harder the crash, the more of us die, the more relative resources we have to get back on track.

I'm certain that we can solve these problems, but there are forces bent on preventing solutions. That much should be obvious to anyone paying attention.

All I can say is get a nice self-sustaining piece of land, dogs, guns, and a blueprint for building up a community out of those that come seeking food.

[Cronopio]

39. "... but there are forces bent on preventing solutions."

Or they have their own idea of a solution, the Malthusian one.

[The Doctor.]

43. 'Precisement'.

[GMFORD]

22. My biology teacher in 1995

talked about the problem of overpopulation. You are right that there is no real way to prevent it.

In the U.S., Europe and the other industrialized nations we have a top-heavy population age pyramid (inverted) because we have a low birth rate and we live a long time. In third world countries they have always had a bottom-heavy population age pyramid because they don't live a long time and have a high infant mortality rate, hence the need to have a large birth rate.

But here's the problem -- even if the third world countries cut down the birth rate, as modern medicine becomes available enabling them to live a long time, just keeping their populations stable means the population grows enormously. Instead of a flat, wide-at-the-bottom pyramid, the pyramid begins to look more like a cube. That means their population more than doubles even if they cut birthrate down to only 1 to 2 children per family. Eventually when the babies already born begin to die of old age, their population will look more like our inverted pyramid and will decline. But that will take about 50 years or so.

Doesn't answer the question of how to solve the strain on earth's resources though.

[truedelphi]

26. WarrenPorter, PhD who investigates a the effects of pesticides and

Other toxins on mammalian life, has stated that in less than twenty five years, the majority of the human race will be unable to conceive.


He is basing this on the deformities now occurring among the reptiles in contaminated waters of Florida and the frogs in the MidWest.

Smaller gonads, hermaphroditism, low sperm counts, etc in these populations more than suggests that we humans are headed the same way.

Especially if we run out of clean water to drink and bathe in.

[roxnev]

33. Use the Bush way

Every one drive a big SUV and start a war and kill off all the Iraqi pepole, and steal there oil.

[riverdeep]

49. We are in some ways, victims of our own success.

Thanks to civil society, law, medicines, and many other factors, we have circumvented, for now, the checks that held our species contained. We've even been given the awareness of how perform our own checks before Nature does it for us. But we still have powerful disinterest in checking growth in any way. It seems to go against our fundamental natures, especially when religion enters into it, organized or primitive.

For example, giving mosquito netting to Africans. It's fairly cheap, it saves lives, it seems innocuous. What could be wrong with that? Who could possibly come out against something like this? Well, increasing the survival rate means even more people sharing a drought-stricken area with poor political structure in an ever decreasing wilderness. It's a long term recipe for disaster. A population explosion in Africa, as it's currently structured, would mean a tragedy for the continent worse than it's currently in, if that's imaginable.

We (including the US and industrialized nations and better off immediate neighbors) need to provide mosquito netting with birth control, with the basics of a civil society, with an educational system. Providing just one aspect, as morally imperative as it might be, is short sighted.

[GOPBasher]

24. "Overpopulation" really isn't the problem.

It is a problem, but mind you, our western, really our American, lifestyle is the far worse problem. We constitute only about 4% of the world's population, but we're responsible for about a quarter of its consumption. If we all led sustainable lifestyles, I bet even 10 billion people wouldn't be too many.

[greyl]

34. Baloney. We don't need to change humanity, just one culture. nt

[Whisp]

60. 'pointless worrying about it'

o ferchrissakes...
born to annoy

[MisterP]

9. ah, Cato--not enough wattage to light a shoebox. n/t

[swag]

14. But I wonder if they could light Ayn's ciggy?

[Stardust]

18. Read that Angelina Jolie is an Ayn Rand fan...kinda disappointing. She needs

to be introduced to some of the excellent liberal authors we have now. Off topic, I'm sorry. Frankly, the other night on the way to the subway, it was dark and mildly cold and I passed two homeless people that really got to me (they all get to me, really) and I just prayed (to the universe) that a meteor would just smash this god-forsaken planet to smithereens. I'm so angry. :mad:

[Warren Stupidity]

20. It is easy for the fabulously gifted and successful to fall into the Rand trap.

They generally don't understand why everyone wasn't born smart and pretty and talented and connected.

[RaleighNCDUer]

29. It's the 'connected' that makes the real difference.

There's plenty of smart, pretty and talented people out there, but few of them go anywhere. But the mediocre or less who are connected, they have it made - look at *.

[Joe Chi Minh]

31. Hodge, Ceaucescu, Hitler, Stalin and Al Capone, to name but a few,

believed the same, but they thought it only sensible to tell no-one about it.

