strikes again!!!

[Guest guest]

For those who don't know Diamond, his book " Guns, Germs, and Steel "

was recommended to me by and I've been going through it (slowly)

since. Smart guy, ! Anyway, he's published a new book more

close to home. There is an interview with him at Salon, for those

with access (or, get a day pass, or read the review somewhere else).

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http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/01/08/jared_diamond/index.html

This suggestion is unsettling enough, as it seems to, at least in part,

exculpate Pizarro from the genocide he wrought. But Diamond didn't stop there.

Why, he goes on to ask, did Pizarro have these advantages, and not the other way

around? The answer, we eventually learn, has less to do with military strategy

or superior weapons than with things like climate and soil quality -- factors

primarily notable for having nothing whatsoever to do with human agency. Diamond

presented a causal explanation of human history that has virtually nothing to do

with humans. And it was convincing. What's perhaps even more amazing is that the

book sold more than a million copies in hardcover, eventually taking the

Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. Here the explanation is simpler: Diamond writes

well, and engagingly.

Diamond's new book, " Collapse, " looks at civilizations both ancient and modern

in search of the reasons why some succeed and others fail. The answers, not

surprisingly, turn out to be largely environmental. The more gripping question

is why many civilizations were unable to avert destruction. In examining one

civilization after another, Diamond provides a host of answers, ranging from the

imperceptibility of certain problems, such as the level of salt in a particular

soil, to the inability of a society to change a dangerous but learned behavior,

to plain selfishness. There comes a definite point, after many chapters under

the tutelage of Diamond's clinical perspective, when the reader begins to

perceive the mortal outline of our own civilization. It's an alarming thought,

to say the least. But, in a marked departure from his last book, Diamond leaves

more room here for human agency. These dread outcomes are avoidable -- if, he

suggests, we can find the strength to see past our cultural biases, our class

prejudices, our distrust of big business, our loathing of one political party or

the other, our fear of terrorism and so on. Only, in short, if we can see how

peripheral we are to the future of our own civilization can we have any hope of

saving that civilization.

...............

These examples seem to underscore the importance of trying to work with big

business, a notion that I think strikes many environmentalists as alien, if not

offensive.

That's right. If you don't work with business, you are certain to be doomed to

failure, because businesses along with governments are the most potent forces in

the world today. Also, it's important to understand why some businesses make

messes and some businesses don't make messes, and insofar as the laws of society

itself produce those different outcomes, it's the responsibility of the public

to pass laws, buy products and boycott products that will encourage businesses

to behave better.

Is there an environmental award that is given to businesses that do well? Is

Home Depot being recognized for what it's done?

They're recognized within the World Wildlife Fund, on whose board I sit. I don't

know if the general public has an appreciation for what Home Depot is doing. The

general public certainly does not have wide sympathy for what the oil companies

are doing. And partly that's the result of history. And there still are oil

spills; there's been a bad oil spill within the last two weeks. But you have to

read the newspaper carefully. That oil spill was not a tanker belonging to

ChevronTexaco or ExxonMobil; it was a tanker belonging to a private oil carrier,

and it's the private carriers that are still using the single-hull tankers and

are adhering to low standards. So they give the oil industry a bad name. I'm not

saying that the oil industry is a saint; there are still big problems with oil

industries operating in dictatorial countries, but the public should also

understand the very high standards to which some oil companies are adhering.

.................

think the administration perceives this as a moral issue, as opposed to an

ecological or population issue. Perhaps you reach a certain point where you

simply have to set morality aside and make tough choices?

Absolutely not, because some people say that offering family planning is immoral

and others say that denying family planning to those who would like to have it,

denying reproductive rights to women who do the work of reproduction, is

absolutely immoral, as well as disgraceful and disgusting. One frequently hears

it said, particularly among those opposed to family planning, " We in the United

States should not prevent those people in the Third World from having as many

babies as they want. " We have this fantasy that people in the Third World don't

care about population issues and would like to have lots of babies, when in fact

my experience, from countries such as Indonesia, the Islands, Kenya and

Tanzania, is that people in the Third World understand the dangers of

overpopulation much better than people in the United States. They know about

contraceptives but they can't afford the contraceptives. And the American

government is making it difficult for them to get the contraceptives.

....................

Have you heard of Crichton's new book, " State of Fear, " and its premise

that a bunch of environmentalists are upset that their cause isn't getting the

attention it deserves so they go around staging environmental disasters?

Crichton has said publicly, as well as in his heavily footnoted book, that

global warming is bunk -- which would be laughable were not the print run of his

book one and a half million copies.

Everything you say is true. There are a couple of things to be added to it. One

is that my previous book, " Guns, Germs, and Steel, " has sold more copies than

Crichton's one and a half million, so I think my new book will get to

more readers. And the other thing is that Crichton is a very skilled

writer of fiction. And fiction is, by definition, the telling of stories that

are untrue. He's very good at that. And I'm a writer of nonfiction, which aims

to be the telling of stories that are true.

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Next " book club " book ... if it's this one, I'm in!

Heidi Jean