Endorse Retired Reader's Review, Adding Images and Links, March 27, 2008
Daniel Byman
I've learned that Retired Reader's background and judgement are very close to my own, and as a general rule, if he reviews a book before me, I look for something to add rather than replicate what he has already set forth.
In my own work back in the 1990's for the Strategic Studies Institute I developed the concept of having five functional strategies within a national grand strategy; “Threats, Strategy, and Force Structure” by Robert David Steele Strategic Alternatives Report (Strategic Studies Institute, Nov 2000) also as Chapter 9 in Steven Metz (ed.), Revising the Two MTW Force Shaping Paradigm (Strategy Studies Institute, April 2001), the five strategies were: global (multinational) intelligence; interoperability (communications, computing, and data standards); force structure (four forces after next (bitg war, small war, peace war, home defense); preventive (mulitnational) diplomacy and assistance; and finally, home front.
It's good to see a book that takes this five front approach (I might mention, there are six fronts on the ground: the USA, Latin America, South Asia, Africa, Central Asia including sects in China and Russia, and Europe, which has so totally lost it on giving citizenship to aliens that they are suffering from terminal cancer.
Now here is the key point: using the image provided above, please recognize that in the larger strategic context of the ten high-level threats to humanity (poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, inter-state conflict, civil war, genocide, other atrocities, proliferation, terrorism, and transnational crime, the “terrorist” threat is a TACTIC and a TINY TINY, infinitesmally small part of the totality of the threat to the USA and any other Nation. To exaggerate this threat and to blow the entire bank and make the USA involvent over it, is to be impeachable for breach of trust, dereliction of duty, and criminal malfeasance in office.
Buy this book. It is one of the best works to date on the nuances of terrorism and how to approach terrorism. It is, however, valuable only for that small segment of the threat that it addresses. For a larger view, see the following ten books (or read my reviews for the snapshot–my article above is easily found on the Internet):
I wrote a rave review on the author's earlier book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time and eagerly anticipated this book. It has been a real disappointment. Only the foreword by E.O. Wilson kept me from setting it aside entirely.
As someone who reads broadly and sees with increasing dismay the insularity of citation cabals, somewhat arthritic communities of practice, and a tendency to ignore diverse perspectives, I was immediately annoyed by this book's failure to respect Lester Brown, Herman Daly, Paul Hawkin, C. K. Prahalad, and J. F. Rischard, to name but a few. The author does not appear to have read the High Level Threat Panel Report of the United Nations, and his over-all presentation, while accurate and erudite, is also dense, narrow, and of dubious implementability.
If you are steeped in the literature and care deeply about the details, then this book is an absolutely essential reference, and for that reason receives four stars.
The author opens with “Humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet.” Early on he says that sustainable energy could be achieved for 1% of world income. He believes Asia will be the economic center of gravity in the future (assuming this includes India, I agree).
He identifies six key factors for the near future:
1. Convergence
2. More people, higher incomes
3. Asian Century
4. Urban Century
5. Environmental Challenges
6. Poorest Billion
He loses one star, apart from failing to honor the real pioneers including Herman Daly, father of Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications, for overly general platitudes about global collaboration, technology, saving Darfur as if anything he lists was possible, and generally neglecting so many factors and metrics as to leave me wondering where the book was going.
He does well in itemizing the importance of the anthropocene, which tends to be neglected by many, listing impacts on land, water, carbon, nitrogen, plants, birds, and fisheries. The loss of amphibians and pollinators (e.g. bees) is noted.
He lists seven climate change impacts:
1. Rising ocean levels
2. Habitat destruction
3. Increased disease transmission
4. Changes in agricultural productivity
5. Changes in water availability
6. Increased natural hazards
7. Changes in ocean chemistry
These are all important, but I am distressed to see no reference to Blue Frontier, Blue Death, or Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource. This confirms my unease–this is a brilliant man with a great deal of influence who is out of touch with a number of very significant observers whose intellectual contributions cannot be ignored in a work such as this.