Only among the ranks of the feral plutocrats of the US could it have been taken as anything remotely approaching a school of thought, never mind a philosophy, and touted as such by their powerful media to an extraordinarily insular and malleable population. As Tom Stoppard pointed out, war is capitalism with the gloves off, and a better mouth-piece for it than the catatonic Rand would surely be impossible to find. Hitler, eat your heart out.

The irony is that, on a slightly more respectable level, the thoughts of the very much more innocent Adam Smith, a moral philosopher, though nowadays cast as the father of modern economics, has been grossly misrepresented by our far-right loonies/Moonies and assorted nut-jobs.

What tickled their fancy so much was that he reiterated the very commons-sensical axiom of the Roman Catholic Church, that grace builds upon nature; and that, mark you, in relation to economics (logical, since it is a human endeavour, unashamedly, as the prayer goes, "in a word divided by by fear and greed"). Scant wonder then, that, deranged as they are, they hared off promulgating their new gospel of greed, while totally discarding the 70% plus of the totality of Smith's treatise, without which grace simply could not build upon nature and mens' economic endeavours could only result in massive failure, as they have done with remorseless regularity, and are poised to do so again.

[riverdeep]

17. I fear that by the time this message gets across, it will be too late.

It's already too late to mitigate the effects completely, we passed that sometime in the 1970's. Maybe 1980's if you're being generous. But today, even today, 'scientists', bought and paid for by industry 9 times out of 10, have convinced the public there's still a debate. They will slow down any attempt at correcting our course until the effects are roaring down on us, and then, they will start shooting and hoarding and head for the hills.

That's why I say, if a Republican gets elected next go round, it really could be the end of the world.

[Warren Stupidity]

19. Jared Diamond? What would he know?

:sarcasm:

[Mrspeeker]

25. is terrorism one of those 12?

[swag]

37. What do you think?

Me, I've already done celebrated that Islamo-fascism Awareness Week. We sang songs and had cookies and Kool-Aid.

It was real nice.

[ironrooster]

35. they shoot horses don't they?

the ironic thing about all this, is to some extent solving the water problem or energy problem or food problem actually will encourage more people to reproduce and eventually exhaustable resources will exhaust. i do believe that policy is more than about the money at some level. and yes, i think that driving the bus off the cliff is a stratagem for some planetary class power brokers.

I saw a graph detailing how much $$ has been spent on iraq vs. alternative energy. the energy problem could be solved within 5 years if we had a sort of marshall plan for energy. but what people don't get is that the power brokers aren't interested in slowing the decline, they want to consolidate as much land/resources/codified power/... as possible and to hell with all the "little folk".

In their little arrogant world -

efficieny gains must devolve to the producers NEVER the consumers.

[blues90]

40. The part that makes me feel we have lost it

Is this idea of a global economy and the spread of the american way of life .

China is now into the automobile big time as are other countries that did fine without these for a good long time . I don't blame them for wanting what we have and we set the example .

Now how do you change this , america won't give up their cars so it appears the race to the end goes on and has picked up speed .

We have no one to blame other than ourselves , I don;t see a way to turn this around before it's to late .

People can try to calculate things based on today compared to last year but how can anyone predict how fast other countries will progress next year or 3 months from now .

We had a chance years ago to stop the madness and we had warnings of the future but all of this was writen off as nuts so here we are now .

[AikidoSoul]

41. With my own senses I can see the decline in air quality and small critters

that used to live on my land.

We live in a very isolated area in N. Florida and we and our neighbors for many miles around here have noticed that the air quality has deteriorated dramatically over the past six years. We have also seen a tremendous decline in dragonflies, bees, bugs of all kinds, tree frogs, toads, snakes and lizards. We have 21 acres and don't mow the land in the warm months to avoid killing the small animals -- so we tread very lightly here to preserve the life.

The decline has been stunning. That and the ocean along the Gulf and in the Pacific -- there are huge dead zones.

So -- where are the rich going to go after everything is dead?

[blues90]

45. I lived in hollywood Fl between 1976 and 1980

There was a large amount of wildlife everywhere and bugs were plenty . My parents lived in Ocala and it was the same thing there . and I noticed the blue clear skys .

By the time I moved in 1980 I noticed alot of the out of the way areas I used to use for fishing had become garbage dumps for everything one could imagine but I would have never imagined all the wild life would drop off at all .

I haven't been there since 1991 at X-mas but didn't go anywhere much so I didn't notice much of a change .

When wild life begins to vanish you know there is a huge problem , since the food chain is affected all the way from the bottom up . I hear there has been alot of construction there as well .

