Jared Diamond in Albuquerque, an Interview

When I was in Albuquerque, NM, househunting last week, I picked up a weekly newspaper called Alibi. It's the sort of alternative paper that I always try to find in any new town, in order to find out what's really going on there: cool cheap places to eat, indy filmhouses, alternative bookstores, stuff like that. What I found out in the edition of Alibi that I picked up was that Jared Diamond was speaking at UNM on Friday. And I was leaving on Thursday.

Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, is, I think, an important book for our society to pay attention to right now. I read it last spring, and am glad to know it has just been published in paperback. There is a lot that I know I did not absorb the first time through. I haven't read his two books that precede Collapse, (The Third Chimpanzee and Germs, Guns and Steel) but think as the winter continues I will do so.

One of the societies he uses in the book is the Anasazi civilization of the desert southwest, the very place he was speaking, and that we are soon to be moving. No one really knows what caused the collapse of the Anasazis, but a shortage of water may have played a big part. Water resources continue to be a huge problem in the west of this country, a problem that will only get worse in coming years. While I was there I listened to an NPR Living on Earth segment on this issue that made me wonder if we're entirely crazy to be planning this move. Us and lots of other waning Baby Boomers are planning retirement in the southwestern states. This large increase in population will be a strain on the ever-decreasing water resources.

Alibi writer Steven Robert Allen obtained a lengthy interview with Dr. Diamond, in which he addresses this issue (with the totally low-tech solution of water-catchment on roofs and in water-storage tanks when it rains - a solution I have used for watering my gardens everywhere I've lived - a subject I hope to write a post about soon) and many others: politicians, religion, consumerism, isolation. It was fortunately in the issue I have still in hand. It's a delightful interview with a man who says, when asked about his talent for synthesising information from many different fields: "Well, it fits together in the sense that everything fits together." I also love that he develops his books from the courses he teaches at UCLA, and that his undergraduate students help with questions and pointers. A professor like this is what education should be about. The Rise and Fall of Civilisations: An Interview with Jared Diamond, from Alibi, Jan. 19-25, 2006.

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