The World’s Environmental Crisis, Looming Collapse of World Civilization, and the Need for Democracy

Contrary to the claims of many of our corporations, almost the whole U.S. Republican Party, and the uninformed, the current world-wide environmental crisis presents a grave threat to world civilization, everything we hold dear, and life itself.

Perhaps the most comprehensive explanation I’ve ever read about the world-wide environmental situation that now confronts us was written by Jared Diamond in “Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed” (Chosen as “Best Book of the Year” by The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and others). Diamond’s book describes the environmental causes of past and present failed societies, such as the collapse of the ancient Easter Island civilization, and compares them with other societies that have succeeded, in order to identify the causes of failed societies. The theme of his book can be summarized as:

Environmental crisis + failure of society to address it ==> societal collapse

Diamond’s reason for writing his book is to make the point that we humans have it within our power to either fail to address the problem, which will lead to world-wide catastrophe, or to avoid catastrophe by addressing the problem while we still can. In making this point, Diamond identifies eight environmental causes of the collapse of past societies, and he adds four more that are additionally relevant to our current world.

He defends the relevance of his analogies to the past in many ways. In doing so he notes two extreme and opposite points of view that attempt to minimize the relevancy of those analogies. One is the racist point of view that holds that past failed societies deserved their fate because of their inherent failings as people. The opposite and equally invalid point of view holds that “past indigenous peoples were gentle and ecologically wise stewards of their environment, intimately knew and respected Nature, innocently lived in a virtual Garden of Eden…”

Diamond identifies five general factors that contribute to the equation of whether or not societies succeed or fail in response to the environmental crises they face:
 Inadvertent environmental damage caused by the human inhabitants of a society
 Climate change (the natural type)
 Hostile neighbors
 Friendly trade partners (or allies)
 Society’s response to its environmental problems

The fifth factor is emphasized as the key, since it is the one that we humans have the most control over. The most striking example that Diamond presents to make that point is that of two Greenland societies who shared the same environment, where one thrived and the other became extinct because of different responses to their environmental problems.

Note that the title of this post identifies three related issues. The first two, which I describe in more detail below, comprise the major theme of Diamond’s book. The third one is my interpretation of how the current political situation relates to the issues that Diamond describes.

Diamond’s book is almost devoid of present day political content – as illustrated by the fact that George Bush is not mentioned once as a contributing cause to today’s environmental crisis. It’s not that he doesn’t recognize the importance of political factors to the state of our environment. He ends his book by giving an overview of our current situation and concluding that it can go either way, that he is “cautiously optimistic” that we will succeed in addressing our environmental problems, and that it all depends on whether or not we have the “political will” to do so. My saying that Diamond does not adequately address the salient political issues is in no way meant as a criticism of him or his book. One book can accomplish only so much. I’m sure that Diamond believed, and he is probably correct, that by maintaining a neutral stance to today’s political situation, the scientific aspects of his book would thereby be given more credence.


Some brief examples of failed societies

Most of Diamond’s book describes examples of how past or current civilizations have coped with environmental challenges, and how their coping mechanisms contributed to success or failure. Here are five examples of failure:

Easter Island
It is estimated that the first human settlement of Easter Island occurred around A.D. 900. The estimated maximum population was 6,000 to 30,000. Easter Island is perhaps best known for its huge stone statues, 887 which have been identified, weighing as much as 9,000 tons (including the base).

The primary reason for the demise of Easter Island society was deforestation, which was virtually complete somewhere between the start of the 15th and the 17th Century. Without trees a major source of wild food disappeared; fuel for warmth virtually disappeared; fish consumption substantially declined because of the absence of canoes; and agriculture was severely disrupted because of soil erosion. Easter Islanders had to turn to cannibalism to survive. Europeans, who began frequenting Easter Island at least by 1722, no doubt contributed to their final demise by spreading disease and kidnapping them. By 1872, only 111 Easter Islanders remained.

