Fundamental Reference from 1970's When Government Betrayal of the Public Trust Began,
October 11, 2008
Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Denniss Meadows
Although there are those who remain in denial about the foresight and wisdom of this book, today we are left in no doubt: there *are* limits to growth, and those who refuse to accept such realities accelerate the demise of our planet while also ignoring the depradations upon the public of corporations, religions, crime families and networks, and the “states” whose officials they all bribe and subvert.
The good news is that an entire literature has developed from this one little book, and there is a growing public awareness–as well as growing financial and corporate awareness–of the urgency of harmonizing our human behavior with the larger Earth system of which we are a part.
I was actually expecting an Operating Manual. Although what I ended up with is a 136-page double-spaced “overview” by Buckminster Fuller, a sort of “history and future of the Earth in 5,000 words or less, bracketed by a *wonderful* introduction by grandchild Jamie Snyder, an index, a two-page resource guides, and some photos and illustrations including the Fuller Projections of the Earth.
First, the “core quote” that I can never seem to find when I need it:
OUR MISSION IS “To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” Inside front cover.
The introduction is a treat–I note “impressive” and appreciate the many insights that could only come from a grandchild of and lifelong apprentice to Buckminster Fuller.
Highlights for me:
Founder of Design Science, a company by that name is now led by Medard Gabel who served as his #2 for so long. I just attended one of their summer laboratories and was blown away by the creativity and insights. It is a life-changing experience for those with a passion for Earth.
He imagined an inventory of global data. I am just now coming into contact with all of this great man's ideas, but my third book, Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time, also online at the Strategic Studies Institute in very short monograph form, is totally in harmony with this man's vision for a global inventory of global data.
“Sovereignness” was for him a ridiculous idea, and a much later work out of Cambridge agrees, Philip Allot tells us the Treaty of Westphalia was a huge wrong turn in his book The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.
“Great Pirates” that mastered the oceans as the means of linking far-flung lands with diversity of offerings was the beginning of global commerce and also the beginning of the separation between globalists who knew the whole, and specialists whom Buckminster Fuller scathingly describes as an advanced form of slave.
He was frustrated with the phrases “sunrise” and sunset” as they are inaccurate, and finally settled for “sunsight” and “suneclipse” to more properly describe the fact that it is the Earth that is moving around the sun, not the other way around.
In 1927 he concluded that it is possible for forecast with some accuracy 25 years in advance, and I find this remarkably consist with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's view that it takes 25 years to move the beast–see for instance Miles to Go: A Personal History of Social Policy.
He has an excellent discussion of the failure of politics and the ignorance of kings and courtiers, noting that our core problem is that everyone over-estimates the cost of doing good and under-estimates the cost of doing bad, i.e. we will fund war but not peace.
He described how World War I killed off the Great Pirates and introduces a competition among scientists empowered by war, politicians, and religions. He says the Great Pirates, accustomed to the physical challenges, could not comprehend the electromagnetic spectrum.
He states that man's challenge is to comprehend the metaphysical whole, and much of the book is focused on the fact, in his view, that computers are the salvation of mankind in that they can take over all the automaton work, and free man to think, experiment, and innovate. He is particularly forceful in his view that unemployed people should be given academic scholarships, not have to worry about food or shelter, and unleash their innovation. I am reminded of Barry Carter's Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era as well as Thomas Stewart's The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization.
There is a fascinating discussion of two disconnected scholars, one studying the extinction of human groups, the other the extinction of animal species, and when someone brings them together, they discover that precisely the same cause applied to both: over-specialization and a loss of diversity.
Synergy is the uniqueness of the whole, unpredictable from the sum of the parts or any part individually.
On page 87 he forecasts in 1969 when this book was first published, both the Bush and the Obama Administration's ease in finding trillions for war and the economic crisis, while refusing to recognize that we must address the needs of the “have nots” or be in eternal war. I quote:
“The adequately macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive solutions to any and all problems never cost too much.”
