I link and quote Pielke Jr.'s work often. He says some of the things that I think, and does so more nicely.

The point here, as it is with Al Gore's carbon footprint or any one else's, is not that [Jared] Diamond is a hypocrite or a bad person. Rather the point should be obvious: asceticism does not offer a path to stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, much less global sustainability (however you'd like to define it). This thought occurs to Diamond's interviewer:

But if we can’t supply more or consume less, doesn’t that mean that, like the Easter Islander who chopped down the last tree, thus condemning his civilisation to extinction, we are doomed to drain our oceans of fish and empty our soil of nutrients?

“No. It is our choice,” he replies, perhaps subconsciously answering his critics again. “If we continue to operate non-sustainably, then in 50 or 60 years, the US and Japan and Europe will be in bad shape. But my friends in the highlands of New Guinea will be fine. Some of my friends made stone tools when they were children and they could just go back to what their ancestors were doing for 46,000 years. New Guinea highlanders are not doomed,” he says, draining his pomegranate juice. “The first world lifestyle will be doomed if we don’t learn to operate sustainably.”

So we should all be so lucky as New Guniea highlanders? Right. As a policy analysis this line of thinking falls well short of credulity for obvious reasons. Diamond's inconsistency should tell us is that sustainability must be made compatible with first world standards of living, because once you pose them as trade-offs, guess which one is going to win out? For just about everyone, Jared Diamond included, standards of living are not negotiable. Policy proposals should start by accepting this reality, otherwise they are simply "magical solutions."

IMV what is revealed is the poverty of the technocratic approach. Our purported experts lack expertise and our intellectuals aren't very smart. They have neither the knowledge or intelligence to formulate useful policies beyond those that deal with small local issues that they can get their minds around. Policies of larger scale should primarily be formulated to reduce the negative consequences of the dumb ideas that technocrats find so appealing. It's like wearing a helmet and pads when you go skate boarding since you will likely have a wreck. Your skill and focus are seldom adequate to the task of skating naked.

I also would take issue with Pielke's too gentle characterization of Diamond: the issue here may not be that Diamond is a hypocrite or a bad person, but he is that. It is not possible that he is unaware of the defects in his advocacy, yet he carries on profiting from spinning popular and lucrative fantasies that dupe society into supporting opportunistic politicians who are concerned not at all about the long term viability of civilization or the well being of humanity.