Diamond describes several natural adverse environmental conditions on Easter Island (such as relatively high latitude with consequent relatively low temperatures, lack of rainfall, low altitude, and geographically remote location that contributed to a paucity of volcanic ash fallout) that explain why that island became so extremely deforested, while so many other Polynesian islands did not.

Other than that, the massive amounts of statue construction, fueled by competition between clans, contributed greatly to resource depletion on Easter Island in two respects: the work required vast amounts of rope and wood products (ladders, sleds, levers, etc.), which led to the deforestation; and it also required huge additional amounts of food for the people who built the statues. In sum, a very fragile environment, combined with a culture that was characterized by massive consumption of vital resources, led to the demise of Easter Island society. In addition, its remoteness precluded the possibility of people emigrating to relieve population pressure.

The Anasazi
The Anasazi resided in current day Southwestern U.S., including parts of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. This area first became populated with humans around 11,000 B.C., though agricultural societies in that area did not arise until about A.D. 1. Anasazi civilization lasted from about A.D. 600 to 1200.

Their environment was very fragile, owing mainly to the lack of water and the related problem of deforestation, which was due to slow re-growth of trees because of the paucity of water. That environment could have supported a very thinly populated society, but as the population grew the environmental pressures rose. Most important, a larger population required more water, so water tables became depleted, resulting in a dangerous scarcity. Droughts periodically resulted in widespread starvation.

Chaco Canyon was the capital of Anasazi civilization. The Anasazi were a highly hierarchical society, such that a well fed elite living in luxury came to occupy Chaco Canyon, while the peasantry did all the work and produced the food that supported the elite. Diamond notes that “Chaco Canyon became a black hole into which goods were imported but from which nothing tangible was exported. Into Chaco Canyon came those tens of thousands of big trees for construction…”

The final blow was a drought in about A.D. 1130. Chaco Canyon became abandoned as many probably starved, people killed each other, and others fled the region. Diamond sums up what happened:


Mayan civilization
The Maya were the most advanced civilization in pre-Columbian America, and the only one with extensive preserved writing. They occupied parts of Mesoamerica, which extended from present day central mid-Mexico to Honduras. The so-called Classic period of Mayan civilization began around A.D. 250. The Mayans were a highly hierarchical society. Diamond explains:


Though the Mayan environment was much less fragile than the environment in which the Anasazi resided, the collapse of Mayan civilization has much in common with that of the Anasazi. Deforestation exacerbated water scarcity problems because of the role that trees have in maintaining the water cycle. Perpetual wars among the Mayan people also exerted a heavy toll. A severe drought starting in the early tenth century was the proximate cause of the fall of Mayan civilization, as between 90 to 99% of the former Mayan population disappeared. With regard to the Mayan response to its environmental crises, Diamond has this to say:


The Greenland Norse
While 99% of Greenland is uninhabitable, there are patches of it that are suitable for agriculture. A settlement from Norway was established in A.D. 984, which lasted approximately 500 years before completely dying out. The fate of the Greenland Norse is especially instructive because another society, the Inuit (Eskimos), who occupied Greenland before the Norse arrived, continue to live there today.

Greenland’s very cold climate, with very short summers, makes agriculture a precarious undertaking. But the Greenland Norse inherited a farming culture from Norway, and they stuck with it. Unlike the Inuit, they never learned to hunt whales, and they had a cultural taboo against eating fish. Thus, when their cows and sheep overgrazed their pastures, farming became an even more precarious undertaking, and lacking adequate alternative food sources, the Norse starved in the midst of plenty. Like many other medieval European Christians, the Greenland Norse scorned pagan non-European peoples and refused to learn from them. Furthermore, the Greenland Norse was a very hierarchical society. Diamond explains:


The Rwandan genocide
Rwanda and Burundi have long been Africa’s two most densely populated countries, and two of the most densely populated countries in the world.

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 was initiated following the shooting down of a plane that carried the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, killing everyone on board. Hutu extremists then immediately initiated a genocide that killed within six weeks about 800,000 Tutsi, which was about three quarters of the Tutsi population of Rwanda.