I agree. I drove to Des Moines and got a memo under Obama's hotel door recommending that he open up to all those not represented by the two party crime family, and also providing him with the strategic analytic model developed by the Earth Intelligence Network. Obviously he did not attend, and today he is a pale reflection of Bush. See the images I have loaded, and Obama: The Postmodern Coup – Making of a Manchurian Candidate.
Early on he identified “information pollution” as co-equal to physical pollution, I am totally taken with this phrase (see my own illustration of “data pathologies” in the image above). I recognize that Buckminster Fuller was about feedback loops and the integrity of all the feedback loops, and this is one explanation for why US Presidents fail: they live in “closed circles” and are more or less “captive” and held hostage by their party and their advisor who fear and block all iconoclasts less they lose their parking spot at the White House.
Most interestingly, and consistent with the book I just read the other day, Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change (The Changing Face of War), he concludes that wars recycle industry and reinvigorate science, and concludes that every 25 years is about right for a “scorched earth” recycling of forces.
He observes that we must preserve our fossil fuels as the “battery” of our Spaceship Earth, and focus on creating our true “engine,” regenerative renewable life and energy.
I am astonished to have him explain why the Pacific coast of the US is so avant guarde and innovative (as well as loony). He states that the US has been a melting pot for centuries, and that the West Coast is where two completely different cultural and racial patterns integrated, one from Africa and the east, the other from the Pacific and the west.
I learn that he owned 54 cars in his lifetime, and kept leaving them at airports and forgetting when and where. He migrated to renting, and concluded that “possession” is burdensome.
EarthGame is a trademarked representation of the original work of Professor Medard Gabel. Visit his web site by clicking on his photographl, and read his overview of the EarthGame by clicking on the EIN seal.
Flagging this for update and questions to Sarah Palin, October 3, 2008
Lindsey Williams
With a tip of the hat to a commenter on my review of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. I have asked for the book to be reprinted and offered immediately, and believe that with or without the reprint, those who are in a position to ask questions of Sarah Palin should make this book the focus: what has she known about why, and what are the possibilities?
Incidentally, taking this book at face value, it helps explain McCain's genius in picking Palin, so as to roll out the “October surprise,” “solving” the energy crisis.
I look forward to buying and reading the updated book.
Conservative Capitalism is Maturing!, October 3, 2008
Gordon K. Durnil
As true conservatives start realizing that both parties are evil and both parties have been corrupt in both selling out to Wall Street and in mandating “party line” voting, the tide is turning in favor of common sense and what I have been calling “reality-based” policy and budgeting.
This author deserves very high marks, and I am disappointed that the book has not attracted any reviews at all. Published in 2001, this author was years ahead of the pack, and along with Governor Mitch Daniels, himself rather special as a former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), I am finding more and more reasons to look to the heartland for common sense.
5 for intent, 3 for immaculate conception, 4 on balance, September 29, 2008
Thomas L. Friedman
I was not going to buy this book, having become generally disenchanted with the journalists style of ignoring the past 10-20 years of pioneering work by others, and instead interviewing one's way toward an immaculate conception of the same stuff.
HOWEVER, I was won over by his appearance on television, his passion for going green, and his articulate summarization of complex ideas. If you read a great deal, the book is a fast read with way too much detail. If you do NOT read a lot, this is a 5 star book with a wealth of detail you will not find in any one place elsewhere, buy it, read it SLOWLY, and be all the better for it.
A few notes for my failing memory and those who follow my reviews:
1) Better than average index, indeed, quite good and a real pleasure.
2) President Reagan undid most of the energy conservation progress made in the 1970's, costing us the equivalent of everything we are so desperate to get now.
3) Denmark is an example of getting it right, and of energy policy producing jobs and savings and quality of life beyond most people's wildest imagination.
4) George Bush Junior blew it (but the author is careful not to mention Dick Cheney's obsession with secret meetings with Enron and Exxon to plot the invasion and occupation of Iraq). The new president chose deliberately–and the author is compelling in quoting the White House press person on this point–to continue cheap gas and profligate energy waste as an American birthright of sorts.
