Collapse, if and when it comes again, will this time be global. No longer can any individual nation collapse. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.
--
Joseph A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, 1988
Published on 4 Dec 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 4 Dec 2006.
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for peak oil
than the US
by Dmitry Orlov
Date: Fri, 09 May 2008
Quote of the day
From today's issue of Science...
Living Up to Ancient Civilizations
The Classical Period Of Greece And Rome lasted more than a thousand years (from about 750 BCE to about 400 AD). By contrast, the modern world, beginning with Columbus's discovery of America, has lasted just over 500 years.
As a result of overpopulation, overconsumption, global warming, and environmental degradation, it now looks increasingly likely that there will be a major societal collapse within the next 200 years. How ironic that a civilization capable of tracing the origin of the universe from 10-43 seconds after its formation and putting a lander on Titan does not have the rigor and self-discipline to sustain itself for as long as the ancients managed to do.
- Geoffrey P. Glasby
Department of Geochemistry, GZG
University of Göttingen
Goldschmidtstrasse 1, D-37077, Germany
HAVE YOU TALKED OFF THE RECORD WITH SOMEBODY WHO IS DEALING AT THE GLOBAL
ECONOMIC LEVEL. I'M THINKING OF PAUL VOELKER. [Chairman of the U. S. Federal
Reserve during the Jimmy Carter Administration, 1976-1980.) HE RECENTLY
WROTE AN ARTICLE HAVING TO DO WITH HIS FEAR THAT THE DOLLAR COULD START
GOING INTO A FREE FALL COLLAPSE WITHIN FIVE YEARS OF 2005, WHICH WOULD
BE BY 2010. IT HAS TO DO WITH A SHIFT IN GLOBAL ECONOMIES TO THE EURO
AND OTHER CURRENCIES AND ISSUES AROUND PETROLEUM. HAVE YOU TALKED WITH
ANYONE ABOUT THAT?
Yes. I have not talked with Paul Voelker, but with other economists.
I have had discussions with the famous economist, Jeffrey Sachs, at Columbia
University. His point of view is very similar to mine. He regards as the
biggest economic problem in the world today the nexus between public health
problems and environmental problems and population problems. He has been
going around the world advising countries about how to improve their economies,
but also talking to First World countries about the importance of solving
these problems. Another person I've talked to is a (Bush Administration) cabinet
minister who I cannot name, but a cabinet minister of the current administration.
This cabinet minister has a point of view that is very different from
that of our president. This cabinet minister read my book, Guns, Germs
and Steel and read my book, Collapse, and is convinced of the seriousness
of these problems.
The fact that an author of Diamond's caliber writes an (otherwise
excellent) book on the collapse of civilizations without explicitly explaining
peak oil gives you an idea of the extent to which we are fully and wholly
unprepared in any fashion whatsoever to handle what has now become inevitable.
It also points to a rather disturbing possibility: future generations
may not even be able to figure out what ultimately caused our collapse.
They will point to symptoms such as terrorism, financial insolvency, poor
leadership, etc. . . rather than understanding the fundamental driving
force: resource depletion.
Published on Tuesday, February 1, 2005 by Museletter
Meditations on Collapse (a review of Jared Diamond's book)
by Richard Heinberg
Civilizations collapse. That is the rule that we learn from history,
and it is a rule whose implications deserve careful thought given the
fact that our own civilization-despite its global extent and unsurpassed
technological prowess-is busily severing its own ecological underpinnings.
Thus we should pay close attention when Jared Diamond, one of the world's
most celebrated and honored science writers, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
Guns, Germs, and Steel, devotes his newest and already best-selling book
to the subject of how and why whole societies sometimes lose their way
and descend into chaos.
Diamond uses his considerable popular nonfiction prose-writing skills-carefully
honed in the crafting of scores of articles for Natural History, Discover,
Nature, and Geo-to trace the process of collapse in several ancient societies
(including the Easter Islanders, the Maya, the Anasazi, and the Greenland
Norse colony) and show parallels with trends in several modern nations
(Rwanda, Haiti, and Australia).
One theme quickly emerges: the environment plays a crucial role in each
instance. Resource depletion, habitat destruction, and population pressure
combine in different ways in different circumstances; but when their mutually
reinforcing impacts become critical, societies are sometimes challenged
beyond their ability to respond and consequently disintegrate.
The ancient Maya practiced intensive slash-and-burn horticulture, growing
mostly corn. Their population increased dramatically, peaking in the eighth
century C.E., but this resulted in the over-cutting of forests; meanwhile
their fragile soils were becoming depleted. A series of droughts turned
problem to crisis. Yet kings and nobles, rather than comprehending and
responding to the crisis, evidently remained fixated on the short-term
priorities of enriching themselves, building monuments, waging wars, and
extracting sufficient food from the peasants to support their ostentatious
lifestyles. The population of Mayan cities quickly began a decline that
would continue for several centuries, culminating in levels 90 percent
lower than at the civilization's height in 700.