That genocide is usually portrayed as being due to ancient ethnic hatreds, fanned by opportunistic politicians. However, the fact that the Hutu and the Tutsi speak the same language, attended the same schools, lived together, worked together, and frequently inter-married, casts serious doubt on that idea.

Rather, one of the major reasons for the genocide was a densely populated country living on land that was barely adequate to support the population. Misery was widespread in Rwanda before the genocide, and chaos and killings were becoming the order of the day. In putting forth this cause of the Rwandan genocide, Diamond explains:



Today’s World’s most serious environmental problems

In the last chapter of his book, Diamond lists the twelve most serious environmental problems that our world faces today. The first 8 were also common to ancient civilizations:

1. The destruction of natural habitats, especially forests, wetlands, coral reefs and the ocean bottom
Over half of the world’s original forests have been converted by humans to other uses, and at the present rate another quarter will be converted within the next half century. An even larger fraction of the world’s original wetlands have been converted, as have one third of its coral reefs.

2. Wild foods, especially seafood
About two billion people today, mostly poor, depend upon the oceans for protein. If wild fish populations were appropriately managed they could be maintained indefinitely. But instead they are exploited.

3. Genetic diversity
Diamond explains how the increasing loss of genetic diversity on our planet harms us in many different ways.

4. Soil erosion
Soil is being eroded on farmlands at about 10 to 40 times the rate at which it is being re-formed, and between 500 and 10,000 times the rate on forested land. Thus, between 20% and 80% of the world’s farmland has become severely damaged.

5. Loss of freshwater
Most of the world’s freshwater is already being used, and those that are not are mostly far from population centers. Freshwater from underground aquifers is being depleted faster than it can be replenished, and over a billion people lack access to safe drinking water.

6. Alien species
There are hundreds of examples of alien species crowding out or killing native populations of species, causing billions of dollars worth of damage.

7. Human population growth
There is disagreement as to whether the world’s population will ever stabilize before it causes massive world-wide catastrophe.

8. The environmental impact of the average person
The adverse environmental effects of large populations of humans are dependent not only on the number of humans but on the average impact per person. If all third world inhabitants adopted first world living standards, that would result in 12 times the current human environmental impact – which the earth cannot support.

Then there are 4 new environmental problems that are unique to today’s world:

9. Depletion of energy sources, especially oil, natural gas, and coal
The prevalent view is that current reserves of readily accessible oil and natural gas will last a few more decades.

10. Photosynthetic ceiling
I don’t understand this one, but Diamond says that there is a limit to the Earth’s capacity to use sunlight, and that by 1986 humans were already using about half of it. His conclusion is that by the middle of the 21st Century, “most energy fixed from sunlight will be used for human purposes, and little will be left over to support the growth of natural plant communities, such as natural forests.”

11. Air, soil, and water pollution from toxic chemicals
Many toxic chemicals persist in the environment for long periods of time, and cleanup costs of many polluted sites are measured in billions of dollars.

12. Global warming from greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and methane from animals
Both are rising at rates that are certain, if continued, to result in rising sea levels that cause catastrophic coastal flooding.


Sustainability

Of the twelve problems noted above, many of them exacerbate each other, thus producing a vicious cycle. Diamond summarizes our current situation:



Parallels between ancient and current civilizations

There are those who say that consideration of the collapse of ancient civilizations has little relevance to today’s world. They claim that with today’s modern technology there is almost no limit to what we can achieve, and that we are far more intelligent than ancient civilizations. Diamond counters that argument by making several points:

There are far more people in today’s world and today’s civilizations than ancient societies had to cope with.

Our advanced technology not only has the potential to help us out of this crisis, but at least as likely, it has the potential to cause far more damage than what was available to ancient societies.

