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Wow, what a book! Craig Dilworth is not content just to rehash the standard anguish over the environment, but to show where our environmental problems really come from. They come from our very nature as a species.
This is not Malthusianism, but it is...more
Wow, what a book! Craig Dilworth is not content just to rehash the standard anguish over the environment, but to show where our environmental problems really come from. They come from our very nature as a species.
This is not Malthusianism, but it is related. It is a "generalized" Malthusianism which incorporates insights from Darwin (whom Malthus influenced) and to a lesser extent Marx. It is part of a new wave of scientific innovations in anthropology, archeology, and economics. The economics portion is represented by the school of "ecological economics" represented most prominently by Herman Daly.
Dilworth introduces and describes his "Vicious Circle Principle" (abbreviated "VCP"). Whenever humans are faced with shortages, instead of adapting to these shortages they come up with something. This can be a new technology, a new way of behaving, a new device, or whatever. The result of this technical tinkering is that -- it works! The shortages are alleviated and in fact a surplus is created. The result of this surplus is that population increases, creating new shortages, and we're back to square one. These shortages can be shortages of food, but do not have to be (thus this is not classic Malthus). This cycle continues until at some point all the earth's resources are exhausted. At that point -- well, that's where we are right now.
Dilworth further shows that the VCP is not some systemic consequence of modern capitalism but in fact is part of our nature as a species -- in fact, it predates our evolution as homo sapiens. He goes back to apes, protohominids, and Austrolopithecus (up to 7 millions ago) to show that this "tinkering" is part of our nature. It is part of our species' "karyotype," a term which he defines but which is hard to understand, and even after staring at the glossary definition and having read the entire book, I'm not sure I could explain it, but I think I have a pretty good idea.
The best part of the book is where he talks about human prehistory. Many years ago, I read Mark Nathan Cohen's book The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture, which deeply influenced me. Dilworth quotes Cohen a lot and clearly approves of his work, as well as of books such as Herman Daly's book Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications which deal with the same subject matter from the point of view of modern economics. It is this reasoning, stretching across multiple disciplines, which is the most convincing, and which convinces me that we are not just dealing with a political or an economic problem. We are dealing with a biological problem.
And what is really interesting is that this guy is a professor of philosophy. By truly delving into many different disciplines, he has done a lot to redeem the ideal of philosophy. This despite the fact that (as revealed in a YouTube video I found somewhere) he doesn't think very much of modern philosophy -- it's still stuck in the pointless analytic trap. He also doesn't think much of humanity's future, and he doesn't talk about what we can do to deal with our ecological predicament. Based on the same YouTube video, he thinks we are heading for extinction and won't be around much longer. But this is a small shortcoming in a book so clearly innovative in so many ways.
Thanks for writing this, Dr. Dilworth.(less)
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"The social phenomenon of economic growth is, thanks to the principle of the conservation of matter, nothing other than the physical phenomenon of increasing resource depletion."
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Craig Dilworth
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I read this book over four years ago, after watching the Discovery Channel DVD on the same subject. While the DVD is very good, this book fills in a lot of additional details that you don't pick up just from the DVD. They talk about the James ossuary...more
I read this book over four years ago, after watching the Discovery Channel DVD on the same subject. While the DVD is very good, this book fills in a lot of additional details that you don't pick up just from the DVD. They talk about the James ossuary, discovered separately in 2002 but now connected to the "Jesus Family Tomb" through the patina, which to me is actually one of the most convincing arguments in favor of the tomb's authenticity. The book just published, The Jesus Discovery: The New Archaeological Find That Reveals the Birth of Christianity now gives some additional interesting details about this tomb, in connection with another tomb discovered nearby with early Christian symbols.
