This is not a paid endorsement…but it should be.

Just finished a great book. Collapse, Jared Diamond. It’s study of why complicated societies completely disappeared from Earth–Easter Island, Incas, Greenland Norse. It’s a realistic discussion of enviornmental management, decision making, political economy.

Green diatribes often skid down the slippery slope towards a Walden-esque utopia. Whereas consumers and business interests often deny that the daily decisions that they make have some type of lasting effect on the existence of the life on the earth.

Diamond cuts through all of that crap. He is an enviornmentalist/bird-watcher/UCLA Prof. who knows that we will destroy our ability to exist on this planet if we continue to manage our environment like a cheap $3 whore. He also knows that people are consumers and that the market economy is going to exist and that the market economy requires resources at the lowest possible cost. So he meticulously goes through the good and bad decision-making processes of ancient and present civilizations (e.g. Easter Island was totally deforrested to put up those statues; Dominican Republic forrest management is a model of renewable resource utilization) to see what choices previous market-economies have made that lead them down the path to disaster or allowed them to continue to exist. More importantly, he recommends realistic alternatives– honest-to-goodness policy paradigm shifts that would reduce environmental effects that are not only harmful but counter-profitable.

It’s worth the read or the audio-book.

Saturday, May 28th, 2005 @ 8:06 pm General, Politics, the Issues
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