The Easter Islanders, whose competing clan leaders built giant stone
statues in order to display their prestige and to symbolize their connection
with the gods, cut every last tree in their delicate environment to use
in erecting these eerie monuments. Hence the people lost their source
of raw materials for building canoes, which were essential for fishing.
Meanwhile bird species were driven into extinction, crop yields fell,
and the human population declined, so that by the time Captain Cook arrived
in 1774 the remaining Easter Islanders, who had long since resorted to
cannibalism, were, in Cook's words, "small, lean, timid, and miserable."
Regarding the Anasazi of the American Southwest, who left behind stone
ceremonial centers that had been integrated into a far-flung empire, I
can do no better than to quote Diamond's own summary:
"Despite these varying proximate causes of abandonments, all were
ultimately due to the same fundamental challenge: people living in fragile
and difficult environments, adopting solutions that were brilliantly successful
and understandable in the short run, but that failed or else created fatal
problems in the long run, when people became confronted with external
environmental changes or human-caused environmental changes that cities
without written histories and without archaeologists could not have anticipated."
A second important theme in the book is that human choice can make the
difference between prosperity and ruin. Diamond is quick to point out
that he is not an "environmental determinist": while the leaders
of the Maya and Easter Islanders made disastrous decisions that plunged
their societies into collapse, others did better. He describes how the
Inuit in the Arctic and Polynesians on Tikopia managed to create ways
of life that were indefinitely sustainable, and why the Dominican Republic
has had a more peaceful and economically stable history than its neighbor,
Haiti.
Diamond argues that our modern global industrial society is creating
some of the very same sorts of environmental problems that caused ancient
societies to fail, plus four new ones: "human-caused climate change,
buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages and full
human utilization of the earth's photosynthetic capacity." Echoing
the conclusions of the Limits to Growth study of 1972, Diamond notes that
many of these problems are likely to "become globally critical within
the next few decades."
There is much to admire in this book. Diamond's essential message-that
our very persistence as a civilized society may depend upon well-led efforts
to reduce the negative impact of our economic processes upon nature-is
one that more people desperately need to hear. The author artfully skewers
classic one-liner objections such as, "The environment has to be
balanced against the economy," "Technology will solve our problems,"
and "If we exhaust one resource, we can always switch to some other
resource meeting the same need." Collapse draws the reader into rich
and fascinating discussions of specific modern instances in which collapse
in some form already has occurred, is occurring, or is likely to occur-Rwanda,
Haiti, and Montana-showing in each instance how political and economic
events, emerging from underlying environmental crises and constraints,
can lead to economic reversal, social disintegration, or even genocide.
Yet while this is a helpful discussion of the subject for readers who
have never before contemplated the possibility that modern fossil-fuel-based
industrialism may be unsustainable in the starkest meaning of the term,
for readers who have been contemplating that fact for some time-and especially
for those who have already made some efforts to draw parallels between
the exuberance of modern industrial society and the similar qualities
of ancient empires in their florescent stage immediately before their
demise-Diamond's efforts fall short.
While the book is rigorous in detail, it is haphazard with regard to
theory. Diamond's methodological prowess shines, for example, as he investigates
the reasons for the failure of the Viking colony in Greenland: he uses
the most recent archaeological data to build a careful, persuasive case
that the Norse farmers simply failed to adjust their cultural attitudes
to take advantage of the most abundant local protein source-fish-and hence
starved. In the process, we learn a great deal about how these people
lived, and about how archaeologists gather and piece together evidence
in order to arrive at conclusions about the human past. Details matter,
and Diamond is very good at moving beyond superficial similes ("America
is like Rome prior to its fall") to look at particular places with
care and nuance.
However, when presented with such a sweeping title and subject, readers
need breadth of overview as much as depth of specificity. Why did the
author select the examples he did? Why did he not choose to discuss Imperial
China or Rome, or the ancient Mesopotamians or Egyptians? Why not, in
addition to a thorough discussion of a few emblematic societies, also
offer a comprehensive and systematic survey of all previous civilizations?
This is not as daunting a prospect as it might seem: there have only been
about 24 civilizations in all of human history (if we define civilization
as a society with cities, writing, full-time division of labor, and relatively
high levels of technological complexity). The wealth of data available
would permit a fascinating comparative overview using a range of selected
criteria.
Diamond refers on only three occasions (and then briefly) to Joseph
Tainter' s classic The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University
Press, 1988), which is widely considered the standard work on the subject.
