The Genesis Strategy

Book: "The Genesis Strategy - Climate and Global Survival" by Stephen H. Schneider with Lynne E. Mesirow - First Delta Printing March 1977 This book (1977) is just as apt and important a read as it was than if not more so. The delimma feared and expounded upon then is upon us today, global warming? It covers other countries attempts at reducing pollution and dependence on fossil fuels. The book goes into the ice melts, CFCs, affects of radiation, the Albedo, population, etc. It has about 27 graphs and pictures. I was amazed to read of China's innovative methods of addressing their environmental conditions. They use every means to alleviate pollution by using "compost, manure, and human excrement with inorganic fertilizer." (Page 282) and make every use of every product produced. That was then. Population and industrial growth though lessened has not been able to stem the crucial environmental state they now face. To their credit they have been building `green" houses where the entire building is run without polluting the environment. Israel is mostly run solar. Saudi Arabia is also going that route, some buildings here in the U.S. solar powered! It also warns of how solar power may cause climate changes...and much more. Nuclear Blackmail -- Page 293 "Genesis Strategy..." "What is talked about here is certainly not a new issue. The debate over solutions to the world predicament has been heated since the time of Malthus. However, there is at least one new aspect of the predicament, and that is the specter of nuclear terrorism, as discussed by Heilbroner, for example: 'I do not raise the specter of international blackmail merely to indulge in the dubious sport of shocking the reader. It must be evident that competition for resources may also lead to aggression in the other, "normal" direction -- that is, aggression by the rich nations against the poor. Yet two considerations give a new credibility to nuclear terrorism: Nuclear weaponry for the first time makes such action possible; and "wars of redistribution" may be the only way by which the poor nations can hope to remedy their condition.' " Chief Sitting Bull - Page 14 The great American Indian leader, Sitting Bull, who commented on the habits of the white settlers at the Powder River Council in 1877: "They claim this Mother Earth of ours for their own and fence their neighbors away from them. They degrade the landscape with their buildings and their waste. They comnpel the natural earth to produce excessively and when it fails, they force it to take medicine to produce more. This is evil."

Boy, it's been a long time since I read this, a lot more than seven years. The authors (and I would single out Schneider as one of the more provocative thinkers of our times) suggest that a thoughtful civilization would store enough food etc. to get it through hard times, such as changing climate. I don't know about you, but I detect a lot of talk in the last seven years about catastrophic climate change. Hmmm, this may be one of those books that gets more important as it gets older. I think I'll give it another read...