companion book to his guns, germs, and steel. another outstanding work from jared diamond. a must read, especially for the misguided who continuously place economic considerations over ecological ones.

tidy little outline/summary from wiki.

Diamond lists eight factors which have historically contributed to the collapse of past societies:

1. Deforestation and habitat destruction
2. Soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses)
3. Water management problems
4. Overhunting
5. Overfishing
6. Effects of introduced species on native species
7. Population growth
8. Increased per-capita impact of people

Further, he says four new factors may contribute to the weakening and collapse of present and future societies:

1. Human-caused climate change
2. Buildup of toxins in the environment
3. Energy shortages
4. Full human utilization of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity

The root problem in all but one of Diamond's factors leading to collapse is overpopulation relative to the practicable (as opposed to the ideal theoretical) carrying capacity of the environment (:yup:). The one factor not related to overpopulation is the harmful effect of accidentally or intentionally introducing nonnative species to a region.

what will we choose?

I liked GG&S. But I disagree with your premise, #1 and #2 I would be interested to know which societies he specifically analyzes and really how analogous the situations are to our own. #3 it would be interesting to see how or why technology advancements didn't help to overcome some of these issues.

Diamond's ideas are basically sound, but he's far too much of an alarmist for my taste.

you disagree with my premise regarding the misguided? in what way?

in hindsight, i shouldn't have pasted that wiki summary as an introduction. unless you have prior knowledge of the book and diamond's arguments, it could be misleading. i should have just listed the 5 point framework that diamond uses to evaluate these societies - environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and societal response to environmental problems - and linked interviews and lectures on the book, which i will do now for those interested.

interview: http://www.thelavinagency.com/articles_cov...nd%20speech.pdf

video of lecture: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4271982381147720351

to answer your post, he analyzes easter island, the anasazi, greenland, iceland, the maya, and pitcairn island, and some others. his section on modern societies analyzes rwanda (which you would like because he titles it Malthus in Africa), the dom repub and haiti, china, australia.

he also opens the book by discussing montana and its ongoing problems and failures.

bear in mind that the material and lists from my opening post are wiki creations, and as such should not have been used as a first introduction to diamond's case. but regarding #3 and water management, what role do you see technological advancement having in solving the problems that it itself often created? in cases where technological advancement could help solve the problem, like toxic pollution from mining and soil erosion from agriculture, economics often prohibits the proper solution.

which brings me back to my original point about being misguided, and a point diamond made in his own way with the book. failure to give the proper forethought and weight to ecological considerations in relation to economics all too often creates significant, if not catastrophic, problems for a society. i see that pattern as being myopic and misguided, and still in existence. diamond sees it in his own way, and this was part of his reason for writing this book and asking why societies succeed or fail. he attributed part of it to the following:

"A theme that emerges from Norse Greenland as well as from other places, is
insulation of the decision making elite from the consequences of their actions.
That is to say, in societies where the elites do not suffer from the consequences
of their decisions, but can insulate themselves, the elite are more likely to pursue
their short-term interests, even though that may be bad for the long-term
interests of the society, including the children of the elite themselves."

i've heard people make the same criticism of him. i don't see it that way, because i don't think he frequently exaggerates his analyses or presents them as imminent or impending, but i suppose it's a legit criticism nevertheless.

That is to say, in societies where the elites do not suffer from the consequences of their decisions, but can insulate themselves, the elite are more likely to pursue their short-term interests, even though that may be bad for the long-term interests of the society, including the children of the elite themselves."

God Bless America.

to be fair, such insulation is certainly much more widespread than america. i'd say it's typical of most governments and power structures.

incidentally, libertarians in particular really need to reevaluate their beliefs on the primacy of individual liberty, private property rights, and the free market as these are often in direct conflict with ecological principles and environmental imperatives such as resource conservation and management, or sustainability for example. as it stands, their positions on these issues is untenable.

True.

And if the rabble don't follow orders that elites respond with terrorism.

i don't follow what you're saying. can you explain what you're applying this to?

In the US, the response to the Civil Rights movement is an example. The southern elite ruling class responded with terrorism against civil rights activists.

i see. i was applying that quote by diamond more to the environmental issues being discussed. but yes, i'd agree it reaches violently across the board in many cases...civil rights, war, etc.

Sadus, I want you to get a stick, and scrawl "I'm a duped tool" one-hundred times in the dirt.

Population control, lol.
--------------------------

Is the World Over Populated? Lets do the math... The World Can Fit In Texas
The world has a surface area of 510.072 million sq km. Well clearly we can not live any where on the surface of the world as the majority of it is water 361.132 million sq km. The remainer is the land mass 148.94 million sq km. So what is the population of the human race? Estimate is currently at 6,525,170,264 (July 2006 est.).

Now let us do some translations. For every 148 sq km you get 37,000 acres of land.

37,000 acre = 148 sq Km meaning that the world has about 3.68*10 to the 10th Acres of land. I will be using 37,000,000,000 acres for the math below. Now if you were to split that land up between all the people of the earth and gave each one a share each would get 5.67 acres of land.