The thing I like about this book is the awareness of the key controversies which surround the whole idea of a tomb of Jesus. They cut to the chase; it's pretty well written. To me, the Jesus tomb is quite plausible not because it is shocking but because it actually doesn't add that much to our knowledge, but confirms what we already knew. The main controversial implication is that Jesus had a son! The early Christians believed in the resurrection, but had a different concept than that of the orthodox. This book is well written and intelligent.(less)
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"The Jesus Discovery" is a follow-up to "The Jesus Family Tomb" (Jacobovici and Pellegrino). The current book is by James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici -- different authors, but still receiving a similar treatment, since Tabor was involved in the inves...more
"The Jesus Discovery" is a follow-up to "The Jesus Family Tomb" (Jacobovici and Pellegrino). The current book is by James Tabor and Simcha Jacobovici -- different authors, but still receiving a similar treatment, since Tabor was involved in the investigations in the earlier book. "The Jesus Discovery" is the tale of investigations of a tomb very near the original Talpiot tomb, which they call the "Patio tomb". The original Talpiot tomb is now termed the "Garden" tomb, but this second tomb is deemed the "Patio" tomb (because it's underneath a patio).
It's helpful, but not essential, to have already read the earlier book on the "Garden" tomb. It is well written and is quite accessible, while also going into some considerable depth to explain both the history of the whole controversy and explain the scholarship and research backing it up, so you get a review of all the evidence relating to their previous investigation of the Garden tomb. To cut to the chase, it appears that while the investigation of the Garden tomb suggested this may well have been the tomb of the historical Jesus and some of his family, the investigation of the Patio tomb essentially seals the case. In doing the investigation of the Patio tomb, the researchers did not actually do any physical excavation. The entire research is done by a camera manipulated by a long robot arm which was inserted into the tomb. So the tomb was, and remains, undisturbed.
What they find is a tomb with clearly Christian symbols speaking of and describing the resurrection. Very important here is the distinction which is made between the physical resuscitation of a corpse, and spiritual resurrection. A spiritual resurrection means the person's essence survives, even though their original body is dead and decaying. This is the original idea of resurrection envisioned by Paul and shared, ironically, by the Jewish Christians, who later became Paul's bitterest opponents in the early church.
The analogy given in the book is very convincing. Suppose that historians many centuries from now discover the graves of a George, John, and Paul. Could this be the Beatles? Well, the names were common. But then suppose that there is further identification of a nearby grave of a Ringo (an uncommon name) and that the father of one of them is also correctly identified on the gravestone. That's the analogy of the "Garden" tomb. But then suppose nearby we find a monument to the Beatles, celebrating their role in rock history. That's the analogy of the "Patio" tomb. Since both the Garden and the Patio tomb were probably owned by the same family, the evidence becomes very strong that this is the tomb of the Jesus known as the founder of Christianity.
One interesting feature is the treatment of the James ossuary, which they now think is not the "missing" 10th tomb, but rather is an 11th tomb, perhaps looted many centuries ago and just recently surfacing on the antiquities market. The patina of the tomb clearly matches that of other ossuaries in the Garden tomb.
The book clearly anticipates major objections, discusses Jesus' wife and children, as well as going over key objections to the thesis. So if you are curious about this and want to understand what the researchers have found from the horse's mouth, this book is indispensable.
One minor criticism: contrary to the author's suggestions, I do not think you can draw conclusions about the Essenes or their influence on Jesus, based on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls community may represent some Essenes, but there were evidently many different Essene communities, some with wildly different views, as Hippolytus (3rd century) says. The Essenes of Philo (a pacifist sect, which refused the use of slaves) are clearly very different from the Essenes of the Dead Sea Scrolls (a violent group believing in war and slavery). So before making grandiose suggestions about the Essenes and Jesus, we need to ask, "which Essenes?"(less)
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Oh God, do I have to read this? No. I refuse. I don't have time. I'm not angling to be the one to pick through the errors, and write the "definitive refutation." So this isn't a "refutation" of the book or even an indication that wheat may not, after...more
Oh God, do I have to read this? No. I refuse. I don't have time. I'm not angling to be the one to pick through the errors, and write the "definitive refutation." So this isn't a "refutation" of the book or even an indication that wheat may not, after all, contribute to the obesity problem.
