5 comments about Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World.

1. I really liked this book for telling me about things that I haden't thought of before, although I thought myself to be an evironmentally aware person. Some of the statistics are breathtaking. Facts are supported by visuals and an attractive layout. As a general reader with no specific education in the environmental science field, it was a bit dry for me at times, but well worth the read. I made lasting changes in my every day life due to the book, and can't get the statistics about plastic bottles and only small amounts of the actually recyclables making it to a "next life" beyond the garbage dump out of my head. Quite life changing.



2. If every person in America understood the energy, chemicals, natural resources and money that went into creating packages, it's likely our consumption habits would dramatically change. Imhoff does a great job of detailing the hazards and challenges of packaging, without being preachy - he lets the statistics and facts tell the story. This book informs, amazes, and startles the reader.



3. This book is excellent and a very easy read. It does a great job of breaking down the different products and their impact on the environment. There are great examples of companies that are doing their part to help reduce the negative impact on the environment.



4. There are environmental causes that stir the emotions--the plight of whales and baby seals, the fate of redwoods, or the metastasis of suburbia. But Daniel Imhoff would point out that the most pervasive and fastest-growing environmental problem is so commonplace it's invisible: packaging. Styrofoam containers from a fast-food meal, the anti-theft blister packaging that encapsulates retail electronics, or the common aluminum can and plastic bottle are all part of a waste stream that composes some 300 pounds of garbage per person per year, headed straight from the shelf to the landfill.
   Apparently mindful of the fact you can read only so much about polystyrene peanuts and polyethylene bottles, Imhoff has organized his book into punchy little essays, short case studies, and colorful charts that survey the extent of the packaging problem, along with a range of solutions that some companies are trying.
   
   Imhoff points out that packaging is increasingly the product itself--a method corporations use to market feelings of familiarity, uniformity, or purity. To illustrate, he would have you consider evolution of the egg: It is nature's perfect packaged food source, with its container, the shell, being durable yet entirely biodegradable. For years, eggs came in molded paper pulp. Now the most expensive of them frequently come in molded plastic trays, derived from petroleum products. (Nature's Promise, which markets eco-friendly eggs, requests on its tray that you recycle the plastic packaging, even though few municipalities take such containers.) And lately eggs come as pre-scrambled "pasteurized real egg product," in capped cartons at premium prices--far removed from the simple egg. The packaging will be with us decades, maybe eons, after the egg has been cracked, scrambled, and eaten.
   
   As its title implies, packaging choices for environmentalists are dilemmas, with few simple solutions: Would you rather bag your groceries in the products of clear-cut forests or petroleum? He holds up companies such as Aveda, the Minneapolis-based cosmetics company, as pioneers. Aveda worked to eliminate toxic or less-recyclable plastics from its packaging line, and strove for 100 percent recycled plastics in its containers, risking profit margins in the process. Other companies are experimenting with novel products, such as biodegradable plastics.
   
   But even these are merely "less bad" solutions in a world full of packaging waste. Imhoff concedes that packaging offers a good deal of convenience and that making upright choices involves giving up some of that convenience. He recommends carrying a mug and a reusable water bottle, eating in instead of getting takeout, buying in bulk (which reduces packaging waste), buying from local farmers and farmers' markets, and toting around cloth bags. When the cashier asks the question in the book's title, Imhoff suggests, hand over a cloth bag and say, "Neither."



5. Since innovative thinking on ways to balance packaging and the environment is always in short supply, I was curious to see if Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World by Daniel Imhoff would contribute something new. Though the book did indeed start out as a polemic against packaging, it quickly changed into a more productive--and provocative--course.
   
   Imhoff, Executive Director of Watershed Media, reports on what is realistically possible in terms of the latest technology, from a new generation of zero-effluent mini-mills to the latest thinking in natural capitalism, eco-intelligence, design, and biomimicry, all as applied to packaging. (The biomimicry section alone will spur many ideas for the creative package designer.) Imhoff also covers the newest generation of bioplastics from a variety of suppliers, reviewing pros and cons of each material. Case studies show green packaging done right.
   
   Also included: a comprehensive checklist for assessing the environmental impact of packaging before the designer makes a selection decision. The list includes attributes designers should keep in mind when selecting materials.
   This is a well-written, fairly reported, attractively put-together book that deserves a place on the bookshelf of any designer or materials specifier. The 168-page trade paperback is available for $16.95.
   
   Capsule review by Dave Newcorn, Vice President New Media, Summit Electronic Media.

5 comments about Sustainable Ethanol: Biofuels, Biorefineries, Cellulosic Biomass, Flex-fuel Vehicles, and Sustainable Farming for Energy Independence.

1. The people in Washington have decided that growing corn to produce ethanol as a partial means to energy independence is consistent with national security goals. Consequently ethanol production, like domestic oil production receives government subsidies. Some may call it pork-barrel legislation and others may call it a "scam." Robert Bryce, in his recently published Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusion of Energy Independence (2008), actually entitles his chapter on ethanol, "The Ethanol Scam." Bryce's point is that ethanol production is not energy efficient and is not sustainable. Furthermore it is posited that we should be using our cropland to grow food for a hungry world that is likely to get hungrier.
   
