Posted on 12/31/2004 10:17:55 PM PST by neverdem
He is a good writer, but his postulates come from small societies.
And for all his complaints about deforestation, he didn't notice that in the Eastern USA, the forests have returned. They were deforested a hundred fifty years ago, the land became exhausted, and people moved on...now you see chimneys and apple trees in the middle of forests.
Similarly, he assumes "consumption" of things is wrong. He's right...but he mainly is talking about the rich isolated communities in Los Angeles, and assumes these places are the norm for all the USA...I agree that California is possible to collapse their civilization, but he can't assume all the USA from this limited data is the same.
Finally, saying the US can't do all the military things assumes we want to...the elites (and there are several in these posts) assume we are aiming to be an empire, rather than the world has a power vacuum, and after 911 we realized that Islamofascist societies were expanding to fill the gap, and unless we defused them quickly, they would threaten our civilization.
And if American civilization falls, like the European liberals want, the result will be worse for them than for us.
You see, we still have farm land and can feed ourselves, and we still rely on families to help each other, not a welfare state like most of Europe. If the East coast was bombed, we'd probably end up supporting fifty relatives---but would probably be able to do it. How many people in Berlin could find a farm to flee to ?
When the common culture and the common language is lost, the nation will eventually fall into chaos, regardless of natural resources. Also, when the consumers greatly outnumber the producers, the means for everyone to survive will be lost. The confiscation of the rewards of the producers with redistribution of those rewards through irrational and unfair taxation, for the purpose of gaining political power is also a factor. I believe that human envy is a huge cause of most of what ails any society. Having said that, all of us should love our planet and should try to learn about it so that we can take good care of it.
The Messianic Kingdom as prophesied will last forever.
Jared Diamond:"What's more, the kings were preoccupied with their own power struggles. They had to concentrate on fighting one another and keeping up their images through ostentatious displays of wealth."
Sounds very much like repetition of posturing and needless spending engaged in by the Mayas. Proves once again that history has a tendency to repeat itself.
A Paul Ehrlich with delusions of Toynbeesque grandeur.
re: "The tools will never save one life. A person using the tool can"
Great point! If you take away the tools a percentage of those using them will find another way to do the job. The secret to America's success is its people.
How colonies collapse is almost assuredly different from how globe-dominating nations end.
Historically, we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that's no longer viable in a world of finite resources. We can't continue to deplete our own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the world.
Many resources are not finite, like livestock, trees, etc. Anything the earth produced, it will continue to produce. Anything that we consume faster that the earth can produce can be replaced by less expensive alternatives (scarcity increases price) down the road.
Historically, oceans protected us from external threats; we stepped back from our isolationism only temporarily during the crises of two world wars.
butbutbut I thought we were an evil Empire under President Bush now.
Now, technology and global interconnectedness have robbed us of our protection.
Rare to see someone argue against either, especially a liberal.
In recent years, we have responded to foreign threats largely by seeking short-term military solutions at the last minute.
Would you prefer long-term military solutions, pushed very early in the process? Shall we overwhelm Iran now, and stay for a decade?
But how long can we keep this up? Though we are the richest nation on earth, there's simply no way we can afford (or muster the troops) to intervene in the dozens of countries where emerging threats lurk - particularly when each intervention these days can cost more than $100 billion and require more than 100,000 troops.
I love it when liberals ask a question as if there is no answer. Jared, go read a history book. Empires were often forged with one single army, marching across the globe, a-conquering as she went.. And with an annual budget of $2.2 trillion, $75 billion per year is a mere pittance when an issue is important enough for us to step in militarily.
A genuine reappraisal would require us to recognize that it will be far less expensive and far more effective to address the underlying problems of public health, population and environment that ultimately cause threats to us to emerge in poor countries.
Jared, honey, you must be young. Every generation thinks that when they see a problem for the first time, it must have gone unnoticed before they came along. Trust me, public health, environment, and population havee been addressed by many nations, cultures and societies for many years. There's no magic solution there.
But I draw hope from the knowledge that humanity's biggest problems today are ones entirely of our own making.
Since we make nuclear war, the Holocaust, and biological weapons, we should be hopeful?! Personally, I'd rather be taking on things like mountains, rivers, and the occasional tornado.
To save ourselves, we don't need new technology: we just need the political will to face up to our problems of population and the environment.
Those areas with population problems already have addressed the problem, and have for years. Do you think we should exert the "political will" to tell China, India, and Bangladesh how they should be doing it? Are you so arrogant?
BTT!!!!!!
I believe the ICUN just came out with a report lambasting the industrial nations for robbing resources from the third world, while preserving their own. Plenty of evidence that this is true here in California. We were the second largest County in terms of timber production. Now we don't even have a mill left. This is primarily due to preservationist regulatory policies. Yet building is booming in California.
Preservation may seem like a prudent resource policy, but you are also exporting the technical know-how to farm, log and mine. The average age of an American farmer is in his mid-50s, and ranchers in their 60s. We are losing our industrial skills and knowledge too.
I believe there is a balance and we are listing too far to starboard.
The problem with his argument is that he generalizes from a few isolated examples and tries to assume the same thing will happen to modern societies. While a few civilizations exhausted the land they lived on and didn't plan for the future many other managed it carefully and were able to pass on their lessons to future generations. I don't see the United States facing environmental collapse any time soon. Ironically, thanks to the anti-natalist policies of the Left, European society is in danger of disappearing because it will have too few people to support it. For the first time in human history if anything, we may well face the problem of not having a degraded environment but too little human capital around to address the challenges we will face. Just a little food for thought for the New Years.'
From time to time, I’ll post or ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
Ignore the politics behind the article. The history is what's interesting. Happy New Year!
For the record, I don't believe the world's gonna end. We may have problems but we've managed to be around for 2 million years. If we humans don't destroy ourselves, we'll be around long after the world's consumed by the sun.
Its funny that its the Left that has insulated itself from the consequences of its own policies. And when faced with their own dismal record - they either try to explain it away or fight reforms to fix it. I doubt the elites will pay attention to his warning - they're full of it to care.
His kind would be easier to take if they didn't seem to enjoy their work so much.
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