Gluten intolerance and celiac disease are real, and they may be more widespread than people realize. I know some vegans who are gluten intolerant and there's even a blog, http://getoffgluten.blogspot.com/ which deals with vegans looking for alternatives to wheat. So I am not saying, "eat all the wheat you want!" by any means. But I have enough information to say that this is not a useful book, and here's why.
In the first chapter he says "vegetarians are fat." He also refers to a national trend to reduce fat and cholesterol and increase carbs. There is indeed a tendency to take in more carbs in the U. S., but this is highly misleading -- it's a trend towards greater consumption of junk food. The amount of fat, cholesterol, and "complex carbs" is actually pretty much the same. Secondly, it is just false that vegetarians are fat. I am a vegetarian (vegan in fact), am not gluten intolerant, and eat wheat every day. I am not fat, slightly underweight actually, and none of my veggie friends are fat. You cannot go to a vegetarian conference or event and immediately notice that vegans and vegetarians are generally not obese or overweight. This has also been documented in studies, also, but it's easier just to invite people to visit your friendly local vegetarian potluck or meetup and count the fat people.
He also criticizes "The China Study" based on some inane correlations published on the internet. He cites Denise Minger, but it's clear that the author doesn't understand the most basic ideas of statistics. One might be able to show a decisive correlation between colon cancer and TV viewing, but that doesn't establish causation; he's pulled out some superficial correlations and considers that a refutation of "The China Study." He also recommends using oils generously, including coconut oil (saturated fat city). He also recommends eating meat, eggs, and cheese "in unlimited quantities." The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition editorialized a few years ago than more than one egg per day could increase all-cause mortality by 40%.
At this point, it becomes apparent that he is really yet another Weston Price Foundation promoter. I suspect that this may be an attempt to revive the Atkins (high-protein, low carbs) diet, so that even after driving a stake through its heart, zombie-like, it rises from the grave to wreak havoc on the unwitting.
Even though there's probably a lot of good stuff in here on problems with wheat, you'll have to be an expert already to sort out the good from the bad. Given the fact that I can just open the book up, read the introduction and first chapter, look at the index, and immediately find a bunch of problems, indicates that I cannot read the rest of it with any assurance that he has a clue. So even though there may be a lot of good material in here, reading this book won't enlighten you. You'll still have to figure out this stuff somewhere else, then come back to the book, and sort through his argument.(less)
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I don't do a lot of fiction, but this is a good book for anyone interested in what resource depletion may be like in a future of "peak oil" (or similar human-induced disasters). It's similar to James Kunstler's "World Made by Hand" in that it details...more
I don't do a lot of fiction, but this is a good book for anyone interested in what resource depletion may be like in a future of "peak oil" (or similar human-induced disasters). It's similar to James Kunstler's "World Made by Hand" in that it details what the near future, after some human-induced disaster like disease or peak oil, might be like. The difference is that these are short stories, so the author creates a whole set of different worlds to explore, not just one. People will like, or dislike, different stories, but the whole thing is worth reading, just because we need to be trying to imagine or think about these things.
One thing I like is that she describes how things appear to individuals, rather than taking an omnipotent viewpoint. The reader is sometimes deliberately left in the dark about why the world has come to this state. The point is to describe how the apocalypse "feels" to people. Sometimes the date of the story is vague but in one case a story can be dated precisely to August 16, 2022, just about a decade from now. This ("Useless Things"), or the final story, were my favorites. To describe how apocalypse "feels" is the import of the story on the zombie apocalypse; it's not because McHugh foresees a possible future in which humans will need to fend off zombies, it's a story about us and how we react to unsavory events.
