One of 3 useful books,
Review: Menopause for Dummies [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)
4 Star, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design1 of 3 useful books, see my two-page memorandum, guys need to know this stuff!,
Review: Your Perfectly Pampered Menopause–Health, Beauty, and Lifestyle Advice for the Best Years of Your Life (Paperback)
4 Star, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design1 of 3 useful books, see my two-page memorandum–guys need to know this stuff!,
Review: New World New Mind–Moving Toward Conscious Evolution
5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Education (General), Education (Universities), Environment (Solutions), Future, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Public), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Philosophy, Priorities, Survival & Sustainment, Technology (Bio-Mimicry, Clean), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, ScarcityReview: Environment, Scarcity, and Violence.
4 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Culture, Research, Environment (Problems), History, Justice (Failure, Reform), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Survival & SustainmentThoughtful, General, Missing the Big Bang,
His book is effective in making the point, but very candidly, did not go the full distance that I was hoping for–he is, in a word, too general and the book lacks a single chapter that pulls it all together with very specific rankings of both the variables and the countries.
The general proposition is clear-cut: environmental scarcity has social effects that lead to violent conflict. However, the author takes a side road in exploring “human ingenuity” as an ameliorating factor, and while he makes reference to crass corporate and elitist carpet-bagging and the social structures of repression, he fails to draw out more fully and explicitly the inherent association between repressive corrupt regimes with extreme concentrations of wealth and power, scarcity, and violence.
For myself, I found two gems within this book: the first, a passing comment on the crucial role that unfettered urbanization plays in exacerbating scarcity and all that comes with it (migration, disease, crime); the second, the author's prescriptive emphasis, extremely importance, on the prevention of scarcity rather than adaptation or amelioration of scarcity.
The endnotes would have been more useful as footnotes but are quite good. The bibliography and index are four star rather than five star, and I was quite disappointed to not have a single page about the author, nor a consolidated bibliography of his many signal contribution over time in the form of articles and lectures.
Review: The Skeptical Environmentalist–Measuring the Real State of the World
5 Star, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Misinformation & Propaganda, Nature, Diet, Memetics, DesignBjorn Lomborg
UPDATED 6 Oct 09 to upgrade to five stars and add links that comprise an apology of sorts. The more I read the less I know, and the more I appreciate the absolute essentiality of getting all points of view face to face before a citizen's wisdom council. New links that complement this book:
The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity
Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death
The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy
At root, Lomborg is a disciple and blind follower of the paradigm best articulated by Julian Simon, who has himself been discredited here and there by well-educated environmentalists. Lomborg's professionalism and devotion to data are not questioned here–one either shares his paradigm or one does not. It merits comment that there are now several web sites, one of them in Denmark founded by his own colleagues, dedicated to exposing the flawed assumptions and analysis that went into this corporately attractive politically-biased treatise.
This is indeed a brilliant and powerful book, just as a nuclear explosion is brilliant and powerful–and very destructive. However well-intentioned–and I do not question, even applaud, the author's intentions, what we have here is a rather scary combination of fragmentary analysis in depth, combined with a strong belief system that accepts as a starting point the concept that the earth is infinitely renewable and no matter what happens, that is a “natural” turn of events.
…
Just as 9-11 was necessary before a paradigm shift in national security concepts could be achieved (now we know that individuals without weapons can turn our own civilian instruments against us in really damaging ways), I fear that a major environmental–perhaps even a terrorist-environmental event, such as exploding train cars full of chlorine, will be required before citizens as a whole experience the paradigm shift and understand that a) we live in the closed system and b) the burden of proof must be precautionary rather than exploitative.
We are soiling our seed corn and the earth it grows in. Lomborg would have us believe that what we grow within such a paradigm is natural and good–no doubt he has an explanation for the dramatic drops in sperm counts around the world, the troubling increases in asthma across Canada and the East Coast and other nations reeling from antiquated coal-fueled power plants (most of them in the mid-West), and other documented demographic costs to uncontrolled liquidation of the earth.
I will end with one very significant concession to Lomborg and his adherents: this book, compelling in isolation, makes it clear that nothing less than the full application of the distributed intelligence of the citizenry on a 24/7 basis, will be sufficient to monitor, evaluate, and comprehend the breadth and depth of our attacks on the earth. It is now clear to me that until we have a global web-based community of citizen observers able to enter data at the neighborhood level, using peer-to-peer computing power to analyze distributed data, that the citizens will continue to be at the mercy of corporate computers and political manipulation.
I strongly recommend this book, and Czech's book, as companion volumes framing a much higher level of data and debate that is now beginning.
Review: Protecting Public Health and the Environment–Implementing The Precautionary Principle
4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Science & Politics of Science, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution4.0 out of 5 stars On Target but Fragmented–Needs New Edition with Summary
June 2, 2001
Carolyn Raffensperger (Editor), Joel Tickner (Editor), Wes Jackson (Foreword)
This is the second best of several books on environmental policy I have reviewed, and it merits careful scrutiny in part because it brings together a number of expert authors and there is in essence “something for everyone” in this edited work. What is lacks, though, is a good summary chapter that lists how the “precautionary principle” should be applied across each of the top ten environmental areas of concern–something that could circulate more easily than the book, and perhaps have a beneficial policy impact at the local, state, and national levels–and I suggest this because the meat of the book is good, it needs an executive summary.
The chapter that was most meaningful to me, the one that I think needs to be migrated into business education, international affairs education, science & technology policy education, is by Gordon K. Durnil, Chapter 16, and it deal with “How Much Information Do We Need Before Exercising Precaution.” This is a brilliant piece of work that dissects our current environmental policy information collection, processing, and analysis system, and finds it very deceptive, disingenuous, and consequently seriously flawed.
For the best on the environment, read Pandora's Poison. For the best on public health, read Betrayal of Trust. For a very fine cross-over book that has good chapters from various good people, this is the book to buy and enjoy.