Catastrophe: Risk and Response

Richard Posner
2005. Oxford University Press. 336 pp. $16.95.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Jared Diamond
2005. Viking (Penguin Group USA). 592 pp. $17.

We humans don’t do catastrophe well until one hits us, if then. After all, our ancestors didn’t survive by planning a century ahead; they survived by spotting predators fast and stretching one harvest until the next. Times have changed, say two prolific polymaths – Judge Richard Posner of the federal court of appeals in Chicago and best-selling uberhistorian Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel) – and we need to change too. Posner worries mostly that we’re ignoring low-probability but high-damage events, from asteroid strikes to scientific experiments gone wrong. His cost-benefit calculations about them make for good policy, dry reading, and the occasional unexpected chuckle. Diamond too thinks we’re ignoring problems, but he’s focused on a dozen imminent environmental threats that could do us in if not attended to. He tells how and why other societies collapsed after ignoring similar problems, and over and over again he makes you wonder, what were they thinking? MORE at Chicago Reader website