   Jeffrey Goettemoeller and Adrian Goettemoeller argue in this technical but readable book that ethanol production can be made energy efficient and sustainable. They counter the cropland for food argument by noting that only the carbohydrate component of the corn kernel is used to produce ethanol, adding that too much corn is now grown for food in America to the detriment of farmers elsewhere who cannot compete in the marketplace with cheap American corn. Consequently, our abundance puts small foreign farmers out of business and ironically creates food shortages. See pages 86-87 for the full argument.
   
   As to the viability of ethanol for use in our vehicles, the authors contend that, although ethanol is only about two-thirds as energy rich as gasoline, it is nonetheless necessary since we will soon or late run out of gasoline. Furthermore, today's combustion engines can be altered to run more efficiently on ethanol than currently is the case. (See "flex fuel" vehicles.) Additionally, ethanol is valuable since burning it reduces vehicular pollution. Finally, ethanol is a necessary replacement for MTBE which here in California has been phased out due to its tendency to pollute underground water supplies.
   
   The book begins with a brief but interesting history of ethanol production, how it was used in lamps before electricity, and how it was legislated against during Prohibition. They follow that with a consideration of oil production and consumption and the prospects for the return of cheap oil. They go on to tout the economic and security benefits of ethanol while considering the environmental impact. Fuel economy and the various gasoline/ethanol blends are discussed and how ethanol might improve fuel economy. There's a chapter on ethanol production from such feedstocks as sorghum, sugar, artichokes, and food waste. Cellulosic ethanol is considered. They close by urging conservation and more efficient use of fuel.
   
   My personal opinion is that ethanol is one of many stop-gap measures we will be taking during the long, slow withdrawal from fossil fuels. In the final analysis, unless there are some major breakthroughs in more efficient ways to capture solar energy and the development of more efficient batteries to store energy, we will not be able to support the six and a half billion people on this planet at current energy levels.



2. This book is truly a crash course on the subject. The Goettemoeller brothers present a brief but very comprehensive account of the ethanol evolution, beginning with a concise history of the oil and ethanol industries, through farm subsidies, the economics, environmental impact, greenhouse gases, ethanol and world hunger, all the flex-fuel vehicles available (E10, E85, E100 and the Brazilian full flex-fuel vehicles), improving fuel efficiency, ethanol production from several crops, the energy balance, to close with a discussion about a key question, is ethanol renewable? All of it in just less than 200 pages, not surprisingly the book reads fast, the facts are presented almost like bullets, with web addresses and references for easy follow-up.
   
   The successful Brazilian experience is also presented, explaining the 30 year process that led to this country's leadership in farming productivity, ethanol fuel production and distribution, and the development and manufacturing of full flex-fuel vehicles, with the same sales price as E-10 cars. And all of these achievements without government subsidies, or sacrificing food production, and even with a sharp increase in grain and food exports thanks to China's voracious appetite for commodities. The authors also debunk the deforestation myth. Sugar cane is produced mainly in São Paulo state, some 2,500 Km away from the Amazon forest, in areas previously used for farming, and the entire state's area is just 3% of Brazil's territory. Whenever possible, a comparison with the U.S experience is presented, and key differences are highlighted, such as Brazil's superior productivity rates in farming sugar cane.
   
   My only disappointment with the book is that the Brazilian case is not presented with the same depth as the American experience; instead, information about Brazil is spread throughout the book in very short paragraphs, and based mainly on interviews with Brazilian English-speaking executives. It seems the language barrier hindered a deeper coverage of this successful story. That's why I did not give the book the five stars. And incidentally, the book does not mention the fact that today the price of hydrated ethanol (Brazil's biofuel) is around 30% cheaper than standard gasoline, more than enough to fully compensate for the lower energy content in ethanol, and thanks to the fully flexible fuel technology, auto users are free to choose the proportion of each fuel depending on market prices. Tipically, between sugar cane harvest seasons, you simply go back to gasoline.
   
   As oil approaches US$ 120 per barrel, and as the oil industry and OPEC countries are ironically echoing the concerns of some international bureaucrats and environmental groups (yes, the same supporting the Global Warming cause!) regarding the alleged responsibility of ethanol production for the recent increases in food prices, I think this is a book you definitively should read before taking sides on the food versus biofuels controversy.
   
   The problem is complex; there are several causes, and agricultural subsidies in rich countries are chief among them, in particular when highly subsidized corn crops for ethanol production became more profitable than producing other cash crops for food. This subject is out of the scope of the book, but if you are interested on this controversy, read the masterpiece article in the Economist's April 17th 2008 issue, entitled "The Silent Tsunami". That will be a good starting point to understand the real causes and the paradoxes behind world hunger and poverty.
   