He rightly criticizes Tainter for underemphasizing the role of environmental
fa ctors-especially resource depletion-in previous instances of collapse.
However, Diamond does not take the time to explain Tainter's valuable
contributions to the discussion. It is difficult for the reader to have
the sense of building on a previous theory without an understanding of
what the previous theory is. Theory was in fact one of the great strengths
of Tainter 's book: he surveyed all known complex societies, and systematically
assessed dozens of prior serious discussions of collapse (including the
ideas of Arnold Toynbee, Elman Service, Pitirim Sorokin, and Alfred Kroeber),
so that when he got around to introducing his own hypothesis (which can
be summarized as the inevitability of the diminishing of returns on societal
investments in complexity) the reader felt a sense of participation in
the refinement of our collective understanding of the problem. This doesn't
happen to nearly the same degree in Collapse. Why? Perhaps Diamond was
trying to avoid sounding academic and wanted to write in such a way that
the maximum number of readers would commit themselves to the task of wading
through a long book on a dreary subject. But something was sacrificed
in the process.
Important contributions to the discussion about collapse have been made
since the publication of Tainter's magnum opus; one that comes readily
to mind is John Michael Greer's paper "How Civilizations Fall: A
Theory of Catabolic Collapse," with its distinction between maintenance
collapse, in which a society recovers and again achieves imperial status,
and depletion collapse, in which disintegration is complete and final.
Greer's essay-which he has encountered some difficulty in placing in a
peer-reviewed journal (it is currently archived at www.museletter.com)-contains
significant theoretical insights, though it comes from a relatively unknown
researcher working with easily available historical materials. One cannot
help but wonder why Diamond, with the considerable resources of a major
publisher and willing graduate students, could not have done much more
to advance the theory of collapse.
A second disappointment that readers already familiar with the subject
matter may encounter with Collapse is the perception that, while the author
is warning us that modern industrial civilization may be headed the way
of the Classic Maya or the Easter Islanders, he seems satisfied with this
warning. He offers, in essence, a message of the type we have come to
expect: Humanity is undermining its ecological viability, but there are
things we can do to turn the tide. Indeed, Diamond predictably devotes
the last section of his last chapter to "reasons for hope,"
leaving the reader with evidence for thinking that collapse will not occur
in our own instance after all. This excuses him from asking a question
that appears to be tugging at more minds, and with more urgency, every
day: What if it's already too late? Yes, if collapse can be averted, we
should of course be working toward that end. But suppose for a moment
that we have passed the point of no return, and that some form of collapse
is now inevitable. What should we be doing in that case?
If we simply regard the question as unthinkable (because its premise
is itself unthinkable), then we foreclose a discussion that could be extremely
important. In a moment I intend briefly to state three good reasons for
thinking that collapse is in fact unavoidable at this point. But even
if there is only a moderate likelihood that industrial society is headed
toward history's dustbin, shouldn't we be devoting at least some mental
effort toward planning for a survivable collapse? Shouldn't we be thinking
about what needs to be preserved so that future generations will have
the information, skills, and tools that they need in order to carry on?
Here are my three reasons for concluding that Diamond has in fact made
an extremely timid case for the likelihood of global industrial collapse;
there are certainly others.
1. Diamond does not even hint at the phenomenon of the imminent global
oil production peak. Even though he cites Paul Roberts' book the End of
Oil and Kenneth Deffeyes' Hubbert's Peak in a note on page 551, he shows
no understanding whatever of these authors' work. There is no discussion
of the fact that oil production capacity is declining rapidly in nearly
two dozen countries, while the world's reliance on oil for its essential
energy needs continues to grow with each passing year. This is not a minor
oversight. At least four independent studies now forecast that the global
oil peak is likely to occur as soon as 2005 and probably before 2010,
which means that there will not be enough time to invest in replacement
energy sources before the decline begins; nor can we be assured that adequate
replacement energy sources exist. In the estimation of a growing chorus
of informed observers, the oil peak is likely to be a trigger for global
economic crisis and the outbreak of a series of devastating resource wars.
2. At the same time, the global economic system and the world's monetary
system are becoming increasingly dysfunctional for other reasons. Currently,
the US dollar functions as the global reserve currency, and the dollar
(like most other currencies) is loaned into existence at interest. This
means that continual economic growth is structurally required in order
to stave off a currency crash. Yet infinite growth within a closed system
(e.g., the Earth) is impossible. So how long can growth continue? There
are strong signs that the American economy, and hence that of the entire
world, is headed soon toward a "correction" of unprecedented
proportions. US debt (in the forms of consumer debt, government debt,
and trade deficits) is at truly frightening levels and the American mortgage
and real estate bubbles appear ready to burst at any moment. If one looks
deeper, there are still other reasons to conclude that the global economy
has nearly reached fundamental and non-negotiable restrictions on expansion.