Just as in the past, political chaos and severe environmental problems go hand in hand. Diamond comments on the most obvious parallel between past and present:


And as for the impact of globalization:



Reasons for hope

In the last few pages of his book, Diamond notes some reasons for hope, as a way of explaining why he is “cautiously optimistic” that we can solve our problems before it is too late to avoid catastrophe. I must say that I was somewhat disappointed with this part of the book – as I was hoping for more hope. His reasons for hope can be boiled down to the following:

 Some past societies have solved their environmental problems and survived.
 There is an increasing awareness of environmental problems in today’s world.
 We know a lot more today about the risks we face than ancient societies did.
 Our environmental problems are solvable if only we have the political will to solve them.
 Some countries are making progress – e.g. in forming the European Union, several nations have forfeited some sovereignty to work together to solve their common problems.

Diamond ends his book with his bottom line reason for writing it:



Why democracy is a crucial key to solving our environmental problems

It might seem that if democracy is a crucial key to solving the world’s environmental problems, then we should be in pretty good shape. After all, the world’s most powerful country is a “democracy”, and there are many more “democracies” in the world today than there have ever been.

Yet, not all is as it seems. The United States of America is a democracy today more in name than it is in fact. Our president may as well have declared himself king, and there has been far too little objection in our country to his gross abuse of power.

But our bottom line problem is not a problem of one or two men. Our underlying problem is that the underlying principle of democracy – one person, one vote – has been virtually destroyed in our country. The wealthy and powerful supply our voting machines, they insist on our using machines that count our votes in secret, and there is far too little protest about that; the wealthy and powerful own most of the sources from which Americans receive their news; and, with our system of legalized bribery, the wealthy and powerful in our country have a very disproportionate influence on our elections even without the assistance of their secret voting machines.

Although Diamond didn’t emphasize this as a general principle, many or most of his examples of failed societies were societies that were very hierarchical. In such societies a small proportion of the population tends to have control over a very disproportionate number of resources. In those types of societies, the rich and powerful often make decisions that benefit themselves to the great detriment of the vast majority of other people. Environmental degradation often means little to them, as long as it increases their wealth and power.

That is exactly what is happening in the United States of America today, with terrible consequences for the rest of the world. The rich and powerful have formed themselves into giant powerful corporations that have demanded and received all the rights of “persons”, with few or none of the responsibilities of ordinary persons. The result has been to substantially widen the gap between rich and poor and to give to the few the license to enrich themselves at the great expense of the many. And I fear that this situation could be fatal to the potential for us to solve our environmental problems.

The American people are concerned about our environment, and they very much want to take steps to solve it. I believe that they have enough political will that in a true democracy they would actually take the steps they need to take. But ordinary Americans today have limited political clout to make their voices heard on this and other matters of great importance to our nation and our world.

It is widely believe that the failure of the most powerful country in the world to participate in the world’s peacekeeping efforts following the 20th Century’s first Great War was largely responsible for the failure of those efforts and therefore sowed the seeds for the onset of the century’s second Great War. Now we have a situation where that same country, more powerful than ever (in the destructive sense), not only refuses to participate in the world-wide effort to solve our environmental crisis, but is actively hostile to it.

I think that of all our Senators, Barbara Boxer is the most on target on this issue. She was the only United States Senator to officially object to the sham of a presidential election that we had in 2004. And now, she is the only U.S. Senator who has dared to suggest that we need to remove the current cancer upon our nation. In particular, she has said (scroll up to top):


The American people can’t leave it up to the good will of our rich and powerful elite and their corporations to solve our environmental problems. Nor should we allow two men who have no respect for democracy whatsoever to run our country. Democracy is all about challenging such outrages; democracy is about people throwing off the shackles of despotism; democracy is about people coming together to solve their problems.

I was particularly struck by the fact that so many of Diamond's examples came to grief in the period of about 1200-1500 c.e. It certainly does seem to have been a period of unstable global climate, although nothing like what I think is coming.

As both Al Gore and Jarod Diamond have said, we have the scientific knowledge and ability to successfully address the current man-made global climate crisis. It's just a matter of having the political will to address it.

If we get one more pResidency like the one we have now, it will probably be too late.

Recommended :thumbsup:.

