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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] How Societies Choose ....
  • Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 21:52:41 EDT



> 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




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