I suppose the rich don't feel this is important , perhaps they will see when it is all dead and gone because then in ways they never suspected they will definetly be affected . They see nothing other than their bottom line and stock reports .

[riverdeep]

50. Hollywood inadvertently spread the American ideal to all parts of the globe.

They didn't do it because they wanted to corrupt the minds of savages, or something like that, they did it because they wanted to make money and saw a market. But the net effect has been that the material American ideal is the best life possible and so, as a nation, let's go about getting there. Even communists, like China, want to be American in their consumption.

Imagine all six billion of us living in a McMansion, in a freshly cleared subdivision, with two cars-a Hummer and Mercedes, a huge water-hungry lawn, all our must-have gadgets-soon to be obsolete, jet-setting around the world. Everyone can't live like that, but we're trying to anyway.

[fascisthunter]

42. This is What Scares Me Most

We humans, have never seen this kind of radical change before. This doesn't just mean we are running out of food and water, but it's happening at the worst possible time: global warming. What are governments, the "People's Tool" doing to prepare for it?

[wuushew]

44. kick

:kick:

[Uncle Joe]

46. Draft Al Gore, he's the best qualified to deal with these multiple problems. n/t

[lutefisk]

52. Unfortunately, he isn't willing to make the sacrifice and run.

Think what he could do as the POTUS in 8 years! None of the other candidates will do much to change course, based on what I've seen.

"Word from Al Gore's Office: Stop Ballot initiatives (to draft Gore)"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2271024

[redqueen]

55. Hey! What about Kucinich?

:wtf:

[lutefisk]

59. I support and admire Kucinich

Unfortunately, the only way he becomes POTUS is by the Ohio National Guard putting him in the WH through a coup d'état. Since the Guard is in Iraq, that scenario is unlikely.

[redqueen]

61. Oh okay... so you meant 'top tier' candidate...

gotcha. :)

[XemaSab]

48. Jared Diamond's sort of a tool.

I'm just sayin'.

[warren pease]

54. A tool of whom or what, exactly? n/t

[XemaSab]

63. A tool of his own ego.

I've read "Collapse" and "GG&S" and in both books it seemed like he came up with a simple conclusion or explanation and then found the facts to support it.

It's lazy science, pure and simple, and prevents what could have been really great books from achieving greatness. If he'd been more comfortable with leaving loose ends or simply saying "I don't know," or "These facts don't fit the model," the books would have been much better.

[warren pease]

64. I can see how "GG&S" could be interpreted that way...

But I don't buy it for "Collapse." I don't think he cherry picked certain societies to support his thesis. Rather, I think he took classic examples of successful and failed societies -- all of which are well known to anthropologists, botanists, paleo-botanists and zoologists -- and viewed them through the lens of a cultural geographer.

I will grant that I was occasionally irritated by his claims to have answers for every scenario, but he pitches those answers as opinion rather than scientific fact. Also irritating was a sort of arbitrary consolidation of ecological problems into 12 tidy groupings. There are certainly sub-categories and options beyond those he writes about.

Still, it's a hell of a task to write an accessible book with mass appeal on this subject. I think he's done well as a popularizer, much as Carl Sagan did for astronomy.

And I can't really find fault with his overall thesis and his conclusions, narrowly defined by his categories though they are.

Anyway, I just don't see him as a tool. If he is, I can't find evidence in his writing.

Btw, have you read The Third Monkey? I just picked it up and am about to start. I'm curious about your take on it.


Best,

wp

[XemaSab]

65. I haven't read the Third Monkey.

Usually either I like authors or just find them a bit dull, but I don't think I'll be picking up Diamond again anytime soon. :P

[redqueen]

56. Glad this was kicked to the top.

Thanks for posting it. :)

[L. Coyote]

57. Women save the world NOW! One child per woman scenario

2010 6.5 billion
2035 3.25
2060 1.625
2085 0.81
2110 400 million people on the earth.

This is the only rational path.

[NickB79]

62. In this same series, they interviewed the "real-life Simpson family", and it was eye-opening

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/09/consumed1_pm_2/

This family uses public transportation, cooks and eats at home with a lot less meat than most, lives in a tiny home in California (~1000 sq. feet) so they don't need heating like up here in Minnesota, and generally conserve like crazy.

When they added up their overall consumption, though, it would take 3 PLANET'S WORTH OF RESOURCES for every person on Earth to live like them! 3 planet's worth, despite all the conservation they do, living on far less than the average American! I was stunned, and it really put the idea of sustainable living in perspective.

Either we significantly reduce our population, or accept the fact that a large percentage of the planet will be living in wretched poverty for a long, long time. Needless to say, it wasn't a very uplifting story.

[Whisp]

66. kick.