In Europe (my area of knowledge) there was a weather shift around 1300 (cooling), which resulted in crop losses and famines. It also influenced the demise of the Greenland Vikings and caused difficulty with ice in northern sea areas. Rivers that had remained ice free in winter began to freeze over (think Bruegel paintings of people skating). The cooling was even noticeable in heavier clothing depicted in art works of the time; more garments were made of heavy materials and lined in furs. One can compare the garments of the early Middle Ages with those of the 16th century and notice that the climate had cooled significantly.

Following about 45 years later, the entire northern part of the eastern hemisphere was affected by a continuing westward wave of the Black Plague, which probably started in China.

I read Barbara Tuchman's "The Distant Mirror" many years ago. Your information reminded me of that. The book mostly dealt with the long "100 year war" between France and England. I wonder if that climate change had anything to do with that.

Put the book on hold at the library, I look forward to reading it! :)

I haven't been able to even quickly scan all of the article, but I do disagree with this accusation . . .

QUOTE: He defends the relevance of his analogies to the past in many ways. In doing so he notes two extreme and opposite points of view that attempt to minimize the relevancy of those analogies. One is the racist point of view that holds that past failed societies deserved their fate because of their inherent failings as people. The opposite and equally invalid point of view holds that “past indigenous peoples were gentle and ecologically wise stewards of their environment, intimately knew and respected Nature, innocently lived in a virtual Garden of Eden…” UNQUOTE

Re the "racist" concepts, I do agree that America, especially, has been afflicted by the propaganda of white male historians and even recently we have seen attempts to portray native people of the past as "cannibals" and currently as "diseased." Both charges eventually unmasked as lies.

On the other hand, the records from Columbus' entry here make clear that the natives were "gentle and ecologically wise stewards of their environment." In fact, the people were referred to as "in deo" meaning people of god. When Columbus arrived here from Western European society often inflicted by diseases unknown to this continent the native American was using penicillin. Their knowledge and experience of plants as medicines is not to be denied. The native, of course, had no concept of "private property." There was no private ownership . . . until threatened and forced upon them by the Europeans.

The Papal Bull calling for the enslavement of the native or his/her death is also quite clear; including his/her forced conversion; true human spirituality a grave threat to the Vatican.

The reckless stewardship since then by Western Europeans extends not only to overpopulation, pollution and the current Global Warming crisis -- but, in fact, to the universe as we extend nuclear weapons into space. Indeed, America exploded three nuclear weapons in space in the 1960's; an effort some believe to break thru the Van Allen radiation belts.

So, this bit of writing in its very beginning has the odor of sour milk about it --
suggesting an agenda other than to focus us on Global Warming -- however, if I have time, I'll come back to read further on.

As I said . . . for two decades I've been aware of Global Warming as an extremely serious threat to humanity and our planet. There are no guarantees that even this planet will keep turning because the damage is s so severe. The urgency cannot be overstated. Further the compounding of damage is unpredictable by any investigators.

Diamond's statement that you disagree with was a very general one. His point is that the response of past societies to environmental crises has been quite variable -- some have failed to respond appropriately and they have perished because of it. He gives several examples of that. Other past societies have recognized their problems in time and have gone to great lengths to solve their environmental problems, and they have survived as a result.

The point is that by looking at successes and failures, at inappropriate responses to environmental problems as well as appropriate responses, we can learn from both the failures and the successes of the past, and by so learning we can gather the knowledge to better respond appropriately to our current environmental crises.

Absolutely brilliant! I will definitely getting as many people as I can to read this.

Thanks!

:toast:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?id=570
Excerpt:

Sarah: The third type of insecurity is cultural. You’ve made a connection between globalization and the rise of nationalist violence and right-wing repression. What kind of evidence have you seen that there are links?

Vandana: Well I’m a physicist, not a social scientist. But as a citizen of India, I have had to suffer the violence and brutality that comes with rising fundamentalism, and I’ve asked myself how a society that is the cradle of peace, the land of Gandhi and Buddha, could be reduced to one of the most volatile societies in the world.