SPOILER ALERT: I found "Going to France" to be a very challenging story, basically surrealistic, and nothing really apocalyptic is ever referred to. The only sense I can make out of it is that this is a dream sequence (after all, flying is something that usually happens in dreams). This story is attractive but has puzzled a lot of people. While the zombie story (the very first story) was also challenging and made me think, it was sort of a turn-off that the main character was so violent. The final story "After the Apocalypse" was also nice, also made me think, about the ways that "apocalypse" arrives in the breakdown of social conventions into a more primitive level; even though no one gets physically hurt in this story, it just leaves you thinking that whatever disaster they have been fleeing from has "hit them" at the end. The story about the lost boy is similar in structure; it shows that "the apocalypse" is not just about bombs or millions of deaths, it's also about human relations. None of the stories had a really depressing or dysfunctional ending; the key characters are trooping on. So even when I didn't like the characters, or how the story came out, the author makes you think about things.
Many, many years ago I read a collection of science fiction short stories by Robert Heinlein called "The Green Hills of Earth." It had tales of exploring outer space. This collection reminds me of that collection, but oh how our ideas of the glorious future have changed.(less)
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There are some good things and bad things about this book. Generally, the newer you are to "simple living" discussions, the more useful this book would be. It is easy to read. However, there are some very serious shortcomings to the book and I wouldn...more
There are some good things and bad things about this book. Generally, the newer you are to "simple living" discussions, the more useful this book would be. It is easy to read. However, there are some very serious shortcomings to the book and I wouldn't recommend it except as an exercise to keep people on their toes. Here's a great discussion topic! "Someone says that they are interested in living more simply and wants to limit the number of things they own to 100 things. What problems can you see with this approach? Discuss."
The good stuff is that this guy is a pleasant, conversational writer. Even though I could tell right out of the gate that this wasn't going to be my favorite book (I was reading it for part of a book club), I kept going. Moreover, he is honest about the shortcomings of the challenge. Instead of counting each individual book he owns, for example, he just counts "his library" as one thing. Actually, I think that's fair; if I was doing this challenge and I had to count each individual book I own, I would have a "1100 thing challenge," with the first 1000 things being my books. So let's give the guy a break. But:
1. While he admits that defining a "thing" is problematic, I think that it's more than problematic. It renders the whole project unmanageable. Sure, count your library as one thing, and your underwear as one thing. But he doesn't count the things he shares with his family as separate "things." Dude. Think about it. If you still wanted to give it a go, I'd consider counting the sofa (or car or whatever else he shares with his family) as 1/5 of a thing (if you have 5 members of the family). But it's not "nothing."
2. This has nothing to do with wealth. Your 100 things could include a private jet, a sailboat, and 8 cars, and you'd still have 90 things to go. "100 things" is entirely a mental construct.
3. This has nothing to do with the environment, either. When you think about it, in our consumer society, it is often more complex to tread lightly on the earth than to consume. Compare the difficulty of driving your car to church (gas stations and repair shops all along your route) to the difficulty of riding your bicycle (taking your life in your hands by going out onto the street) or taking the bus (figuring out the schedule, bus doesn't run as often or at all on Sundays, etc.).
4. Vegetarianism is not mentioned; population is not mentioned.
There is another thing that I think that readers cannot help notice. As you read the book, it is apparent that he is, while not wealthy, at least very comfortable. He is also very well connected. The "100 thing challenge" apparently does not impinge on this lifestyle in the least. He may not be part of the top 1%, but it sounds like he is in the top 5% - 10%. That doesn't mean you can't live simply and be in this income category, but I'd at least be aware of the "wealth and connections" angle, and be aware that not everyone can live this way, and that maybe "simple living" has something to do with this problem.
And there is no attempt, at all, to connect simple living to the Christian faith which he professes. Whatever happened to Luke 14:33: "Whoever of you does not renounce everything that he has, cannot be my disciple"? How can he have produced Christian audio books and not be aware of the most obvious feature of the gospel of Jesus?
