October 8, 2006
Sunday morning news blogging ::
politics — tagged congress, environment, legal, newsblogging, politics and sustainability
11:08 am
Now that I live without a television, my Sunday mornings are usually spent reading news sources and political blogs rather than idly worshipping the institution of Sunday morning punditry. So with that, let me start what I hope to be an ongoing tradition here at The Pages Within: Sunday morning news blogging. With that, two interesting articles worthy of reading.
The first is an LA Times piece on the products allowed into US markets that other countries ban. At the top of the list is Chinese-produced plywood coated in formaldehyde, which incidentally the Chinese government has banned in its own country. The lack of regulation in the US, however, has created two separate camps of corporations—one that is self-regulating, and the other that chooses to take advantage of the lack of health regulations in this country. The self-regulating companies instead “comply with EU standards, the most stringent chemical laws in the world.”
“We don’t operate to different standards in different parts of the globe, regardless of differing environmental standards,” said John Frey, manager of corporate environmental strategies at Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard.
Those companies that choose to adhere only to the minimal US regulations have a predictable argument:
[T]heir products have undergone rigorous reviews in the United States and are not only legal here but safe. They say some governments, particularly the EU, have overreacted and banned chemicals with little or no evidence of a human health threat.
Similar to this case, his book Collapse Jared Diamond contrasts the business practices of two oil companies, and talks about how one company—Chevron—discovered it was better to self-regulate, setting the bar higher than the law necessarily requires, both because taking precautions is always cheaper than dealing with a disaster, and because, like it or not, the tendency of government is to implement more stringent health and safety requirements. So it’s good to be ready for it.
The second article is a slightly more self-explanatory piece in Slate about Congress’ use of the language of addiction. You might not have thought that the Foley scandal and the passage of the (likely unconstitutional) detainee bill are related, but apparently they are.
September 6, 2006
Collapse by Jared Diamond ::
books — tagged books, civilization, energy, environment, history and sustainability
9:37 pm
So in his book Collapse, Jared Diamond is back, and is just as thorough and expansive in his writing as he was in his previous work, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Only this time around, he focuses on how societies collapse rather than how they grow and flourish. Although reading the book takes a lot of work—I took about a month and a half to read it, while studying for the bar and reading other books—reading it is definitely well worth the effort. Not only does Jared Diamond once again forge a unique path when trying to explain the phenomenon of collapsing societies, he does a great job of speaking authoritatively, backing up all of his assertions with solid research and compelling stories of how societies decide to either work to preserve their resources and protect their environment or forge ahead with unsustainable lifestyles that ultimately result their demise.
Jared Diamond focuses first on a set of historical societies, including the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi, the Greenland Norse, and describes the mistakes those societies made that, after they went uncorrected, led to their destruction. Those decisions included mass deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, and—interestingly—a strange compulsion for certain societies to want to preserve an “old way” of living that was completely incompatible with their new environment. With regard to that last decision, an example that stuck out in my mind were the Greenland Norse, who brought the Norse way of living, the Norse form of agriculture, with them when they attempted to set up a society in Greenland. They found it impossible to sustain such a lifestyle there, and refused to adopt any of the ways of life of the Inuit people already inhabiting the island, even though those people had (slightly) more success in surviving in the inhospitable environment. In each of these examples, it appeared that the ancient societies were faced with a choice of either continuing their course of action, or making fundamental changes in their collective behavior, which could ultimately avert disaster. In many cases, the societies ultimately chose the former, which resulted in their society’s, well, collapse.
Diamond also discusses examples of societies that made decisions that ultimately allowed the socity to continue on and prosper. One example was Japan, which faced a substantial deforestation problem at one point in its history, but which is now one of the most heavily forested industrialized countries in the world, because of what Diamond describes as “top-down” decision making. As the name implies, there was one governing body that made the central decision to protect the country’s forests. Another option that Diamond discusses is the more bottom-up or collective approach to problem solving, which I personally found more attractive (I am, after all, a Vermonter at heart), which has also proven to be historically effective in preserving societies.
Ultimately, all of this discussion of historical societies then turns to a discussion of modern examples of societies that faced the same types of decisions those historical societies did. These modern examples had very similar outcomes, only with modern socities the stakes are always much higher—mostly because, unlike the ancient societies, countries no longer live or die in isolation. Because of globalization, the bad decisions that any single nation makes will ultimately have an effect on the broader global community. This is why the book is ultimately so important. If the human race is going to continue, the individual choices that not only individuals and communities, but entire nations, make will have a profound effect on the ultimate survival of humanity.
May 31, 2006
Review: Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen ::
books — tagged books, environment, fiction, Jonathan Franzen, love story, Massachusetts and Somerville
8:47 pm
I neglected to mention that two weeks ago I read my first post-JD novel. And I must say that Strong Motion was a great way to get into recreational reading, even if my foray was cut short by studying for the Vermont Bar.
But seriously: what a great book. Before writing this, I went back to check my review of The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen’s other, perhaps better-known book. And although it seems from that review that I enjoyed it much more than I remember, I have to say that Strong Motion was even better. In addition to the complicated characters and emotionally intense personal narratives, this book has a much more plot-centered structure, which I have grown to appreciate more as I’ve gotten older. Not only that, but the plot is particularly compelling: a corporation’s dumping of toxic chemicals into a four-mile deep shaft in Peabody, Massachussetts leads to earthquakes throughout the greater Boston area. So in addition to having the characters drive me ever forward in reading the story, I also had an impending environmental disaster to add to the tension. In the end, I didn’t even question whether such a situation were actually not scientifically feasible.
Throughout my adult life, I have been searching for novels that most accurately describe what I consider to be the Generation X condition. Although no author could render that condition perfectly, Franzen does come up with a compelling narrative, combining loneliness, advancing technology, abortion politics, environmental degredation, overconsumption, and unregulated business into a cohesive story that constantly makes me say, “yeah, this is what life is really like.” And what’s particularly amazing is that Franzen wrote this book back in 1992. I only wish I’d taken the time to read this book sooner.