5) Cradle to Cradle and Divesity are hot now. Duh. I quelch my annoyance as not seeing any credit to Herman Daly or Paul Hawkin or Club or Rome or Limits to Growth and so on, because later in the book he discusses how localities can become Noahs and Arks, and I like this section very much.
7) Energy Internet, Where IT Meets ET is quite special and alone worth the price of the book for those of us that do read a great deal.
8) Innovation *is* happening, and I am extremely impressed by his account of how the US Army has been discovering the value of going green, for instance, using renewable energy to power remote outposts so as to dramatically reduce the need to truck fuel over roads, reducing both targets and costs for the entire force.
9) US Government has no energy policy, and the private sector desperately needs one if the private sector is to make the 30-50 year bets on nuclear, wind, solar, bacteria, biomass, and so on.
10) China has 106 billionaires, and the balance of the book on China, both its challenges and its potential to go green and not make our mistakes, is also very valuable and provides coverage I have not seen elsewhere.
I found a number of gifted turns of phrase in the book, and they helped to balance the verbal vomit of facts and figures stuffed into the book.
Here are two quotes that I consider worth highlighting:
“American energy policy today, says Peter Schwartz, chairman of Global Business Network, a strategic consulting firm, can be summed up as ‘Maximize demand, minimize supply, and mmake up the difference by buying as much as we can from the people who hate us the most.'” [Schwartz forgot to mention that we borrow the money with which we buy….] p. 80.
“All the human energy and talent is here [in the USA], ready to launch. Yes, it can go a long way on its own…[b]ut it will never go to the scale we need as long as our national energy policy remains so ad hoc, uncoordinated, inconsistent, and unsustained–so that the market never fully exploits our natural advantages.” p. 375
The author appears to ignore or not include the extreme greed and the predatory capitalism that characterizes the energy companies, for example, Exxon eternalizing $12 in costs to the public for every $4 in gas we buy [i.e. they did NOT make a $40 billion windfall profit this past year, they instead stole this money from the public now and in the future.]
Here are some books that I read before this one, and that I recommend very highly for those who wish to delve into the pioneering ideas of others. The author is himself a distiller and obsever, not a pioneer, but unlike his other books, on this one, I give him extra credit for being relevant, on target, and passionate in the most positive way.
Beyond 5 Stars–Inspirational, Valuable, Practical, September 27, 2008
Mike Oehler
This book is phenomenally wise, useful, easy to read, and plain inspiring. I picked it up this morning intending to get back to it tonight and ended up not putting it down at all.
I have bought and read a number of underground building books as well as log cabin books, and would sort them into three categories:
A Expensive log homes for the really rich
B Moderate earth-covered (not quite underground) homes for the middle
C This book, for those who truly want to integrate innovation and low cost with deep Earth comfort and resilience and all the good stuff that goes with it.
This book, in short, is in a class of its own. Most will notice that it was first offered in 1978. As the USA goes through a major financial crisis that proves nothing has changed–Wall Street and the two “parties” it has bought down to their lost souls are still here, still looting the commonwealth–this book proves that it is timeless.
There is indeed a great deal of land across this great country where one can still afford to “dig in,” and this could not be a better time to be thinking about renting what you have now in the close in fragile areas, and setting up alternative housing with adjacent land for a basic Life Garden.
As I went through each chapter I found the list of materials, the prices, the diagrams, and the text all coherent, concise, and totally “on target.” Black and white photographs throughout, and a handful of color photographs in the middle, round the book out.
The book ends by discreetly recommending a tape series on design as the key element for success, and one that professional architects generally overlook (as we are all learning, the “experts” in finance and other areas are really “credentialed” but NOT experts).
I LIKE THIS BOOK. As an afterthought, it is recommended by just about every major alternative living, green energy, and sanity outpost (Vermont, Oregon, Washington State) reviewer. This book is a “good deal” and inspiring to boot.