One incident that contributed to my understanding of these links was the violence that erupted in the Punjab in the 1980s. As the magic of the Green Revolution started to disappear, as subsidies were removed and an artificial system of prosperity started to decay, the Punjab became the birthplace for anger and discontent. When you look at why people were fighting, you find they were fighting for their rivers, for fair prices, for a say on when dam waters should be released. None of this was decided locally or regionally—it was all decided from the capital, Delhi. So the discontent was against centralized regimes in which people had no share in shaping their future.

More recently there have been clear indicators of how fundamentalism is growing out of the economic insecurity of globalization. Let me just give you two examples. In the late 1990s, because of the pressures of globalization, onion prices went up from 2 rupees to 100 rupees. The ruling party lost what became known as “the onion elections” of 1998 because they allowed this price increase. The opposition parties used the onion as the symbol of their fight against globalization, and they won in every state. Immediately after that we saw a round of fundamentalist violence.

In Gujarat, we had another set of regional elections, and the WTO, agriculture, and farmers’ survival were the major issues. Farmers said they were being destroyed by globalization policies, and they voted the ruling party out of power. Immediately after that the fundamentalist wave erupted, the genocide and warmongering started, and while public attention focused on the violence, the globalization agenda was pushed further.

As decision making is centralized away from local communities to national governments—and ultimately to corporate board rooms, financial markets, institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO—representative democracy loses its base in economic democracy. As local and national governments lose control over economic resources and priorities, elected leaders can no longer build a political base by championing programs responsive to family and community needs.

Political demagogues of the far right emerge to fill the void by channeling the anger and insecurity created by empire’s program of scarcity, injustice, and exclusion into an us-versus-them politics that blames particular national, racial, culture, or religious groups. The rise of the LePens in France, the Fortuyns in Netherlands, Haiders in Austria, and the Narendra Modis in India is a result. So there is a strong affinity between the forces of empire and a politics of hate that justifies policies of domination and exclusion. So long as people’s attention is focused on fear and hatred of foreigners or members of a particular religious group, such as Muslims, they are distracted from organizing to deal with the system of institutional domination and exploitation that is the real source of their insecurity.

Sarah: That certainly sounds like what is happening in the United States also.

Vandana: Absolutely. It’s a vicious cycle, and we need instead to create virtuous cycles that allow economic democracy to feed political democracy, cultural identities, and cultural diversity.

It comes back to deepening of democracy. What we have at this moment is democracy reduced to the rule of lies—lies in the way the popular will is being counted, as we saw in Florida in 2000, and lies in the way the people’s wealth is being counted, as we see in today’s accounting scandals. That false wealth is influencing who will rule—it’s all just too false now.

Our system of food security is being destroyed in the name of economic growth and economic liberalization, and people don’t have enough food to eat. Our farmers are being ravished by seed companies, being pushed into debt, and committing suicide. This system is going to cost lives even in the US, where people don’t know how they’ll pay for their health or retirement.

The way out of this violent cycle is to deepen democracy—to bring decisions that directly affect people’s lives as close as possible to where people are and to where they can take responsibility. If a river is flowing through some communities, those communities should have the power and the responsibility to decide how the water is used and whether it is to be polluted. The state has no business giving to Coca-Cola the groundwater of a valley in Kerala, resulting in rich farmland going totally dry. Communities need to take back sovereignty and delegate trusteeship to the state only as appropriate.

What we have now is a regime of absolute rights in the hands of corporations with zero responsibility for the environmental and social devastation and the political instabilities they are creating. If we want to reactivate and rejuvenate democracy, we have to bring back the economic content.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We must share and demand to share in the shaping of our future, or Democracy is lost. Thank you for this thread. Recommended.

This article talks about today's complex political issues that weren't emphasized in Diamond's book.

It's really scary how a largely unseen corporatocracy seems to have taken over the whole world, and how much damage they're doing to it.

It must have taken you a very long time to write it.

TfC, ich bedanke mich! :loveya: K&R!

It did take a long time to write, but I learned a lot from it. :hug:

but from which nothing tangible was exported." . . .

this has an all too familiar ring, no? . . . similarly . . .