37,000,000,000/ 6,525,170,286 = 5.67 acres per person


That does not sound like a lot does it? Some may say "Much of the land is unliveable" and they are right so let look at a area where we could make it nearly totally liveable. The Great State of Texas. Texas has a surface area of 261,797 square miles.
1 square mile = 3,097,600 square yards = 640 acres
640 * 261,797 = 167,550,080 acres in Texas

Now lets say we move all the people of the world to the state of Texas. They would each get only .02568 acres of land.
167,550,080 / 6,525,170,286 = .02568 acres per person

That does not sound like alot. But wait how much is .02568 acres?
1 acre = 4,840 square yards
4,840 * .02568 = 124.29 square yards
1 square foot = 1/9 square yard
124.29 * 9 = 1,118.61 square feet

Here's some more from another psycho-babblist...

Psychology Today Blog: Ban Having Children for 5 Years
By Erin Brown (Bio | Archive)
February 9, 2009 - 12:09 ET

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A bestselling author has called octuplets-mother Nadya Sulamen a 'murderer' and warns of overpopulation saying, "we need to lose 4.4 billion people."

“STOP HAVING CHILDREN.” Steven Kotler has declared that responsible adults should stop having children in order to save the planet. Those who are having kids, are being selfish and stealing from the future, the rest of humanity, and “every living thing on the earth,” he wrote. Have too many kids and you should go to jail.

This isn’t a joke. Kotler writes a blog called “The Playing Field” on the Psychology Today Web site. He is a best selling author and an advocate of controlling population growth. His latest solution: a five-year moratorium on having kids.

Kotler’s reasoning is that the planet is running out of resources. “You think the economy is bad now – wait a few years,” Kotler said. “Wait until we’re almost completely out of oil and food and water and available land ... we need to lose 4.4 billion people and we need to lose them fast.”

Those comments came just days after Nadya Sulamen, a single mother of six, gave birth to octuplets, and Kotler had an opinion about her as well. “She’s a criminal,” Kotler declared. “She’s a murderer. She’s not only guaranteeing her kids a very hard life, she’s killing all of us.”

Kotler isn’t the the first person to say humans are destroying the planet. Paul Watson of the radical Sea Shepherd Society, has called for the global population to fall below one billion, because “we are killing our host, the planet Earth,” Watson opined. “I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” Watson has said.

Like Watson, Kotler doesn’t think much of humans. In December, writing on “The Playing Field,” he said:

So do I think that a dog's life is worth more than a humans? I think that no dog has ever, intentionally, for reasons of selfish greed, destroyed their home like we have ours. I think that yes, there are way too many people on the planet, and while I'm not advocating mass euthanasia (though mandatory birth control sounds pretty good to me), I think before we start saying humans are worth more than dogs, we need to examine exactly what we have contributed to the quality of life for all species on this planet, not just our own.

Such ideas are hardly original. Thomas Malthus, an influential 18th century economist and philosopher, was an early proponent of population control. He reduced the human position on earth to a mathematical observation: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio,” Malthus wrote in 1798. “Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.”

Nearly two centuries later, America scientist Paul Ehrlich took up the Malthusian standard, and added his own shrill urgency. In his hugely successful 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich foresaw that, "In the 1970s and 1980s…hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."

Ehrlich’s answer was “compulsory birth regulation…(through) the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size."

Of course, Malthus, Ehrlich and other doomsayers have been proven spectacularly wrong. Kolter didn’t address that fact in his piece.

Erin Brown is an intern for the Culture and Media Institute. Matt Philbin is the Managing Editor for CMI.

prowling, you just demonstrated a level of ignorance that prohibits any serious discussion on populations and how much land and water are required to sustain them.

let me sum it up for you. not only as a species, but as a country as well, current population growth levels are NOT sustainable with our current practices. in fact, i'm entirely unconvinced that even with zero population growth what we have going is sustainable. we are facing MAJOR soil and fresh water issues. you need to understand that if you intend to discuss this issue with any integrity.

.026 acres is enough! embarrassing.

You Pelosiphiles can quit pretending you know anything about population growth.

wow. that was even more pathetic than i expected.

i'm embarrassed for prowling and i don't even remotely agree with him or like him (or the character he plays here).

Maybe you should start a 'Duped Tools Who Hate Prowling' club? :yup:

There's probably 500 million Americans just like you :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYtZKrcz-CE

"Most horrifying of all is the notion of people who think of themselves as intelligent reading the evil ravings of moonbats like Jared Diamond and then nodding their heads knowingly as they head off to the polls to vote."

http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2008/0..._diamond_d.html

PS, where did Jared Diamond come up with his name, anyway? A jewelry commercial?

Sadus, would I be correct to assume you're in your early-mid 20s? That's when most people go through their 'save the world' stage.

BTW, that Texas example breaks down to 4 people per football field, minus about nine yards.

really? 4 per football field? might want to recheck your math there, based on your original numbers it's more like 43 people per football field. not only was your premise stupid, you can't even manage to make simple calculations to back it up. nice work dummy.