   Also, the latest two books from Joseph E. Stiglitz have some chapters explaining how agricultural subsidies in the U.S. and several European countries, together with trade barriers, are among the real culprits for the poorest developing countries not being able to produce what they eat, and how many other countries are being barred from entering the "free" global market and developed by themselves. Just read Making Globalization Work and Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development. At least inform yourself properly and get the facts right before taking sides on this new global controversy. Happy 2008 Earth's Day!



3. This is a book that is helpful for people of all educational levels to begin to understand not only Ethanol, but the who Biofuels industry.
   
   The conciseness of the information into what can be considered bullet points delivers the maximum information in the least space possible. This leaves no room for agenda driven diatribes present in most books today. In addition, the book provides an abundance of cited sources that can be used by the reader for additional research and, thus, does not choke the book with needless facts and information.
   
   The best part is that, for us who think Ethanol is only one piece in the complete Biofuels puzzle, much of the information can be applied to other Biofuels like methanol and butanol.
   
   For me this book is not only a primer, but a reference source for the future.



4. We hear a lot these days about global warming, the West's over consumption habits, and how oil is getting more and more expensive and less available. We also hear a lot about alternative energies, flex-fuel cars, ethanol, and the like, but how many of us really know what these alternatives mean - both for the environment and our wallets. Unless you are a scientist working in the field, often we have to rely on what the media tells us; and many of us don't trust the media for a straight forward, objective opinion. Big oil, with their record profits, try and keep us in the dark about other forms of energy. Good thing I stumbled upon the book Sustainable Ethanol by the Goettemoeller brothers. This is the first book I have seen that explains the science - and logic - behind ethanol as an alternative fuel to oil and gas in a clear, readable, and informative style.
   
   Not only do they cover the history of ethanol fuel (did you know the first cars were designed to run on ethanol, not gasoline), but they go into what the latest scientific studies prove - that ethanol is a viable alternative fuel not only for cars, but also for other forms of energy such as natural gas. This latter point is further developed in the book when the Goettemoeller brothers delve into biogas and butanol - two other alternative energies that can be derived from natural resources (such as landfills, manure, and agricultural waste).
   
   Chapters include: A brief history of ethanol fuel; Will cheap oil return?; Economic and security benefits; Environmental impact; E10, E85, and flex-fuel vehicles; Improving fuel economy on ethanol; Food, farming, and land use; Ethanol production; Cellulosic ethanol; Energy balance: Is ethanol renewable?; and Facing our energy future.
   
   Some highlights of the book include:
   
   In 2006 the ethanol industry contributed $23.1 billion to our Gross Domestic Product, created 163,034 new jobs, $2.7 billion in federal tax revenue, $2.2 billion in state tax revenue, and reduced our need for foreign oil imports by 206 million barrels.
   
   If car manufacturers optimized their flex-fuel vehicles to run on E85 (85% denatured alcohol and 15% gasoline), not only would the fuel economy be the same as straight gasoline, but a significant reduction in pollution would occur because ethanol has fewer highly volatile components (i.e., lower carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide).
   
   Ethanol production is not limited to just corn: grain sorghum, wheat, barley, agricultural residues, forestry wastes, municipal solid wastes, food processing and other industrial wastes, and various grasses can all be used to make ethanol.
   
   Ethanol can be made via a "closed loop" system, whereby the grain used to make the ethanol can then be feed back to the animals (as ethanol production only uses the starch from grains, not the proteins or vitamins), the manure from the animals is then used to create fertilizer (for more grain) and biogas which is used as a process fuel in place of natural gas. In a sense, no external energy is required to go into the process, creating a sustainable energy production process.
   
   Sustainable Ethanol is copiously documented, with charts and graphs illustrating the complex science that is clearly explained. This book should be on everyone's reading list who cares about the environment and our future. Rarely does one get to read about an emerging technology and actually understand at the end what that technology is, how it works, and just how important it can be for helping save the planet. The Goettemoeller brothers have succeeded beyond any expectations in this regard. Sustainable Ethanol is a landmark book - if you want to see what you can do to help save the planet, then this book is a must.
   
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   New Great Books
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5. A good introdution to the subject of ethanol fuel,well worth reading,with some valuable information not in other books on ethanol.Not enough detail though for people who prefer a more hands on approach and would like to make their own fuel and convert their vehicle to run on ethanol.

No comments about Clean Money: Picking Winners in the Green Tech Boom.

2 comments about Leading Change Toward Sustainability: A Change-Management Guide for Business, Government and Civil Society.

1. Bob Doppelt is the first sustainability expert to describe the nuances and challenges of successfully implementing a systemic sustainability program. Where others have said that "you need to get the people in the organization involved," Doppelt goes deeper and tells us how to do this.

   His comprehensive approach, systems thinking, and concrete examples give us previously unavailable insights about successfully implementing sustainability programs in organizations.

   I especially appreciate that he includes economic, population, and social equity concerns and not just the technical aspects of protecting and improving the environment.

   I have recommended this book to all my sustainability Ph.D. students.




