JARED DIAMOND: AN ERUDITE IGNORAMUS

Here is another comment on the man who thinks ecology explains just about everything

I saw Diamond speak at UC Davis last week and gained more insight into his views, or lack thereof, on the importance of human institutions. After his talk, a questioner asked Diamond for his thoughts on whether market prices protect modern societies from overrunning their resources, since these prices let everyone know when various products are abundant or scarce. Diamond responded that free markets work in some situations, but fail in others. As examples of the failure of free markets, he pointed to overfishing of the world's oceans, and the complete clear-cutting of Easter Island's forests by its Polynesian inhabitants.

What Diamond calls a free market is actually the tragedy of the commons -- the state of affairs that results from common ownership of resources and absence of price signals -- exactly the opposite of a free market. A free market requires well-defined, freely exchangeable, and enforceable private property rights. Diamond casually discounts free markets, but doesn't seem to understand what a market is, or to be aware that it is the absence of free markets that causes much of the environmental degradation he laments. Indeed, the creation of free markets in fishing rights is beginning to address overfishing problems around the world.

Easter Island was deforested by the early 1700s. During his talk, Diamond asked "what was the Easter Islander thinking as he cut down the last tree?" He provided a few potential answers given by students in his classes at UCLA:

* It's my property and I'll do what I want with it.
* Don't worry; new technologies will come along to replace wood.
* This proposed ban on logging is premature -- we need more research.

This is as deep as Diamond went in his economic analysis, and was also indicative of his style of argumentation. He brought facts and reason, the discourse of science, to bear when discussing his favored explanations for societal collapse, but resorted to ridicule and caricature to preempt reasoned discussion of alternatives that don't fit into his incomplete paradigm.

Diamond is an engaging speaker, his erudition is extraordinary, and his discourses on past civilizations are fascinating. And yet, while he has been wildly successful as an author, his Collapse thesis fails as science. Diamond claims to have uncovered the factors that determine the success or failure of human civilizations. But he has done so without reference to the societal institutions that have played a major causal role. As a result, despite his detailed and captivating case studies, he draws spurious and misleading conclusions.

The question still remains: what was that Easter Islander thinking when he cut down the last tree? Here's my guess: "If only we had well-defined property rights instead of common ownership, and if only we had the rule of law instead of the law of the jungle. Then we would have avoided the tragedy of the commons that's forced me to cut down this tree before the next guy gets it. We would be trading among ourselves and with other tribes, instead of fighting each other for control of an ever-shrinking resource base. We would have created new technologies that would allow us to make more stuff from a given amount of resources, transform formerly useless materials into new resources, and create substitutes for resources that become scarce. And we would have supplanted wood with better and cheaper materials a long time ago."

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ARNIE PANDERS TO THE CALIFORNIA FRUITCAKES

Bucking the Bush administration, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to unveil an ambitious plan this week to combat global warming that would make California the largest state in the nation to set concrete goals for cutting greenhouse gases, the Mercury News has learned. Under an executive order Schwarzenegger plans to sign Wednesday, the governor will call on state officials to develop new ways to reduce greenhouse gases by 11 percent over the next five years, 25 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. The proposal would put California at the forefront of a burgeoning state and local effort to try to curtail emissions heating the Earth's atmosphere and place Schwarzenegger at odds with President Bush, who has rejected international efforts to combat global warming.

But critics said Saturday that the governor's plan is long on symbolism and short on substance. The executive order, the specifics of which were outlined in a two-page administration fact sheet obtained by the Mercury News, essentially sets goals without offering any laws or regulations to enforce the governor's agenda. `Until you bind someone in the law to meet a target, the pronouncements are all toothless,'' said state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a Los Angeles Democrat. She and other lawmakers plan Tuesday to call on Schwarzenegger to go further and embrace new anti-global-warming measures the group plans to champion this year.

Skeptics also suggested that Schwarzenegger was merely piggy-backing on existing anti-global-warming efforts, including a pioneering 2002 measure law that requires automakers to set tighter emissions standards for millions of cars, trucks and other vehicles on California roads.

Administration officials declined to discuss the governor's proposal until he unveils it before attending the World Environment Day conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Business executives briefed on the proposal could not be reached for comment Saturday. But one industry executive said global warming is a difficult issue for one state to tackle. ``Climate change is a global concern and there is a limit to the impact that any one state, let alone any one country, can have,'' said Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based association of power companies.....

Schwarzenegger's plan takes longer to meet a similar goal by calling on California to reduce its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Because California has long been at the forefront of environmental issues, critics said Schwarzenegger should set more visionary targets for the state. ``It's ambitious in 2050, but the impacts of climate change are already being felt in California today,'' said Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, the Woodland Hills Democrat who was the author of the 2002 anti-global-warming bill targeting cars. In September, the state's Air Resources Board adopted new rules to implement the law, which require automakers to reduce vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions starting in 2009, with a 30 percent reduction by 2016.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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