Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> James, I accept without a reading what you and Don tell me. What shall we 
> do about the warnings beyond what we here on the homestead list espouse? 
> Has Diamond caused any good change? I do not fault him if not. Millions of 
> us are aware of many things that need to be changed. Not many are doing 
> much.
> 

Diamond identifies two approaches, both which he says are effective [and he 
gives examples].  He calls them the 'bottom up' and the 'top down' 
management.  
His most interesting example are three Pacific islands, one tiny, one much 
larger, and a third in between the two.  He says the large one was populous 
enough to have a strong central government that [and this is the essential 
point] 
had a vested interest in the long term survival of the culture, usually 
because they expected their descendents to inherit power.  The ruling class 
put 
regulations in effect which protected the environment, limited the 
population, and 
conserved resouces.  This is the 'top down' arrangement.   The tiny island 
was so small that everyone knew what everyone else was doing and so by 
concensus 
of the community, resources were conserved and the environment protected,   
This is the 'bottom up' arrangement.  But the third island was too small to 
have an effective central government, and too large for everyone to be 
involved 
with what everyone else was doing, so it ruined its environment, squandered 
its 
resources, and the population died out.

One of the reasons he gives for Haiti being an eroded, deforested ecological 
disaster area while the Dominican Republic preserved 27% of its forests and 
managed its water and soil resources is that the otherwise despotic leaders 
of 
the Dominican Republic viewed their power as hereditary and expected to have 
their family in power hundreds of years later.  In Haiti there was no such 
expectation among the equally despotic leaders and they allowed (or 
encouraged) the 
despoiling of the resources for their immediate gain.

In cultural entities like the US, Diamond says it MUST be a combination of 
both approaches and herein lies the problem.   No political party, even (if 
not 
especially) the Greens, has a vested interest in real environmental and 
resouce management.  You cannot make any inroads in having the political 
parties in 
power (and the corporations that control them) embrace real, long term 
environmental and economic policies when their power and the continuation of 
it does 
not depend on a stable economy nor renewable environment.  A real 'top down' 
component is not in the offing.

But, alas, except in some isolated instances, here's no bottom up component 
either.  We have friends who are devoted Greenies and chain themselves to 
trees 
to protest logging here abouts.  But although they have 40 acres of 
manageable timber themselves, when they do repairs on their house, they 
always go to 
the lumber yard and buy the very Georgia Pacific products they protest.  They 
don't see that as an inconsistency because they say they are working for a 
comprehensive federal policy to force everyone, including them, to make 
alternative 
choices.  But until then it is business as usual on the one hand and 
relatively meaningless protests on the other.

Although Diamond is somewhat optimistic, I am not .... not unless something 
changes.  As far as petitioning the government, especially the US government, 
to address the problems, it is like the line in the Rubaiyyat which reads:

"Lift not thy hands to it for help
 For it rolls on impotently as thou or I."


James