Coming back to Darfur, one recommendation he makes with which I totally agree, is the value of introducing cell phones and cell towers to the high-risk areas. I wrote to the CEOs of both Nokia and Motorola about such an initiative a year ago, and never received a response. They do not seem to appreciate the reality that cell phones, like razors, should be given away, and the transactions monetized instead (“sell the shave, not the razor”).
He makes five points about the US that are certainly serious, but as one who has read Joe Nye, Jonathan Schell, Chalmers Johnson, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Peters, and so many others, I see the following five points as the equivalent of a teen-age driver lecturing on highway safety:
1. Limits of military power (see Nye's Paradox of American Power)
2. Wars of identity (see Peter's Wars of Blood and Faith)
3. Drivers of violence (see UN High Level Threat Panel above)
4. Foreign Assistance (see O'Hanlon, Half Penny on the Dollar)
5. Real Security (proliferation, environment, failed states–ho hum)
The chapter on global problem solving was entirely reasonable, and I worry that I am communicating too harsh a sense of the book. If you are a geek and have time on your hands, by all means buy this book. Otherwise, read my reviews of all the others, and then buy Rischard's book and spend time at the Earth Intelligence Network (all free).
He says the public sector should
1. Fund basic science (never mind the Republican war on science)
2. Promote early stage technologies (never mind Monsanto's seeds of death or the Transylvanian Dracula patent system designed to retard human progress by locking up new stuff so the legacy stuff can continue to sell)
3. Create a global policy framework for solutions (see Earth Intelligence Network and the ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers, see especially the EarthGame(TM) as devised by Medard Gabel who helped Buckminster Fuller create the original analog World Game)
4. Finance the scale-up of successful innovations and technologies (huh?)
No mention of the public sector's most important role in creating a social environment that is stable, orderly, and healthy, so that citizens can be educated and gainfully employed while exporting goodness.
He suggests the private sector has two core responsibilities besides making a profit (at our expense, see comment below on true costs):
1. Investing in R&D, often with public funding
2. Implementing large-scale technological solutions in partnership with the public sector
Hmmm. No mention of Green to Gold, Sustainable Design, Services Science, identification of “true cost” for all products and services, etc. There is an entire planet of literature relevant to this books purpose that does not appear here. I respect the author and his accomplishments, but at this point in the book I am exasperated.
The not-for-profit sector has five key roles, per the author:
1. Public advocacy (perhaps public education would be a better term)
2. Social entrepreneurship and problem solving (good)
3. Seed funding of solutions (but not willy nilly–has anyone heard of the concept of a creating a Global Range of Gifts Table for each of the ten threats across each of the twelve policies, with amounts from $10 to $100 million, such that individuals–80% of the giving–can select items directly, and Civil Affairs and NGO individuals all over the world can “call in” peace targets to the Table?)
4. Accountability of government and the private sector (see the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and what David Walker will be doing there–that is a first-class endeavor)
5. Scientific research, notably in academic institutions (where we should be emphasizing very low cost licensing to the governments of India, South Africa and others, and burying the profiteering pharmaceuticals and the predatory seed companies).
The author follows the above with a global funding architecture that is not persuasive and that would not satisfy my colleagues from the Office of Management and Budget.
The book ends with a limp, suggesting eight steps individuals can take:
1. Learn
2. Travel
3. Join
4. Community (face to face)
5. Social Networks (online)
6. Workplace
7. Live personally (Gandhi: be the change you want to see in the world.)
My bottom line: this book is not ready for prime time. It is dense, disappointing, and it will never be read nor understood by the kinds of people–less E.O. Wilson and George Soros–that have real power over the $1 trillion in charitable giving, the $1 trillion in spending on war instead of peace, or the $1 trillion in corporate and government and other foreign assistance.