2. While the concept of sustainability and sustainable development is still ethereal, Bob Doppelt has his finger at the pulse of our best thinking, practices and strategy for implementation. I resonate with his view that the process of achieving sustainability is messy and non-linear and people enter it from many directions. This book has informed my understanding and has helped structure a subject that has a moving target component to it. Bob Doppelt's work has credibility and substance for me.

No comments about Your Eco-Friendly Home: Buying, Building, or Remodeling Green.

3 comments about The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature.

1. Ecological restoration has often been viewed as either a fringe hobby -- a few aficionados re-creating a patch of prairie on weekends -- or as a distraction from the vital and politically charged work of preserving more or less undisturbed landscapes. But William R. Jordan III argues that it's vital to the preservation of the Earth's ecosystems, and to ourselves. Jordan, founder of the journal Ecological Restoration, writes that restoration is "a way of achieving an ecologically close relationship with the rest of nature," as well as "a context for confronting the most troubling aspects of our relationship with our fellow creatures." The Sunflower Forest is an important book about a practice that is, in coming years, bound to become one of the most important ways we deal with our surroundings. Thanks to Jordan's wide-ranging intellect and compelling writing, it's also a great pleasure to read.



2. Bill Jordan says restoration is the only approach to ecological stewardship that will last in the long run, which is the only run that counts. Restoration assumes a heavy human hand, exactly something that rubs the nature-as-sacred camp the wrong way. Jordan proposes a metaphor for guiding ecology: community. One reason both "liberal" and "conservative" politicians and activists scorn restoration ecology is because we hate community. We like having friends, but true community is very costly, an observation in line with scripture. True community goes against sinful nature, and requires society's full efforts to avoid disintegration.
   
   Jordan lists four stages of a human's community involvement in life. These four struck me as very important for understanding life, but less important for building ecological principles:
   
   1. I am not God. (Some people never figure this out)
   2. Get a Job. (We all need to contribute to the world)
   3. Giving Gifts. (Giving connects others to us)
   4. Receiving Gifts. (Receiving connects us to others)
   
   This one surprised me. How is receiving a greater communal than giving? It's a simple answer that is changing my life: receiving a gift binds us to someone else, while giving a gift only binds others to us. As long as we only give and never receive, no one has any claim on us and we retain absolute control over the relationship.
   
   The Sunflower Forest is a science book that taught me more about community than many books ostensibly about community. It's also an insightful, if a little "out there" treatise on restoration ecology. The lessons are profound, but the policy recommendations - a debate within a narrow field of eco-philosophers - will date very quickly.



3. Sunflower Forests:
   
   The emphasis of human community involved in the act of ecological restoration runs deeply through a ribbon of subjects that the author is beautifully versed in- myth, literature, anthropology, religion and philosophy. All confront human nature and its boundaries of communion with nature.
   
   Jordan shows us why we are still active components of nature even as we define our boundaries and seemingly cut ourselves out of the picture through civilization, but as he shows through striking examples, we are not removed at all; in fact he demonstrates we are on the cutting edge of nature through evolution. Outlining the differences between preservation and restoration he shows us the error in excommunicating tracts of land as if they were burials grounds for the pristine nature we left behind, this only excommunicates ourselves in the process. Instead we need to develop plans for ongoing restoration within these sects in order to activate communion and maintain a vital connection that ultimately will create knowledge and reverence and ensure survival of eco systems beyond mummified ideas of wilderness and landscape. Jordan unlike so many other environmentalists goes to exhausting and quite eloquent lengths of history to exemplify our roles rather than downgrading us to wishful observers. He breaks through the barrier of our excuses at incompetence argued endlessly in scientific debate and by philosophical ecologists, he shows us that humans have been quite competent at ritual performance engaging nature and creating harmonious landscapes through various cultural mechanisms since time immemorial. And though we may no longer go hunting and singing for the soul of the prey gifted to us, we are still creating our most sacred and most ritual work through restoration.
   
   The `audacity', as he says, we must have to recreate nature, assembling a prairie with our own hands, this audacity creates tension, guilt and shame. This though is the fuel that creates the moment of seedling and animal returning out of an ark, a gush of life that redeems us in beauty and as the participants in the graces of ritual. This performance has been lacking in our cultural repertoire.
   
   As Jordan points out, we have the ability to compensate for what we take from nature, as in the case of entire ecosystems. In the process to give back we do not assume we can recreate all that was, but we engage in the act with the same significance and purpose. Jordan illuminates the reality of what we have to work with rather than idealizing the past and casting ourselves as hopeless refugees of nature.
   
   Jordan's work covers the selected terrain of philosophical issues important to our purpose for ecological restoration- the next step though is to show we can make this work significantly more mainstream so his thoughts are accessible (Not just accessible through professional journals that require a subscription). I think it would require even more `audacity' to go from where we are comfortable and supported in the enclaves and circles of our own like minded groups, into the more painful reaches of our broader community who may reject esthetics of the sunflower forest in an orderly world.
   