"We have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long term problems…"

I didn't fully realize how much so until I went through the book a second time while I was writing this post.

Here is something similar, from Chalmers Johnson's "Nemesis -- The Last Days of the American Republic". After explaining in great detail how absolutely worthless is the Reagan and Bush "Star Wars" system, costing over a trillion dollars, Johnson says:

piece bringing all of this disparate info into focus as a comprehensive whole.

We've got to find a way to take back the reins of power
and put these criminals out of business for good.

It makes me want to go hunting fat cats and corporate megalomaniacs

for high crimes and misdemeanors. This is the most lawless pResident in our history, and it's time that our Congress did something about it:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x3021745

I have been thinking of putting together a post about that-but I am lazy and not particularly articulate. Thanks for this post! K&R

There were a few things in it that I feel could be subject to misinterpretation by more conservative or libertarian people. My environmental book group for instance had what constitutes basically a huge email flame-war over it that lasted for weeks. I think Diamond is a person who legitimately and honestly introudces some degree of grey (now I may not agree with him on some of those issues but I do think he is being honest) in how he approaches the effects of corporations, his views on societies of the past as stewards of the planets as opposed to modern societies etc.
It has lead some people to consider him an apologist for corporatists/a status quo-er etc. Now I hold no brief for people who are actually apologists/status quo-ers, but while I don't agree with him on some issues, I think it is inaccurate to peg him or some of his views as any of those things. He is a scientist and I think he tries to be objective most of the time.

On the fudamental points though, I thought it an extremely informative piece of work. As far as opinions go, yes I disagreed with him on a few of his opinions.

I think he tried very hard to be politically neutral. Of course, that's very hard to do with respect to a subject that is so politically charged and that is influenced greatly by the political process. But like I said in my OP, I think that his intention was to keep politics out of his book to the extent possible, in the hope that the science that he talked about would be taken more seriously. I think he did a very good job of that.

John Perkins, of "Economic Hit Man" fame, indicated the darned corporations may prove key for solving our problems. They have the human and economic resources needed for the job. Unlike most of the world's governments, their shareholders can order them to set and accomplish whatever goals are deemed necessary. In the case of the globe, we must achieve sustainability and Justice. Democracy is the answer. And We the People need to kill the television screens and take charge.

Truly great post, yours, Time for change. Thank you infinitely.

I for one believe that corporations can be as good or as evil as their human Directors.

"The Secret History of the American Empire".

Both of his books are sooo enlightening. I believe that he's shown a very bright light on aspects of American history that so many people (including me) either never suspected or only had a vague understanding of.

Thank you so much.

...thanks for posting this and the links! :)

K&R!!!

Will we ever learn? I do wonder, since we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Those of us who have learned from history are much like poor Cassandra, so sad to say.

I firmly believe the radical rightward shift in our government is primarily due to the rightward shift in the media. Addressing this should be the starting point for resurecting true democracy in America. I don't think it's possible to recover our country without establishing a true populist media supplying a steady diet of truth to the average citizen.

Here is an excellent series of articles about this issue:

http://consortiumnews.com/archive/media.html

One of my links in the OP talks about that:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1784920

In your other journal entry about the impending death of our republic referenced in this entry you say:

"But what is even more troubling to me than Bush’s actions (seizing extra-constitutional powers) is the lack of reaction against them. This should be a scandal of the highest magnitude."

Exactly right! And do you know why most of the public does not react?

There is no mainstream media explaining to the public on a regular basis how radical this administrations constitutional theories are.

Prove it to yourself. Ask some of your acquaintences about the unitary executive theory, the military commisions act (1.) etc. Just try it!

I assure you most of your average evening news watching folks won't know what you're talking about. They don't really know their constituion is being destroyed, therefore there is no outrage.

I hope Michael Moore goes after the media in his next project, because that is where political power actually resides.

Until we correct that problem democracy has no chance.

(See also the DVD "Orwell Rolls in His Grave.")