I challenge the author to post a one page summary suitable for a President, and a one-page spending plan that addresses the ten threats and twelve policies that I list below for the convenience of the Amazon shopper:
TEN THREATS (LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft and others on High Level Threat Panel of the United Nations–in order of priority)
01 Poverty
02 Infectious Disease
03 Environmental Degradation (includes climate change and warming)
04 Inter-State Conflict (we spend $1.3 trillion on waging war)
05 Civil War (often occasioned by corruption and our support for 42 of the 44 dictators on the planet–see Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
06 Genocide
07 Other Atrocities (kidnapping for body parts; kidnapping dumb cute girls from Connecticut that go to “movie auditions” alone)
08 Proliferation (no mention of small arms, the real weapon of mass destruction: the USA sells five times more weapons to the rest of the world than the UK, three times more than Russia–and the worst proliferators of nuclear, biological and chemical are the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Reality check, anyone?)
09 Terrorism (a law enforcement problem, not even close to the casualties from automobile accidents in the US alone)
10 Transnational crime ($2 trillion against the US $7 trillion, and getting worse–they have better intelligence, encryption, computers, and wages than any government force)
The twelve policies, based on an EIN study of the last 5 presidential election “mandate for change books”:
01 Agriculture
02 Diplomacy
03 Economy
04 Education
05 Energy
06 Family
07 Health
08 Immigration
09 Justice
10 Security
11 Society
12 Water
Last but not least, the author, who is without question one of the very highest experts in his narrow chosen domain, appears out of touch with the literatures on collective intelligence and on the wealth of networks. I will mention only one book (there are others, including one now free at EIN on COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace). See my favorite, Yochai Benckler's The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.
I am going to end with a harsh thought: As much as I admire Columbia University, as much as I see the possibilities for the United Nations, what I sense in this book is that the author is deeply entrenched in a pyramidal systems of systems, and is still in the “command and control” top-down elites rule mode. Common Wealth is not going to be orchestrated by the New York mandarins–it is going to be created by We the People, using Open Money, boycotting all products and services whose true costs are externalized (e.g. Exxon did not make $40 billion in profit–they externalized $12 in costs to the earth for EACH gallon of gas they sold–one will not find that fact in this author's book–he might not be invited back to the high table).
See for instance (Amazon limits me to ten links, sorry):
Infinite Wealth by Barry Carter (the first real visionary)
Wealth of Networks by Tom Stewart
Revolutionary Wealth by Alvin and Heidi Toffler
Group Genius by Keith Sawyer
Wikinomics by Don Tapscott
Then there is the sustainability and ecological economics literature:
Seven Tomorrows by Paul Hawkins
Green to Gold by by Daniel Esty and Andrew Williams
Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawkins
Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawkins
Capitalism 3.0 by Peter Barnes
The Philosophy of Sustainable Design by Jason McClellan
and so on….
Argh. Annoying. I expected so MUCH more. I expect some negative votes. There are those that simply cannot stand to be told they have missed a big part of the diversity answer. As we used to say in Viet-Nam, “Sorry 'bout that.” It takes ALL of us, SHARING and creating COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE from the BOTTOM UP, to create Common Wealth. This book is certainly accurate as far as it goes, well-intentioned, but looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
Getting Repetitious, A Tiny Bit More Direct This Time Around, March 21, 2008
Michael Scheuer
The author was not a “spook.” He was an analyst. Analysts do not work under cover and they very rarely if ever go in harm's way.
What I admire most about this author is that he kept his integrity, as did Dick Clarke. Both stand in sharp contrast to Tony Lake and Sandy Berger and Madeline Albright in the Clinton Administration, and Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and Condi Rice in the Bush Administration.
Folks have been reluctant to understand that from the first book by Anonymous, this author has been practically shouting from the rooftops:
BIN LADEN IS RIGHT. BIN LADEN HAS LIMITED OBJECTIVES.