   
   
   I have not read this book without questioning. It is hard to obliterate the image of autonomous nature, the one that has intrinsic value because it is the `original' despite what Jordan counters with his interactive description to authenticate nature. It is hard for me to dismantle thoughts that there was once something "better" in terms of not having been eroded by human use, that it was filled with plants and animals that I will never see, loaded with certain species that I grieve for yet have never been in contact with -- so as to not even know the real basis of my grief. Is it really for those flowers that have gone or is it for something gone period? Just in the act of speaking about certain places to small groups of people who were willing to listen, I have come to find that those places already take on new meaning and new purpose. Through a shared awareness perhaps, these places become "real" to us, not removed as some piece of untouchable history anymore and quite in line with what Jordan says, I find I do not grieve for them as much as I would in enshrining a relic; I want an active force outside of my bumbling to take over and proceed. However, my point is, maybe autonomy really does matter as a concept that leads us to worship and reverence at first, for something greater outside ourselves, (isn't that why we have religion?) and that finally leads us to action, to the missing ritual and restores the meaning for the sacred while quietly and potently removing boundaries of time and history to connection with the primordial.

2 comments about Worst-Case Scenarios.

1. I recommend reading this book. Dr. Sunstein considers many modes of thought and the book should get you thinking.
   
   Throughout the book Dr. Sunstein uses two main narratives to examine how people react to uncertainty, Terrorism and Global Warming. He provides a very PC perspective, probably to better reach a broad audience and get them thinking about how we deal with what we don't know. The book is an exercise to get the lay person thinking about uncertainty rather than an objective analysis of how to deal uncertainties. It should get the reader to consider how we over and under react and how costly it is.
   
   Sunstein makes the very good point that people have over-reacted to the historic risk level of terrorism (with much unnecessary cost in life and resources) and explores why. He also makes the point that probabilities alone are not enough to make decisions. Context is also important. That said, he possibly over emphasizes the fact that people over-react to more highly salient risks and he fails to thoroughly consider why people react strongly to risks involving justice and intent (especially that there is also a signaling component).
   
   While most of us make the mistake of over-reacting to highly salient risks, Sunstein does the opposite. He makes the mistake of greatly exaggerating the risks of Global Warming. For the sake of argument, he makes up numbers. But the numbers are absurdly high, even when considering them as the likelihood that a risk will increase rather than the likelihood of an actual event happening or not.
   
   When dealing with the uncertainty created by human actions, Sunstein also neglects uncertainty that already exists. The human component of global warming is small (and the greenhouse gas component of that is less than half). A large amount of uncertainty exists whether we reduce CO2 emissions or not. Building a particle accelerator creates a small, immeasurable risk of catastrophe. But Earth is surrounded by many particle accelerators which bombard the Earth and even produce collisions. Building one doesn't significantly affect the level of risk we face (and may provide us with knowledge that will help us avoid other risks).
   
   The biggest qualm I have is that Sunstein advocates a policy of generational neutrality. He makes a good rhetorical argument, but logic is not on his side. He notes the consensus among economists that future lives should be discounted is unraveling. And unraveling is an apt term. The principle was long considered obvious to economists for the reason that it is obvious. When Sunstein asks whether the life a 10 year old today is worth more than the life of a 10 year in 2040, he quickly answers, as many would like to, "No." But he fails to consider the obvious; that a 10 year old now will have 10 year olds of his own in 2040.



2. Cass Sunstein has written a superb analysis of how cost benefit analysis can usefully be applied to extreme situations - worst case scenarios. He takes up two - mostly climate change, but then compares it to counterterrorism. My comments below focus on the application of cost benefit analysis in responses to terrorism; I admire Sunstein's analysis, but think it has limitations in its application to terrorism.
   
   Regnant approaches to terrorism are driven not just by narrow cost benefit analysis, but by a still narrower focus on something we might call "event-specific catastrophism": preventing the next attack. This is as true of the Bush administration as of its leading opponents. What has the Bush administration focused upon, in speech after speech to the public? The imminence of the next attack, and the need to prevent it. One hopes this is mobilizing rhetoric for larger policies against jihadist terrorism, but in considerable part, the uncertain next attack is the focus of policy - a long-term strategy, if one can call it that, even after seven years, of just trying to make it to the next day unscathed.
   
   Despite much discursive rhetoric about long-term policy and the war on terror, much US policy is what, in a strategically informed plan, might well be considered the very last defensive perimeters. Airport security, daily monitoring of cell phone traffic, internet analysis in hopes of seeing spikes that might indicate imminent terrorist action, watch lists, and many, many cement barriers. Presumably no one in Britain is reassured by the fact that the Glasgow attack was prevented not by perceptive police work, nimble intelligence agents, deep penetration of homegrown terrorist cells - but simply by a physical barrier at the airport. But perhaps people are comforted; the cement barrier worked, after all, effectively and cost-effectively, while the rest of the counterterrorism apparatus, at enormous absolute and relative cost, did not. Still, these are fundamentally defensive measures aimed at preventing the next attack, counterterrorism in a vital but stiflingly narrow sense. The cost benefit analysis underlying such planning, shaped toward event-specific catastrophism, is necessary and fruitful, but bears little resemblance to planning or conducting a "war" on terrorism or, really, any strategic conceptual response to jihad that goes beyond preventing particular events of uncertain probability and magnitude.
   
