September 1999
Ed Ayres '63, God's Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1999.
Revolutionary changes are sweeping the world. To say they are unprecedented in human history is an understatement. In the history of our planet, there has never been anything like the titanic confluence of events that Ed Ayres calls the four "spikes": skyrocketing surges in population, consumption, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and extinction. It's no wonder we don't know what to do and are in deep denial. As Ayres puts it: "It [is] clear that we are in a megacrisis of our own making, and that we have a chance now to escape it before it destroys us--but the chance won't last long. The window of opportunity is closing fast."
This is as big a news story as an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth. Why isn't it on the front page of every newspaper and the lead story on the evening news, every single day? If you are confused about whether overpopulation is still something you should worry about, whether global warming is caused by human activity, or whether the rising extinction rate merits attention from anyone but nerdish re-searchers in arcane branches of biology, it's probably not your fault.
Corporate public relations managers issue ersatz news releases and "scientific" reports, leading journalists and their readers to believe that a spectrum of responsible scientific opinion exists where it does not. The public gets the impression that scientists are engaged in fierce controversies on these issues. Ayres documents what amounts to a hoax, except that the consumers of information seem to be as complicit as its propagators. He makes a convincing case that there's a thriving "market for denial," and we're buying it as fast as the news media can serve it.
Our global economy is based on a system of blind accounting. Ayres points out, "When profits are piling up, the whole system looks so solid that it seduces us into shutting our eyes to the question of whether there may be hidden costs not reflected in the prices, which someone, sooner or later, will have to pay." The economic system will contribute more to the problem than to the solution as long as it evades full accounting of the true costs of production and fails to include all costs in its prices to consumers up front. Market economies have always suffered the "tragedy of the commons," and eco-catastrophes have undermined several now-dead civilizations, but none before ours has had the benefit of extensive scientific knowledge of the problem and of possible solutions.
Ayres' book is not a jeremiad. He offers hope and suggests solutions. His advice is compelling--inspiring in places--but I found it frustrating as well. He suggests finding and joining a "healthy community," one that doesn't "suck huge amounts of resources from the surrounding area, and expel huge amounts of waste." Where can I find such a community without abandoning the part of the earth where I feel rooted, where I have spent a large part of my life soaking up knowledge about the natural environment? The answer isn't easy: Help organize like-minded people and work to create such a community.
Ayres ventures hopefully, "If the information climate is changed to make the costs of excess consumption visible, we might begin to see cultural attitudes change in turn--and what seems politically difficult would then become politically supported." But how fast can human culture, especially human values, change? Fast enough to catch up with the dizzying curves of the four megaspikes and reverse their tilt, before the Earth's biosphere permanently loses the capacity to support more than a small fraction of our current population? It is arguably too late already.
We might still have time or we might not, but we may as well act as though we do because it's better than the do-nothing alternative. If many people would take this book's message to heart, I believe they could transform the world. The world will change anyway, but the question is: How painful will it be? Will the transition be as catastrophic for our species as it is now for the many other species that our actions are carelessly consigning to oblivion? Or will enough human beings wake up and take responsibility for how we are sabotaging our future prospects on this planet by undertaking the drastic actions needed to save ourselves?
L. Wesley Argo '57, French, German, and Swiss Links in Pennsylvania: Descendants and Ancient Ancestors, Gateway Press, 1998. This book covers the historical lineage of the author's wife, Marjorie Thom Argo '57.
W.D. Ehrhart '73, Ordinary Lives: Platoon 1005 and the Vietnam War, Temple University Press, 1999. W.D. Ehrhart and Philip K. Jason (eds.), Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War, Rutgers University Press, 1999. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, W.D. Ehrhart '73 "may be the best-kept literary secret of the Vietnam War." Author of 17 books of poetry and prose, Ehrhart has three new books out in 1999. Retrieving Bones, which he co-edited with U.S. Naval Academy professor Philip Jason, is a collection of stories and poems that add depth to the literature of the Korean War. Ordinary Lives: Platoon 1005 and the Vietnam War chronicles the lives of members of Ehrhart's Marine boot-camp platoon&emdash;men he spent five years tracking down and interviewing. The Philadelphia Inquirer said Ordinary Lives "makes comrades of 'ordinary' men, tests their bonds of fellowship, and then returns the survivors to face the rigors of peace&emdash;after their lives have been changed forever." Ehrhart's third book of the year, Beautiful Wreckage: New and Selected Poems, is due out in November. It will be reviewed in the December Bulletin.