The fact is that the US armed presence in the Middle East, first off remaining in Saudi Arabia, a violation of the promise Dick Cheney made, and second of all being loyal to the despotic, debauched Saudi “Royal” family that is consuming the national commonwealth at the expense of the people, are both legitimate grounds for any well-educated revolutionary and patriot to say ENOUGH.
I only give this book four stars because as right as the author is, the end of the book and its varied prescriptions are the only really new ground (from this author) and they are basically no more or less than any well-schooled PhD would tell you: put your own house in order, do no harm, support no despots, and mind your own business.
Bottom line: Bush is a village idiot with a semblance of integrity. Cheney is a nakely amoral war criminal who should be run out of town–he's not worth impeaching. The well-intentioned managers of the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the US Intelligence Community do not have a clue about how to create a long-term global strategy to create a prosperous world at peace. They are trapped in pyramidal organizations and have all–without exception–lost the ability to think for themselves. Thus does the Republic stagger to its demise.
Really great with disappointing ending, March 16, 2008
Chris Kuzneski
I agree with the thrust of the other reviewers, to wit, there is a lot of cleverness in this book, but ultimately it disappoints at the very end (GREAT book, the last page is a flop).
However, as I was desperate for a read at Fort Bragg this past week, and I read the book all the way through, it merits both a review and a passing comment.
First, the author has done his homework and also provides an epilog that points at several books I link to below. That raised him from three to four stars in my estimation. This was a great book right up to the end when it wimped out with a one-paragraph flop of a conclusion.
Second, I am persuaded that religions as now organized are a form of organized crime, and that we would all do better going with unitarian communitarian approaches in which we deal direct with God on a personal basis, and direct with one another on a community basis. With a handful of exceptions (Rabbi Lerner, Archbishop Tutu) most church “officials are in my view santimonious frauds, and any fictional book that helps portray that is inherently useful.
Book loses one star–perhaps unfairly–for not integrating secondary sources and using the *combination* of this extraordinary biography and the Brahimi Report and other core documents, to illuminate why the UN desperately needs a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN).
+ Sergio Vieira de Mello (henceforth SVM) spent forty-years as a UN gad-fly, and his resume of tens of short assignments interspersed with a handful of 2-3 year assignments is a testimony to all that is wrong–not with him, but rather–with UN recruitment, training, continuity of operations, and lack of decision support.
+ The book opens with the observation that Paul Bremer (the ultimate US dilettante who set us back five to ten years while losing tens of billions of dollars) refused most of SVM's suggestions, especially on setting timelines (the same ideas General Garner adopted before he was fired by Dick Cheney and replaced with Bremer). We are told his last words were “Oh shit” and I somehow doubt that.
+ Vague mandates were a constant problem (see Peacekeeping Intelligence: Emerging Concepts for the Future for a full discussion of why the Brahimi Report still needs to be implemented, so the mandate can be informed, the force configured based on ground truth, etc.)
+ UN got into “governing” for the first time in Kosovo, and was completely ill-equipped for the task.
+ SVM reflected with the author that the world was too big to ignore but too complex to manage quickly or cheaply. Later in the book he is cited as recognizing that the UN is so dysfunctional that governments work around it (while foundations beg for effective focal points for their giving totaling $500B a year), but that governments are not prone to support long term interests in eradicating the ten high level threats as lain out in A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
+ SVM was an impressive scholar. He finished first out of 198 at the Sorbonne in Philosophy. He did a Masters in moral philosophy (a tautological redundancy I would have thought) and then a doctoral in two levels, one in 1974 and one in 1985. It was here that he understood that governments are not adept at preventing crises nor as rebuilding failed societies.
– First level doctorate: “The Role of Philosophy in Contemporary History,” with key line “Not only has history ceased to feed philosophy, but philosophy no longer feeds history.”
+ He composed his speeches on hotel note pads, observing that if he could not fit his argument to a hotel pad, he probably did not know what he was trying to say.