   Yet the Bush administration's legion critics ridicule US counterterrorism policy in great measure within the same narrow framework that the administration has used. Sometimes the cost benefit analysis would scarcely past muster in an undergraduate economics class - political scientist John Mueller, in his bestselling Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them, or journalist James Fallows, each breezily announcing that the chances of getting killed in a terrorist attack are less than getting struck by lightning, or that 9-11 killed 3,000 people but 40,000 Americans die a year in automobile accidents and, ergo, well what? Cost benefit comparison of opportunity costs makes sense only if comparing genuinely apposite, available opportunities.
   
   Serious cost benefit analyses are offered in criticism of US policy, and Sunstein's Worst Case Scenarios is the best of them. It calmly and restrainedly demolishes, for example, the so-called "One Percent Doctrine" - Vice-President Cheney's assertion that even a one percent chance of a catastrophic terrorist event requires a response as though it were a complete, 100% certainty.
   
   Worst-Case Scenarios is not primarily about terrorism; it is mostly a discussion of cost benefit analysis applied to climate change and the limitations of the `precautionary principle' (of which the One Percent Doctrine is a variety). Sunstein uses terrorism as a striking, but adjunct, case study in order to illustrate, among other things, what the behavioral economists call `salience' - the contrast between the Bush administration's all-in commitment against terror, even on a one-percent threat basis, but its unwillingness to adopt similarly drastic principles with respect to the possibility of another kind of catastrophe, one that is not, however, as immediately visible and `salient' to the general public.
   
   In using this splendid book here, in a discussion strictly limited to terrorism, I want to be clear that its arguments over the nature of cost benefit analysis, its critique of the precautionary principle, and its careful application of them to climate change bear close, repeated reading on their own terms and the intellectual ends to which Sunstein puts them. Solely with respect to countering terrorism, however, Worst-Case Scenarios correctly points out that not even `all the instruments of the national will' (what President Bush solemnly committed to the fight against terrorism after 9-11) are unlimited. They never are. Choices still have to be made and priorities established and, as Sunstein acutely observes, preventative actions bring risks of their own. Countering every one percent risk as though it were a 100% certainty creates many more one percent risks of their own, and countering all those one percent risks will preclude many, if not all, of the others. The One Percent Doctrine, and the precautionary principle which it instantiates, is finally "incoherent," as Sunstein says. It induces simultaneously a demand for actions of many contradictory kinds, and yet precludes them at the same time: paralysis in every direction, demands for action and inaction. It cannot serve as a universal basis for policy, and no one, to my knowledge, has made this argument better.
   
   Nonetheless, even sophisticated cost benefit analysis of the kind found in Worst Case Scenarios tends to take the prevention of particular events as the fundamental analytic objective. There is, to be sure, an important political reason for this. The American public has been gradually downgrading terrorism as a political priority, even while continuing to say (in the fine democratic tradition of wanting your cake and eating it too) that it supports serious measures against it.
   
   American elites, for their part, have been sliding to a dismissively contemptuous view that questions the whole idea of counterterrorism as a serious, large-scale necessity. The threat is downgraded, deploying cost benefit style arguments to call the administration's counterterrorism programs trumped up and exaggerated, and to suggest that the terrorist threat is quite capable of management without special military or intelligence measures. Leaving aside the frequent starting assumption that the Bush administration has illegitimately grabbed executive power and that this, rather than terrorism, is the primary thing against which to protect, the fundamental factual claim is that the probability of a successful attack has been seriously exaggerated.
   
   How to interpret, in other words, the fact that the US has not been hit on its territory since 9-11: evidence of the effectiveness of the anti-terrorism efforts, or evidence that it was always more chimerical than real? Ultimately that is what Sunstein's very fine book, at least as applied to terrorism, seeks to answer and to say, in the absence of being able definitively to answer, how to respond. Still, this is ever a relentlessly tactical approach, and the most important criticism of it is that over the long term, we seek something more comprehensive. Even when not event-specific - even when it takes, for example, "Islamist terrorism" as the whole scenario for consideration - it is by its very nature reactive. Cost benefit analysis does not propose solutions; it evaluates proposed solutions offered by other processes. It is not finally a strategic form of thinking. And that is a problem.

1 comments about The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review.

1. Dr Nicholas Stern was formerly the World Bank's chief economist, so he has huge experience of faulty forecasts. His 2006 review has become the most influential global warming report, embraced by the Blair and Brown governments. He appeared to bring hard-sounding economic calculations into the world of scientific predictions and guesses.
   Yet his report is now wholly discredited. Dr. Richard Tol, Principal Researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, called it `preposterous'.
   Crucially, Stern estimated the cost of additional carbon emissions as $29 a ton, as against Tol's conclusion that the costs were `likely to be substantially smaller' than $14 a ton. Tol said, "In sum, the Stern Review is very selective in the studies it quotes on the impacts of climate change. The selection bias is not random, but emphasises the most pessimistic studies ... Results are occasionally misinterpreted. The report claims that a cost-benefit analysis was done, but none was carried out. The Stern Review can therefore be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent."