It's not my math, and I doubt it's wrong. Even if it's wrong, and your number is right, you can still fit every person on the planet inside Texas.

well, it is very wrong.

124.29 sq. yards per person

5333 sq. yards per football field goal line to goal line, or 6399.6 sq. yards including end zones.

42.91 persons per football field goal line to goal line, or 51.49 persons per football field including end zones. either way, you're way off.

anyway, point is what does this mean to you? how does this support your argument?

moonbattery? you actually read that crap? did you bother to read the op-ed that diamond wrote, which went right over the head of the fool in your moonbattery link? if so, exactly what did diamond wirte that you have an issue with?

here's the link to diamond's op-ed. you should read it, you might learn something about the issues being discussed instead of being infected by idiotic interpretations like the one in your link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/...gin&oref=slogin

an excerpt from your link...

Diamond's more serious ideas are even more disturbing. Terrified that poor countries might lift themselves out of poverty, he proposes imposing poverty on the entire world. That way poor countries won't mind being poor, because we'll have equality. As Diamond euphemistically puts it, we must see that "all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels."

see, now this is just a complete lie. it bears no resemblance at all to what diamond really said, it's just the rantings of a half-wit lunatic. do you honestly believe that shit? if so, you have some major issues. seriously, i know i gave you shit for being stupid. but i don't think you're actually stupid, you're just misled. unless you read diamond's op-ed and think this "analysis" from moonbattery is spot on, then you really are a dumb intellectually dishonest pawn.

Jared "Sparkling" Diamond is a UCLA moonbat, with his talk of consumption, man is raping the earth babble.

The earth is not over-populated. The fact that the population of the entire planet could fit in the borders of Texas doesn't amaze (and enlighten) you?

and within a month the state of texas would be trashed and most of the people would be dead.

Nah. Texas still allows citizens to protect themselves. And they have the death penalty, in case a criminal escapes the scene of his crime.

overpopulation isn't about a raw population figure where anything above is overpopulated and anything below is sustainable. with the technology and processes that we have in place, earth is currently overpopulated. the systems in place are simply not sustainable. earth could conceivably support significantly more people with improvements in technology and an alteration of lifestyle, but that doesn't address the question of our status now.

overpopulation isn't about how many individuals of a given species you can physically fit into an area. that you think it is proves my point about your complete ignorance of the issues.

yeah, talk of consumption has no place in a discussion about overpopulation. :whistle: after all, it's only THE single most important factor in determining carrying capacity and sustainability.

read diamond's op-ed. it isn't some extreme irrational perspective on human consumption. it's basic science, ecology 101 stuff.

It's moonbat 101.

Are you a vegetarian?

ecology, and concepts like carrying capacity and sustainability are moonbat 101? prowling, open your eyes. try reading something informative on the issue. there is plenty of literature on this subject, it isn't some creation of diamond's.

no, i'm not a vegetarian.

yeah, i'm pretty sure they'll be glad they have those guns when everyone starts shooting each other over water.

it's pretty clear he doesn't understand or accept basic concepts like ecosystem, carrying capacity, sustainability, ecological footprint. for example, according to calculations made by scientific american, about 24 acres is needed to sustain the lifestyle of one american.

did you read diamond's 1 page op-ed?

Ecological footprint = :yammer:

24 acres needed to sustain one American? BAD America! Bad!!!

The world would be one big cesspool without America, the curator of civilization. I wonder if Japan still fertilizes it's rice paddies with human feces? They did as recently as the 50's.

That reminds me, during WWII our guys learned that the Germans were the only society outside of the U.S. that considered toilet paper to be a necessity. The muslims are still wiping their ass with their hands.

i know, you don't like the way the phrase sounds so you ignore the concepts behind it. concepts supported numerous scientific disciplines. the phrase just sounds "libiot" to you, so you ignore it without having any idea what it means and how it is derived.

this isn't an indictment of america, all first world countries are in that same zone. lifestyles and standards of living in first world countries are not sustainable using current methods and systems for attaining that standard. until we undergo a paradigm shift of some kind and begin to perceive ourselves not only as consumers in economies that need to flourish, but organisms in ecosystems that need to be maintained, we risk undermining our achievements as nations and as a species. i see the possibility to engage in serious long term planning and truly visionary action by merging the two roles in a responsible manner with increased emphasis on the realities of environmental health and sustainable resource use. unfortunately, there are people like you to contend with who seem to hate humanity and life in general. for whatever reason you and yours have chosen to be enslaved by willful ignorance and parochial considerations. a big hearty fuck you to y'all.

I don't really care if the trees are happy. WW III and a dangerous man in the White House are actual concerns.

happy trees. just stupid dude.

let me know when you decide to respond to what i've actually posted instead of erecting yet another embarrassingly transparent straw man.

"In ‘Collapse’ Diamond states that Australians are cutting down too many trees..."

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2006/02/m...-jared-diamond/