The original intent for today's blog posting was "Spring Quarter Suggested Readings For Law Students,"where ten or so books were to be listed. In reading Stephen Emmott's book (see below), however, I have concluded there is one, and only one, problem that renders all other problems minor. If we don't address and solve the problem of climate change there is no need to address other social, political and legal problems. Why, because, as Emmott notes, we will have fucked ourselves already. Thus, instead of a list of books to read for the spring quarter, might I suggest reading just one book . . . and, then, thinking long and hard about what you are going do, how you are going to change, how you are going to consume far, far, far less, thinking about what the rules, regulations, and laws would have to be, etc., so as not to fuck future generations. That is, if it is not too late already.
Stephen Emmott, Ten Billion (New York: Vantage Books, 2013) ("We are now almost certainly losing species at a rate up to one thousand times faster than we would expect form ordinary 'background' (natural) processes. This means than human activity is almost certainly now set to cause the greatest mass extinction of life on Earth since the event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. When newspapers, TV, and green campaigns want to highlight loss of species, they often do so by showing a picture of a lonely looking polar bear on a minuscule ice floe, looking as though 'this is it.' But losing polar bears is just the tip of the iceberg, no pun intended. What we need to be a lot more concerned about is the loss of biodiversity itself." Id. at 60-61. "It takes about 7,000 gallons of water to produce one kilogram of chocolate. that's roughly 304 gallons of water per Hershey bar. This should surely be something to think about while you're curled up on the sofa eating it in your pajama. Id. at 82. "We urgently need to do--and I mean actually do--something radical to avert a global catastrophe. But I don't think we will. I think we're fucked." Id, at 216.).