5 comments about Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West.

1. 'Rivers' presents an extensive yet accessible history of Western development based on the author's unique 'hydraulic' thesis -- a hybrid framework that adds an environmental dimension to traditional socio-economic analysis. Essentially, the idea is that the relationship between humans and environment dictates social structure. Whether or not one buys the theory on the strength of this book alone is beside the point. The importance of 'Rivers' lies in its singular, alternative perspective that, when combined with others, reconstructs a more complete story of the West. With that understanding, the reader may appreciate this work without being bothered by its occasional lapses into the kind of flat ideological analysis that seems inevitable in social histories like this.

   'Rivers' offers a number of invaluable insights. Contrary to the idealized vision of the West as the last hope for freedom and democracy, the West birthed a rigid, hierarchical society combining big capitalism with big government. Yet the reason behind this was not the environmental condition of aridity per se, but the romantic capitalistic notion of the desert as something to be subdued and exploited. On an even broader level, therefore, 'Rivers' begins to shed light on the dynamic interplay between the relationship between human and nature and the relationship between humans themselves. In the end, this work's highest value may lie in its contribution to the development of this critical but still largely ignored point.




2. 'Rivers' presents an extensive yet accessible history of Western development based on the author's unique 'hydraulic' thesis -- a hybrid framework that adds an environmental dimension to traditional socio-economic analysis. Essentially, the idea is that the relationship between humans and environment dictates social structure. Whether or not one buys the theory on the strength of this book alone is beside the point. The importance of 'Rivers' lies in its singular, alternative perspective that, when combined with others, reconstructs a more complete story of the West. With that understanding, the reader may appreciate this work without being bothered by its occasional lapses into the kind of flat ideological analysis that seems inevitable in social histories like this.

   'Rivers' offers a number of invaluable insights. Contrary to the idealized vision of the West as the last hope for freedom and democracy, the West birthed a rigid, hierarchical society combining big capitalism with big government. Yet the reason behind this was not the environmental condition of aridity per se, but the romantic capitalistic notion of the desert as something to be subdued and exploited. On an even broader level, therefore, 'Rivers' begins to shed light on the dynamic interplay between the relationship between human and nature and the relationship between humans themselves. In the end, this work's highest value may lie in its contribution to the development of this critical but still largely ignored point.

   One interesting point from Hawai`i: the author's suggestion of a new model based on sustainable, locally governed and accountable communities is very reminiscent of the ahupua'a system of ancient Hawai`i.




3. I can count on two hands the number of truly pathbreaking works of history published since 1980. "Rivers of Empire" is one of them, and must reading for anyone who seeks to understand the history of this critical region of the United States.

   Donald Worster, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, has been producing outstanding history of the American West and environmentalism for more than a quarter century. When the so-called "New Western History" was avant-garde in historian circles in the early 1980s he was dubbed one of the "Gang of Four" who transformed the field of study--the others being Patricia Nelson Limerick, William Cronen, and Richard White. Worster's work, as well as that of the other three historians, was indeed pathbreaking, and "Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West" is by far his most influential publication. It demonstrates well why Worster was one of the "Gang of Four."

   In "Rivers of Empire" Worster argues that the core reality of the American West is its aridity. To make it suitable for large-scale human habitation required the complete transformation of the region; Americans harnessed the rivers and brought water there, irrigating the land and creating great cities. As Worster writes, "The ecological and social transformation of the Great Valley is one of the most spectacular, and more revealing episodes of the American West" (p. 11). The organization and structure of every institution associated with the West reflected the need to control the environment. It brought profound changes to both the region and the people who lived there. This is the story that he tells in this superb book.

   Ironically, the supposed individualistic and democratic westerners willingly conspired with the government to create a hydraulic civilization under the suzerainty of the federal government. In order to flourish in the arid West Americans had to build an agricultural system that was dependent upon large-scale government-managed waterworks--productive (for irrigation) and protective (for flood control). This not only made the West habitable, it brought urbanization and wealth there as well. Ancient Egypt first engaged in this type of civilization, and became a dominant power in the process. But always, there were winners and losers in this situation and those left out harped on the inequities of the system. In the American West the "Sagebrush Revolution" of the latter twentieth century pitted the presumably individualist West against the organization and power of the federal government. Ironically, the very organization and power that had created the modern American West was under attack from those who had so benefited from it.

   Worster notes that the dominant myth of the West needs to be replaced with a more realistic understanding. He asserts that it is best understood as a story "of people encountering difficult environments, of driving to overcome them through technological means, of creating the necessary social organization to do so, of leading on and on to indigenous bureaucracy and corporatism" (p. 11). He is so right.

   This is a wonderful book. Don't miss it!