1. (http://journals.democraticunderground.com/AJ9000)

too many words a gordian knot to tie-up too much discussion wants audience

i'll read it all when i have time

Who uses most of the energy, for example? Corporations? Or millions of people who drive gas guzzlers too fast and too often and who only complain about the price of gasoline, without regard to either its eventual scarcity or true environmental costs. Are not masses of consumers also responsible by giving no thought to conservation. And millions of voters who voted for a candidate that promised them money in the form of tax cuts, and no costs for it.

Also, there is another contradiction. On the one hand, you say Bush is like a King or a dictator, but on the other hand "Our underlying problem is that the underlying principle of democracy – one person, one vote – has been virtually destroyed in our country....the wealthy and powerful in our country have a very disproportionate influence ..."

It is the second framework which I think is more accurate. If Bush was a king, he would rule over the wealthy and powerful too. I don't think he does. He serves at their pleasure, and only gets away with his excesses because the distractions and his policies serve the ruling class very well. Bush and Cheney are not the cancer. Only a visible skin lesion of the underlying disease.

Certainly the American people deserve a share of the blame for voting for Bush in large enough numbers that he could steal two elections, and for putting up with his dictatorial rule as much as they have. Similarly, the German people of the 1930s and 40s deserve a good share of the blame for putting up with Hitler as much as they did.

However, that does not take any blame off Bush and Cheney, just as the acquiescence of the German people doesn't take any blame off of Hitler. Bush and Cheney are both vile human beings, and their monstrous policies are disastrous for our country and the world -- and they don't even care about that.

It is certainly true, as you say, that Bush serves the wealthy and powerful. But I don't see that as making him less of a King. All Kings have their constituencies that they must serve in order to stay in power. I don't think that makes our situation any more desirable than if Bush served only himself, and it may even make it worse. Furthermore, there have been many Kings of the past that served their people much better than Bush and Cheney have served us.

As for emphasizing corporations, I believe that that is appropriate. I said in my OP that we should not let corporations make our decisions for us, and I'm pretty sure you would agree with that. Corporations should be emphasized because they hold a very disproportionate amount of power in our country today -- a degree of power that they have lobbied very hard for. I believe that degree of power is totally inappropriate in a democracy.

some of the world elite may be planning massive catastrophes, wars, terrorist attacks, or other "extinction events" in order to stop or slow down the widespread waste of worldwide resources. Don't think that there are not people out there who are thinking about this. I hate to point out such a depressing mother of all conspiracy theory, but now may be the time to openly bring together all the problem-solving capabilities possible via the internetS.

If you read the PNAC document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses", it seems quite obvious that that is their goal. Anyhow, you don't have to be a wild eyed conspiracy theorist to believe that. History is full of similar examples, and it would be quite surprising if various people didn't have that in mind.

Your bumming everybody out.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

George Santayana

It appears that even those who have learned from history may still be doomed to repeat it. Knowledge does not always translate into action, and action may not be sufficient.

I need to read the whole book (I'm a big fan of A Distant Mirror too, BTW...)

A sustainable society must be one that learns to live in harmony with nature. Ours does not, which is why environmental issues are the most important ones facing us today.

The idea that Democracy is essential to our survival is the key point here. Runaway capitalism is at the heart of all our problems. We are living in an era similar to the age of the Robber Barons which led to the great depression. The corporations have almost completely bought off our system of representative government so that all political decisions are made for their perceived benefit. Before we can begin to make the hard decisions and institute serious regulations to turn this train around, we have to find a way to get money out of politics. The power of the vote is severely diminished when it takes millions of dollars for a candidate to get on the ballot. It means that they have to put the interests of the corporations first, and those of the voters second.

Thanks for getting this impotant discussion going.

See you on the baricades!

Money is corrupting politics in our country, and it makes a mockery of the one person one vote ideal of democracy. Along with that, I feel that the idea that money = speech is an absurd and purposeful perversion of our First Amendment, and we need to find a way to deal with that in order to initiate meaningful campaign finance reform.

Thank you!!

I just bought Collapse and I'm going to print this out to keep as well.