So, basically, because of his honesty and his writing style, I wouldn't rule out reading something else this guy wrote. But this isn't something I'd actually suggest anyone read. How can he claim to "get rid of almost everything"? How can you be a Christian (in a largely Christian country) and write a book on a simple living topic and not mention that Jesus, like, had something to say about this? How can you write about something connected to simple living and not mention wealth or the environment? In his next book, he might want to discuss these topics.(less)
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This is a tough book to review because basically, it depends on the audience. Generally, though, I like the book and agree with the thesis. Heinberg's book is right in all major respects, well-written, and important.
Please consider this a five-star...more
This is a tough book to review because basically, it depends on the audience. Generally, though, I like the book and agree with the thesis. Heinberg's book is right in all major respects, well-written, and important.
Please consider this a five-star review if you are asking yourself, "what's all this talk about 'peak oil'?" or if your last encounter with the idea of limits to the economy is dim memories of reading "The Limits to Growth" in the 1970's. On the other hand, if you regularly peruse the Peak Oil News (from ASPO-USA), the Energy Bulletin, the Oil Drum, the "The Crash Course," or Gail Tverberg's blog (http://ourfiniteworld.com/), you will find very little that you don't already know: two or three stars. Since I don't know who's going to read this review, I'm arbitrarily calling it four stars. I generally praise the book but have two specific criticisms over which I want to go into quite a bit of detail.
I fall in the category of a fairly knowledgeable reader and have pretty much heard this already. Economic growth is over. Heinberg argues that the "Limits to Growth" theories are essentially correct after all and looks at alternatives. There are two questions of detail, but important details, which are lacking in the book: how the post-growth economy will work, and how and what we will eat in this economy. I also have problems with Heinberg's research methods and and his rebuttal of his opponents (more about this below). But first, here's the two specific problems I see:
(1) A clear picture of how the post-growth economy is going to work is missing; we see themes, but it is not worked out in detail or even fully in outline. The last two chapters, chapters 6 and 7, do throw out some good ideas but this is not a comprehensive overview of the needed approaches. On the other hand, no one has really done this and it would be difficult; we really need a kind of popularization of the whole discipline of ecological economics. This book could have been that popularization, but Heinberg has focused his work just on the problem, more than the solution.
(LATE BREAKING FLASH: "Plenitude" by Juliet B. Schor may be this book. I haven't read it, but it's in our house and I'll get to it as soon as Kate finishes it. Here's the link: Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth)
(UPDATE 1/17/2012: "Plenitude" is quite interesting and adds some insights, but is not a popularization of how a post-growth economy would work. She is not entirely clear that we have hit the limits to growth.)
(2) Also missing is any serious mention of diet. Heinberg has told me personally that he has been a vegetarian for decades, but you can't tell it from his writings. There are only cursory references to diet, usually along the lines of brief platitudes like "we need to cut back on our meat consumption also." This is too bad; a critical change that we will need to make in our lifestyles as a result of the end of growth is a drastic reduction in meat consumption in the West.
I wish Heinberg would be more aggressive in his research. I've read a number of Richard Heinberg's books and I think I know how he researches and writes his books. They're all good: "The Party's Over," "Blackout," "Peak Everything," and "Powerdown" stand out. They tend to be a bit repetitive in their themes, but the themes are important and there aren't a lot of people putting stuff in print (as opposed to blogs) about this. Heinberg, I believe, finds a thesis, and looks at how others are defending it. "This is a defensible thesis," he says to himself, and investigates further. He looks at alternative points of view. He reaches a conclusion: "this is not just defensible, this is right, and important, too." And then he explains it to others.
This is good, but I think before one popularizes an idea we need to make sure it is really intellectually all there. Ecological economics, as a discipline, is not fully developed. So we both want to work out the key concepts in this discipline and simultaneously popularize them. Heinberg is not interested in coming up with his own ideas; as far as I can tell, he is fully occupied with defending other people's ideas. I think Heinberg is smarter than that and I'd like to see (in his blog or in a book or elsewhere) some of his thinking about things he doesn't understand. Sometimes things you don't understand turn out to be things that, well, you just don't understand that well. But other times, the reason YOU don't understand something is because NOBODY understands it.