Pamela Haag '88, Consent: Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberalism, Cornell University Press, 1999. In this investigation of social history, popular culture, legal doctrine, and political theory, Haag's book discusses the history of sexual rights in the United States.
Margaret Helfand '69, Margaret Helfand Architects: Essential Architecture, The Monacelli Press, 1999. The cover of Margaret Helfand Architects: Essential Architecture features a detail shot of Swarthmore's Kohlberg Hall. In December, the building won a Design Award from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Margaret Helfand '69 (above) designed the new humanities building in 1996, three decades after she left the College to attend the College of Environmental Design at the University of California at Berkeley. Kohlberg's simplified, contemporary lines reflect the Quaker aesthetic Helfand discovered at Swarthmore as well as the primitive architecture she found during her travels.
Judith (Markham) Hughes, Freudian Analysts/Feminist Issues, Yale University Press, 1999. Within the history of psychoanalysis, the author explores multiple gender identities.
Martin K. Hunt '90 and Jacqueline E. Hunt, The History of Black Business, Knowledge Express Company, 1998. This work chronicles the history of African-American&endash;owned businesses and spotlights 10 around the world.
Ruth Mary Lamb '56, Mary's Way: A Memoir of the Life of Mary Cooper Back, FuturePrep Corporation, 1999. This memoir of Mary Back--artist, naturalist, wife, Wyoming pioneer, dude rancher, airplane mechanic, hiker, hunter, author, and philosopher--was compiled by her niece.
Jenifer McVaugh '64, The Love of Women, Borealis, 1998. This first novel is a moral tale focusing on women and is told from their own viewpoints.
Pamela Miller Ness '72, Alzheimer's Waltz, Swamp Press, 1999. This poetry collection, accompanied by line drawings of leaves collected and pressed by Ness' father, describes his experience with Alzheimer's disease.
Barbara Norfleet '47, The Illusion of Orderly Progress, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Norfleet's entomological compositions, including those titled "Frolic," "I Won't Deny My Nature," and "Dance Betrayal," offer fables about human nature.
Gertrude (Joch) Robinson '50, Constructing the Quebec Referendum: French and English Media Voices, University of Toronto Press, 1998. This book addresses the ways different élites presented their perspectives of nationalism during the 1980 referendum debate.
Mary McDermott Shideler '38, The Struggle for Clarification: Stage IV in the Series Visions and Nightmares, Ends and Beginnings, A Woman's Lifelong Journey, Scribendi Press, 1999. This theologian-writer describes her search for intellectual and spiritual nourishment during her sixth decade of life in the 1970s.
Simon St. Laurent '92 and Ethan Cerami, Building XML Applications, McGraw-Hill, 1999. This guide shows programmers how to integrate the Extensible Markup Language (XML) with Java programming to create applications. Simon St. Laurent and Robert Biggar '91, Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical, McGraw-Hill, 1999. This book explains existing XML vocabularies and tools and ways to develop new ones.
Walter R. Goldschmidt and Theodore H. Haas, Haa Aani, Our Land: Tlingit and Haida Land Rights and Use, Thomas F. Thorton '86 (ed.), University of Washington Press, 1998. This book, which publishes the report "The Possessory Rights of the Natives of Southeastern Alaska" for the first time, explores the early 1940s boom in white migration that raised legal land and resource rights questions.
ALUMNI DIGEST / BACK PAGES/ BOOKS BY ALUMNI / COLLECTION / EDITOR'S NOTE / FEATURES / IN MY LIFE/ LETTERS / PROFILES / ARCHIVE / TALK BACK