+ At this point I have a note, overall a very good use of biography to offer a “sense” of the UN, but lacking in synthesis, recommendations, or secondary sources.
+ Early in the book and throughout, one senses that Lebanon is the UN's modern birthplace, and where it has been permanently hospitalized if not euthanized.
+ SVM is quoted as saying that constructive change required “a synthesis of utopia and realism.” I urge the reader to visit Earth Intelligence Network to see this being implemented.
+ Pages 87-89 provide a marvelous condemnation of satellite surveillance as a panacea. SPOT Image which does ten meter or 1:50,000 multispectral imagery, identified land “suitable for resettlement.” Actual ground inspection failed the satellite findings, which did not see the land mines or the malarial mosquitoes.
+ SVM valued local staff, actively cultivated their inputs regardless of rank or function, and he is described as having a keen eye for symbolism.
+ We learn from this book that UN “teams” are assembled in an ad hoc fashion reflecting the whims and past good relations of the ubber boss, and I for one recognized what chaos and discontinuity this represents for all elements of the UN System.
+ We learn that when the UN arrives the cost of everything skyrockets, not least because UN employees get $140 a day, which in the specific instance of Cambodia or Kosovo, I forget, was the average ANNUAL income for any given person. I point to William Shawcross's unforgettable Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict. Read my review of that book to see the relevance.
+ SVM proves clever in one instance, suggesting that smugglers not only be hired to get around a blockage against blankets, but that they be given dignity in the form of a UN consultant certificate. From many such accounts the author excels at painting a portrait of a complex and very intelligence UN official.
+ It is at this point that I check the index to discover that neither the word “information” nor the word “intelligence” nor the compound word “decision-support” appear.
+ The author cites SVM as saying that he was fed up with American bullying–I can certainly understand that–and that the hardest part of peacekeeping was internal peacekeeping (within the UN's dysfunctional family).
+ It is here I note: “At every turn: ‘We don't know; ‘We don't have the information; ‘We are too few to certify….'”
+ Then I see the golden nugget, on page 219, in his words: “We are so remarkably ill-informed. We go into a place, we have no intelligence, we don't understand the politics, and we can't identify the points of leverage. See the PKI book cited above, and also the forthcoming book, PEACE INTELLIGENCE: Assuring a Good Life for All, with a Foreword by MajGen Patrick Cammaert, who with this book and a decade of effort, got many at the UN to understand that Brahimi had it exactly right: intelligence is decision support using legal ethical open sources, and it has nothing to do with espionage. The raw book is at OSS.Net/Peace, just add the www. at the beginning.
+ The book continues with many vignettes where the UN elements are uninformed, therefore they do poor planning (lousy mandates, crummy force structures, no tactical combat charts for landing zones, etc) and hence they are often over-whelmed.
+ SVM saw a need for and proposed that the UN address the constant law enforcement gap by maintaining a roster of pre-trained and available multinational police, judges, lawyers, and prosecutors. See Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security, my review includes notice of the fact that most UN “police,” e.g. those from Nigeria, can neither read nor drive.
+ We learn that SVM was acutely aware of how the UN's reputation for competence plummeted in the 1990's and how he learned in East Timor was that Legitimacy was Performance Based. As a side note, when East Timor went down I led one of 40 different efforts to answer the same three questions: 1) where are the bodies; 2) where can we land; and 3) who is is coming when, and what are they bringing. That was when I realized the need for a Multinational Decision-Support Center. On legitimacy, see The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
+ The book comes to a close with several useful notes.
– Law and order gap a constant recurring theme.
– SVR saw Iraq as a peer nation meriting respect rather than patronizing from the US
– Excellent discussion of the days leading up to the attack on the UN headquarters; to the dismissal by the US of all UN requests for information or security, and the realization, too late after the attack on the Jordanian embassy, that the UN HQ was a “soft target.”
– KUDOS to LtCol John Curran, whose foresight and rehearsal to include identification of all relevant helicopter med-evac landing zones, ensured that no one died for lack of very rapid medical evacuation. I certainly hope the UN put him for a Legion of Merit, at the very least.
