Bookraft

Collapse by Jered Diamond $14US
Jered Diamond is famous already for his book Guns, Germs and Steel which did in 512 pages what Arnold Toynbee failed to do in A Study of History's 10 volumes - provide a lucid, believable rational for the sweep of history and what some of its key drivers were over and over again.

So when Diamond's new book, Collapse came out I bought it right away. And I steamed through it and found it compelling but also hard to stomach - it seemed to be so inevitably pessimistic.

But recently with the environmental canaries starting to chirp persistently(think coral collapse, vast bee disappearance, mutated frogs)I thought it might be prudent to take a second look. And I was surprised, the book now turns out to be stubbornly optimistic on rereading 3 years later.

Now Diamond does not happen to cover the Coral Collapse seen throughout the world, nor the Disappearance of the Bees, nor the details of the Frog Mutations of the past 8-9 years. Each one of these crises can be related to man inflicted causes, much like Acid Rain of the 1980's and the Ozone Layer Depletion of the 1990's. So the idea that man can influence the environ on a global scale should be accepted knowledge. Yet such diverse players as George Will of ABC/Newsweek, Exxon Mobil's top management, and major think tanks still not only deny the possibility of man-induced global warming but actively sponsor in the case of Exxon Mobil publishing an ever smaller set of Global Warming Denier papers and articles. Is this just a 21st century problem ?

No - in fact this is one of the central problems before Collapse of a Society -Denial by those in Power- the inability to acknowledge the range and scope of the problems confronting a society. Yet in story after story in Collapse we can see the fall of great civilizations from Harrapa in the Indus valley to Easter Island or the Cahokia cultures due to the fact that the leadership of the populations failed to either see, understand, and/or effectively respond to signs of impending environmental and then economic disaster.

Now this is most telling because the first decade of the 21st century has some notable deniers in positions of great political power. US President Bush until early 2007 has denied global warming. And now he is in the throes of instigating a minimalist agenda. And he is not alone, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is doing the same in even more energy profligate Canada while the regimes in India and China are warding off global warming's energy and environmental regulations because it hinders "their chance for fast economic development". As a result a permanent cloud of pollution stretches from India through Tibet to spread all over China. And worldwide movement on global warming and other environmental problems is jeopardized by petty localism.

So now we can add a new Canary to the species list for testers of the environment - Humans. Asthma, Allergies, Autism, Cancer, Diabetes, Immune-system Deficiencies and many other disease families are increasing in incidence and speed of dispersion. Now some, like diabetes can be traced primarily to natural causes - growth in obesity. But many like Autism and many Cancers have diffuse causes that can be traced partially but tellingly to environmental pollutants. Think melanoma Cancers and high UV from Ozone depletion.

And so Collapse is most instructive when it describes how societies that recognized their problems and then .... This is the best part of the book so I don't want to give the denouement away. But suffice it to say that Diamond cites social and political leadership as a key determiner of how well societies cope with Collapse crises.

Now here is why I regard the re-read book as optimistic. Diamond fully expects that when presented with the facts, the intellectual, economic and political elites will act rationally and choose to confront the problems with strategic action. Yet I see the opposite. President Bush and Prime Minister Stephen Harper not wanting to say to their populace (and voters) that we are the world's worst energy and environmental spendthrifts - 5% of the population but 25% of the worlds energy usage; ditto for environmental footprint.

But neither are the US Presidential candidates. The Republicans are hopelessly enmeshed in Iraq, terrorism and immigration fears, and playing to an anti-this-and-that Base. The Democrats are also "being pragmatic" with Don Quixotean health care, social security and tax reforms plus "we will end the war in Iraq" platforms. Energy and the environment is just too big and requires telling people, especially a Boomer Generation, that they can't have - a message they have rejected throughout their lives. S0 Collapse may be too optimistic after all because asking the tough questions and presenting the harsh options just may not be in the current political and social realm. In a sense we may be predestined to Collapse.

Update: In the November 15th democratic debate, Governor Richardson of New Mexico was the first presidential candidate that said "the US public will have to be called on for sacrifice too in our programs".