4. However, while I appreciate other reviewers' passion, Marc Reisner has a broader scope in that book, covering the aquifer-driven irrigation of the High Plains as well as the river-fed irrigation of the Southwest.
   
   Plus, his book has a 1993 revised edition, making it newer and more informative.
   
   Above all, though, as a journalist, rather than an academic. Reisner is simply the better writer. His book is more of a story than "Rivers of Empire," and reads that way, as well as having the broader and more updated coverage.
   
   Indeed, with an older-style typeface (at least in hardcover), Worster's book looks much more dated.
   
   For somebody new to this subject, this is still a very solid four-star book. But, having read and re-read "Cadillac Desert," in that context, I rate "Rivers of Empire" at 3.5 stars.



5. In this book, Worster extends Karl Wittfogel's theory of the hydraulic society to the United States - - a task that Wittfogel, despite having emigrated to the US, never attempted. Since Wittfogel emphasized the authoritarian consequences of large-scale irrigation system, so too does Worster, finding an authoritarian "empire" in the American West.
   
   Certainly there are authoritarian elements of western agriculture, especially in the treatment of farmworkers by large farms and corporations. Worster mentions this, but oddly enough does not give this issue as much attention as one would expect.
   
   Worster gives much more attention to the symbiotic relationship between landowners and the water engineers at the Bureau of Reclamation. Like most relationships between government and business, this represents a conspiracy against voters and consumers. That said, it doesn't seem any more hierarchical or autocratic than any other area of regulation, and Worster doesn't really make that case.
   
   Theory aside, the book tells its story well. Unfortunately for Worster, he's competing with a masterpiece, Mark Reisner's "Cadillac Desert", and he covers essentially the same ground. (Reisner's book was published a year later.) Without Reisner, I'd have given this book four stars and recommend for general readers interested in this particular corner of human experience. But Reisner tells the story so well that Worster's book has to stand or fall on the theoretical apparatus - - and this just isn't convincing. As a result, I think that "Rivers of Empire" will really only be interesting for specialists.

4 comments about Citizenship Papers: Essays.

1. This man is wise and we need to listen to him. Even more, we need to think hard about what actions we can take to address the concerns raised here. For most of us, our actions will necessarily be considered "radical", for most of us have strayed far from living with a consideration for the health of the earth and the local communities we live in. I am frightened at the direction this nation is going and I hope and pray more people pay attention to what Bush and his crew are doing and kick him out next year. But that is only a small part of what needs to happen. Berry consistently gets to the hard roots of many of our modern crises and is always clear-headed and forceful in his analysis. An amazing writer and a master stylist. Read him now. Now is when we most need to hear him.



2. Wendell Berry throughout this book describes the real meaning of citizenship. Not citizenship of a country but citizenship of a place, a community, an ecosystem.

   Berry writes that security comes from being self sufficient within that community. The fact that a breakdown in transportation in this country would leave grocery stores bare should give us all pause. How much more sense it would make to know the farms still exist locally to provide the food, to know the farmer through a Community Supported Agriculture arrangement, to not be dependent on food shipped across the country and even across the oceans.

   The problem is current and past policies are driving small farmers out of business and local businesses are being driven out by megastores such as Walmart. But Berry points out we can resist being driven along this path and stand up and say no. Join a CSA, shop at the farmer's market, buy organic, support the local shops.

   Wendell Berry says it better. "This, of course, is the description of an emergency. It is moreover an emergency of the worst kind:one that cannot be resolved by "emergency measures". It is an emergency that calls for patience, and to be patient in an emergency is a hard requirement. but patience is what we must have if we hope to complete our work.

   Obviously, we must use the emergency measures that are available to us, thought there are not many. We must do what we can politically, thought our political power at present is not great. But we must remember that good work cannot have a merely political completion. Our work will not be completed in the world's capitals, but in healthful farms and forest, ecosystems and watersheds, and in coherent communities. More important even than political victory for our side is the necessity to keep our thinking sound enough and complex enough to deal effectively with actual problems and needs. We must not let either political urgency or our sense of peril reduce us to the proto-warfare of slogans and sound bites."




3. Where does one draw the line?
   Why is it ok to tobacco farm?
   I guess growing cancer doesnt bother anyone?
   Is it ok that farming destroys the land in a more genteel way than the growth of cities?
   What you advocate is the theory of slow death, Wendell.



4. Wendell Berry's essays ought to be required reading for any federal policy-makers. It questions the wisdom of our current "War on Terror" and the efficacy of violence to end violence. Berry also asks astute questions to the religious (or those who feign religiosity): what does it mean to be truly Christian? Is it enough to merely support a nominally Christian and coservative President? Berry asserts that real Christianity is found, significantly, in doing Christian acts. Peace, Berry tells us, is much more than the absence of war, but a condition towards which all must cooperatively work together.
   Berry asks the questions that Americans need to be asking themselves right now. What does it mean to be American? Berry recognizes the deep importance of this question, and seeks its answer. Perhaps more importantly, however, Berry encourages the reader to ask this question of himself, and to seek his own answer.