Doesn't he see a vegetarian diet as an obvious answer to the whole problem of resource shortages? He should at least address the question of diet and tell us. I don't find the answers to questions of diet in "The Food and Farming Transition" (http://compassionatespirit.com/Keith-...). There has sometimes been a bias -- covert, or sometimes blatant -- against veganism in the energy descent community elsewhere (see my comments at http://compassionatespirit.com/Keith-...). From the other side, the vegan community has also largely ignored environmental questions, with a few exceptions such as Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang of "Livestock and Climate Change" fame, Jonathan Maxson of Permavegan fame, and Dawn Moncrieffe of "A Well-Fed World." Heinberg is ideally positioned to lead the way here, but alas, he isn't. I'm doing a lot of work on these issues myself, so if anyone is interested, let me know (keith "at" compassionatespirit "dot" com).
Another question of detail is how he answers objections to his thesis. There are six chapters, and chapters 4 and 5 stand out as the rebuttal. In the case of Chapter 4, it isn't clear that there are actual opponents within the economic community to which he is responding. Chapter 4 asks, won't substitution, efficiency, and innovation come to the rescue? Good question. But, are there any economists kaking these positions? I know that there are people like Julian Simon, and philosophers like Mark Sagoff ("Price, Principle, and the Environment"). But who are Heinberg's opponents here? Just a question. I get the impression that this holy Trinity of "substitution, efficiency, and innovation" is just an unexamined prejudice on the part of economists, rather than any coherent attempt to refute the idea of the limits to growth.
Chapter 5 tries to refute, in advance, any attempts to say that growth has returned just on the basis of one country or other experiencing growth, or describing the slight recovery from the Great Recession as "growth." That growth is increasing in one part of the world doesn't mean that growth has returned -- just that some economy is growing locally at someone else's expense, while the world as a whole goes downhill. And that a huge collapse followed by a slight uptake of indicators is not "growth" is also true. But to my mind it this deserves a paragraph or two at most. Isn't this obvious? Well, maybe not.
In conclusion, this is a great book and you should ignore all my critical comments and read it anyway. If you're a vegan you should read it because then you might have a clue why I am so concerned about the prospect of peak oil. If you're already well familiar with the limits to growth thesis and regularly attend ASPO-USA conventions, you should read it because you'll know what is being done to popularize and extend the whole thesis of an end to growth soon. And if you're clueless, after reading this book you'll have a clue.(less)
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This book is definitely worth reading, but is mistitled. It should be, "Miscellaneous Observations on Peak Oil by a Pretty Smart Guy Who Knows a Lot of Stuff."
I thought his discussion of Hubbert and how he was a bit lucky in his 1956 paper (though w...more
This book is definitely worth reading, but is mistitled. It should be, "Miscellaneous Observations on Peak Oil by a Pretty Smart Guy Who Knows a Lot of Stuff."
I thought his discussion of Hubbert and how he was a bit lucky in his 1956 paper (though within the range of reason) was interesting. The discussion of minerals was VERY interesting, and I gained a new insight into why some minerals were mined in ancient times (gold, copper, tin) while others were not really used until modern times (aluminum, magnesium). It has to do not so much with how rare the metal is but with how easily it can be separated from its ore.
However, about halfway through, I thought to myself, "where is this book going?" Once I realized that it was not building to some earth-shaking synthesis of all previously known geology, I achieved a state of inner peace.
However, while most of the book does not systematically defend it, his last sentences really nail it: "The biggest challenge to our intelligence is managing the transition from a growing economy and a growing population to a sustainable steady-state condition. If the world were flat, we would have unlimited resources an unlimited space for growth. The world is round."(less)
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4.29 avg rating — 7 ratings
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published
1983
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3 editions
4.67 avg rating — 3 ratings
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published
2000
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