Collapse

Ben and Mare Giudice were here last night and I discovered that Ben actually reads our blog! We're very honored. Anyhow, hearing about Ben's research on endocrine disruptors and invasive species at UC Davis, getting an email from Joe about consumption factors, and finishing "Collapse" by Jared Diamond have me thinking about the environment...

For the past six months I've been reading "Collapse" by Jared Diamond but I finally finished it. Joe sent me a link to this NYT editorial by Diamond. I wrote Joe back; my email is a concise statement of my thoughts on the book:

"That article was sort of a condensed version of 'Collapse', which I would recommend you read. It gets a bit boring after a while but the last section (finding important lessons for our society and giving some policy/personal action recommendations) is pretty great.

What stuck out to me in this article was the zero sum analysis. Diamond doesn't take into account how new ideas will help us use resources more efficiently. In his book he does mention the innovation factor but also talks about unintended environmental consequences of most innovations. I do like his point that much of our resource consumption does not contribute to 'quality of life' (although QOL is an admittedly difficult thing to define)."

By the way, wasn't it great to see Lloyd, Mike, Chad, and Jake go out on a good note on Jan 1? Hail to the Victors! I'm hoping that OSU will beat LSU in a few days - then I can argue a bit with SEC fans that the Big Ten is a conference of comparable quality (at least at the top).