Best Available Primer for Third Party, March 9, 2008
Douglas Schoen
Edit of 1 July 2008 to change transpartisan to non-partisan, add flyleaf notes from second reading, and delete observations found wanting by Amazon visitors.
Following my fly-leaf notes are a few observations, cut in half from my earlier review.
+ 75% of American voters are dissatisfied with the way things are going and generally do not trust either the political parties or the federal government–misery is at an all time high as is distrust
+ Voters “crave” real solutions
+ The time is right for a third party ticket, and the NYC race of Mayor Bloomberg in 2005 is the model
+ 3 out of 5 voters dislike BOTH parties
+ 61% feel they are not living the American dream
+ Being “on message” does not cut it–interaction and authentic tough focus on issues is demanded
+ Non-partisan solutions, with common sense, addressing tough problems, are demanded
+ Democracy in a crisis because the system itself lacks credibility (both political and federal)
+ Governor Schwarzenegger is on the right track
+ Half of all registered voters thing a 3rd party is a good idea
+ Restless & Anxious Moderates (RAM) are the swing vote
+ Fiscla discipline with a balanced budget, and being in touch with voter values, essential
+ Top two reasons people are Independents are both ANTI-PARTY: vote issues and candidate, not party
+ Parties are polarized, people are not
+ Need new fresh blood, open minds
+ 3rd parties are *not* odd man out, have a rich history
+ Ballot access is critical, needs 800,000 signatures
+ If not already done for the following states by today (1 July 2008), they are off the books: Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Maine, Pennsylovania, Delaware (because of registration deadlines)
+ Internet blogging, YouTube, and texting (as well as ads to cell phones) have changed the dynamic
+ Democratic dirty tricks against Nader detailed (I am personally aghast–like Rove on McCain)
+ Nonpartisan Citizens Union could be a group to watch (see also Reuniting America)
+ Citing David Colarusso to Newsweek: “Web 2.0 has the potential to actually compel candidates to be genuine (page 141)
+ Independent must craft authentic grassroots citizen-based movement, field candidates for governor
+ Colin Powell is strongest candidate (author may not know Mrs. Powell has demanded, and received, a promise never to run), followed by Mike Bloomberg (I favor Powell back as Secretary of State, with his integrity this time)
+ Win or lose, a solid Independent candidacy will be able to influence the debate as well as the election (in the Electoral College, or in the House of Representatives) and lead a body of opinion thereafter.
FACT: Dick Cheney hijacked the White House and no one is willing to hold him accountable. BOTH the Democratic floormats and the Republican foot soldiers should be run out of office. I have no wish to impeach Dick Cheney. He simply needs to be removed from office and never again allowed to betray the public trust.
FACT: Congress abdicated its Article 1 responsibilities, a sin for which Al Gore especially culpable in failing to support the McKinney House resolution to re-do Florida. Every one of these folks merits an independent challenge.
In my view, Mike Bloomberg is the only truly credible independent, see my review of his own book, Bloomberg by Bloomberg. If I had one minute with Mike Bloomberg, this is what I would say:
1) Win or lose, you can *be* the catalyst for creating an “open books” alternative government at all levels
2) $20 each from 25 million Americans buys our government back, make it a subscription and we can migrate the new system to the rest of the world
3) A nonpartisan coalition sunshine cabinet, each person leading thousands of citizen wisdom councils focused on each Cabinet's respective areas of concern, will change the debate and inform America overnight
4) A balanced budget online, where everyone can debate and then see aggregated differences by zip code and party affiliation (anonymous otherwise) will enable strong leadership.
That's it. All we need is a really rich guy willing to stake the new system (Perot did not), be authentic, and LISTEN.
