I've begun reading his "Collapse" with an eye toward writing a kind of running commentary as I progress through this 560 page book.
Something that I had premonitions about, based on previous encounters with Diamond, is painfully obvious as I make my way through his chapter on Montana. This is a state that I have visited, as well as Alberta to the North, a province that shares many of Montana's ecological problems. Basically, Diamond tends to compartmentalize. In other words, he examines Montana's problems as a challenge to the state of Montana--as if you could build ecologically sustainable societies within the border of a single state.
For example, rather than obsessing about the environmental consequences of wheat farming, as he does, Diamond might consider just returning Montana to the status quo ante when Bison and other native flora and fauna as part of a general transformation of the Plains states. This seems beyond him.
He also has trouble thinking outside of the box on economic questions. For example, he is virtually tormented by the idea that the big mining companies will go out of business if they are forced to clean up after themselves. How else do we expect such companies to behave, he seems to plead with himself. They *have* to make profits.
This brings me to a connected point. I didn't know that Diamond has been the Director of World Wildlife Fund/USA since 1993. Here are some of the other members of the board of directors:
David Bonderman Principal, General Partner, and Founder Texas Pacific Group Fort Worth, Tex.
Pamela Daley Vice President, Corporate Business Development General Electric Fairfield, Conn.
Brenda S. Davis Vice President, Technical Resources Johnson & Johnson New Brunswick, N.J.
Lawrence H. Linden* Advisory Director Goldman Sachs New York, N.Y.
Peter Nadosy* Advisory Director Morgan Stanley Asset Management New York, N.Y.
Stephen M. Wolf Former Chairman US Airways, Inc. Arlington, Va.
This might explain his rather startling comments about oil companies in a salon.com interview:
Q: Is there an environmental award that is given to businesses that do well? Is Home Depot being recognized for what it's done?
A: They're recognized within the World Wildlife Fund, on whose board I sit. I don't know if the general public has an appreciation for what Home Depot is doing. The general public certainly does not have wide sympathy for what the oil companies are doing. And partly that's the result of history. And there still are oil spills; there's been a bad oil spill within the last two weeks. But you have to read the newspaper carefully. That oil spill was not a tanker belonging to ChevronTexaco or ExxonMobil; it was a tanker belonging to a private oil carrier, and it's the private carriers that are still using the single-hull tankers and are adhering to low standards. So they give the oil industry a bad name. I'm not saying that the oil industry is a saint; there are still big problems with oil industries operating in dictatorial countries, but the public should also understand the very high standards to which some oil companies are adhering.
Q: Like Chevron.
A: Like Chevron in Papua New Guinea. Now I can't swear that Chevron is being clean everywhere in the world, but I've talked with lots of Chevron employees who told me about how Chevron operates, for example, in Bahrain and Dubai and Kuwait, and it sounds, from what I'm told, that their standards there are as high as their standards in Papua New Guinea.
full: http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2005/01/08/jared_diamond/index1.html
Here's a take on the relationship between Chevron and WWF. It would appear that it would not be an overstatement to describe it as sordid:
The poor environmental reputation of the oil industry and the environmental significance of the area caused Chevron to take precautions. Will Frazier, former project director for environment, health and safety said in 1992, "We've tried to make this a model effort for development that is environmentally sound and socially responsible." The Kutubu development has indeed been billed a "green oil project" in several industry magazines by virtue of a pipeline that does not leak and the employment of professional environmentalists from the United States to work with the oil joint venture. The World Wildlife Fund-USA is party to a $3 million contract with Chevron to implement an "Integrated Conservation and Development Project" for the oil project area.
While the environmental merits of the WWF plan are open to debate, it is indisputable that Chevron values its ties with WWF for the credibility they lend to an environmentally questionable operation. A leaked 1993 confidential evaluation of the potential impacts of a Kutubu oil spill and the clean-up capacity of the joint venture, written after a practice exercise conducted by the joint-venture partners, expressed concern "as to whether a policy exists to control media and interest groups (Greenpeace) at Kopi area should a spill of this magnitude occur." Other documents concluded that the joint venture partners could rest easy, however, because "WWF will act as a buffer for the joint venture against environmentally damaging activities in the region, and against international environmental criticism."
full: http://www.moles.org/ProjectUnderground/motherlode/chevron/png.html
Louis Proyect Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