Mixed Feelings–Mix of Brilliance and Gobbly-Gook, March 8, 2008
Lance H. Gunderson
On balance, Resilience and the Behavior of Large-Scale Systems (Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) Series) is the better book but this one is the thicker heavier more math-laden pretender–the problem is they have their own citation cabal, and while the bibliography is much broader and deeper than the above recommended book, there are too many gaps and an excessive reliance on obscure formulas that I have learned over time tend to be smoke for “I don't really know but if I did, this is the formula.
Also published in 2002, also with 20 contributors, this book lost me on the math. As someone who watched political science self-destruct in the 1970's when “comparative statistics” replaced field work, foreign language competency, and actual historical and cultural understanding, and a real-world intelligence professional, I'd listen to these folks, but I would never, ever let them actually manage the totality.
The book is the outcome of a three year effort, the Resilience Network as they called themselves, and there are some definite gems in this book, but it is a rough beginning. Among other things, it tries to model simplicity instead of complexity, and continue to miss the important of true cost transparency as the product and service end-user point of sale level, and real-time science that cannot be manipulated by any one country or organization (Exxon did NOT make $40 billion in profit this year–that is a fraction of the externalized costs, roughly $12 against the future for every $3 paid at the pump–that level of public intelligence in the public interest in missing from this book).
Page 7, “Observation: In every example of crisis and regional development we have studied, both the natural system and the economic components can be explained by a small set of variables and critical processes.” This rang all of my alarm bells. If I did not have total respect for what the authors and funders are trying to do, that sentence alone would have put this book firmly into my idiocy pile.
I just do not see in this book the kind of understanding of the ten high-level threats to humanity interaction with one another, such as can be seen free online or bought via Amazon, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, nor do these distinguished practitioners of their own little “club” see the strategic coherence of identifying ten core policies from Agriculture to Water that must be harmonized at every budget level, nor the irrelevance of anything we do unless we can persuade the ten demographic challengers with an EarthGame online that delivers real-time science and near-real-time cost-benefit analysis.
I find several of the authors to be a bit too cavalier in their dismissal of the contributions of economists, ecologists, and others.
Theories of change and next cycles are useful. Concepts of cascading change and collapsing panarchies are good. Log number of people in Figure 4.1 is very good.
In discussing adaptive response to change these learned scholars appear to have no clue of what is possible in delivering neighborhood level granularity of data for online social deliberation and models for gaming. There are early light references to deliberative democracy, but right now these folks have models in search of data in search of players. I did like the discussion of the larger model for levels of discourse, but WikiCalc and EarthGame are a decade ahead of this book's contents (which I hasten to add, was started in 1998 and published in 2002).
Table 11-1 on page 310 was so useful I list its row descriptors here, Factors and Adaptation and Possible Effect on Resilience (the latter not replicated here.
Factors:
Biota
Diversity-spacial
Diversity-production strategies
Energy sources
External resources
Mental models
Population structure
Savings
Scale
Technology
This is no where near the 10-12-8 model at Earth Intelligence Network, but I see real value here, and the need for a cross-fertilization. The fatal flaw in this book is that they confuse the failure of expertise with the failure of democracy–if we can achieve electoral reform and eliminate the corruption inherent in most governments, and certainly that of the US government which is broken and “running on empty” while every incumbent sells their constituents out to their party or special interests, it would be possible to connect data, change detection, alternative scenario depiction, and deliberative democracy at the zip code level.
Gilberto Gallopin, Planning for Resilience, is alone worth the price of the book, in combination with above and the closing summary, which is also a real value. My final note: too much gobbly-gook (to which I would add, “and no clue how intelligence-policy-budget connections are made and broken.
The key to eradicating the ten high level threats to humanity, among which environmental degradation is number three after poverty and infectious disease, is not better science–it is better democracy, participatory democracy, combined with moral capitalism. Below are a few titles to help make this point.
These 20 contributors are all part of a future solution, but they cannot be allowed to drive the bus.
Endorse Retired Reader's Review, Adding Images and Links, March 27, 2008