In his book The Limits of Business Development and Economic Growth (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005), business strategist Mats Larsson makes the point that
most of technology and business development in the past has had as its
goal the reduction of time and cost in manufacturing. But nothing can
be done at less than no time or at less than no cost. He cites the example
of the printing and distribution of books and other written media: with
these, Gutenberg famously reduced time and cost. Now, the Internet enables
the electronic reproduction and distribution of books, films, and music
at almost no cost and in almost no time. Similarly, labor cost in China
is probably now at close to the absolute theoretical minimum. Larsson's
conclusion is that economic growth is perilously close to its ultimate
bounds, even when resource constraints are not factored into the calculation.
3. Averting collapse would require changes that must be championed and
partly implemented by political leaders: unprecedented levels of national
and international cooperation would be needed in order to allocate essential
resources in order to avert deadly competition for them as they become
scarce, and our economic and monetary systems would have to be reformed
despite pressure from the entrenched interests of wealthy elites. Yet
the American political regime-the most important in the world, given US
military supremacy and economic clout-has evidently become terminally
dysfunctional, and is now the province of a group of extremist ideologues
who apparently have virtually no interest in international cooperation
or economic reform. This is a fact widely recognized outside the US, and
by many sober observers within the country. The problem is not merely
that politicians are being bought and sold by corporations (this has been
going on for decades), but that the entire system has been hijacked by
partisans who pride themselves on making decisions solely on the basis
of ideology and in supreme disdain for "reality." At the same
time, the US electoral system has been eviscerated and commandeered by
a single party (using various forms of systematic fraud that have now
become endemic), so that a peaceful rectification of the situation by
a vote of the people has become virtually impossible. Moreover, the American
media have been so cowed and co-opted by the dominant party that most
of the citizenry is blissfully unaware of its plight and is thus extremely
unlikely to vigorously oppose the current trends. Diamond shows some limited
awareness of this truly horrifying state of affairs, and he realizes that
wise political leadership would be essential to the avoidance of collapse.
Yet he refuses to draw the obvious conclusion: the most powerful of the
world's current leaders are every bit as irrational as the befuddled kings
and chiefs who brought the Maya and Easter Islanders to their ruin.
None of these three problems can be solved quickly or easily if at all;
each of the first two is by itself a sufficient cause for collapse; the
third will effectively preclude any attempts to reverse the slide toward
international chaos; and all three will no doubt rebound upon each other
synergistically.
Diamond's subtitle, "How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,"
implies that, for modern industrial societies, success is still an option.
Yet if "success" implies the ability to maintain current population
levels and current per-capita rates of consumption, then we may already
have exhausted our choices. We cannot replace dwindling non-renewable
resources, we cannot make industrial wastes disappear, we cannot quickly
restabilize the global climate, and we cannot revive species that have
become extinct.
What, then, are Diamond's "reasons for hope"? He offers only
two: first, that our problems are, in principle at least, solvable; and
second, that environmental thinking has become more common in recent years.
But for hope to be realized, he says, modern societies will have to make
good choices in two areas. We will need "courageous, successful long-term
planning," which, he says, is indeed being undertaken by some governments
and political leaders, at least some of the time. What Diamond doesn't
mention is that the single instance of long-term planning that might have
made all the difference to the survival of our civilization-a sustained
choice by the US to wean itself from fossil fuels, beginning in the 1970s
at the time of the first oil shocks-was not followed through; as a result,
economic crises and resource wars are now virtually assured. We will also,
he says, need to reconsider some of our core values, and he cites a few
examples of modern societies that have done this (e.g., over two decades
ago China decided to restrict the traditional freedom of individual reproductive
choice). However, Diamond may be underestimating the degree to which some
of the "values" that we would have to change (such as our mania
for continuous economic growth) are not mere preferences or easily reversible
government policies, but necessities structurally reinforced by multiple
layers of institution, privilege, and power.
Perhaps the message of Collapse would have had more of a cutting-edge
quality if the book had appeared in the early 1970s, when mere warnings
were appropriate. Collapse might have added to the chorus of voices raised
on the first Earth Day, and might have helped drive home the importance
of the often-misrepresented Limits to Growth study.
Today, however, we are living in a different era. Collapse has, in effect,
already begun, even though we have seen only the first of the trigger
events that will eventually rivet public attention on the cascading process
of disintegration taking place around us. The question is no longer that
of avoiding collapse, but rather of making the best of it.
One of the many virtues of Joseph Tainter's book was that he dissipated
some of the pejorative cloud surrounding the word collapse, defining it
simply as a reduction in social complexity. This helps us to see that
the process can manifest in different ways: it can occur slowly or quickly
(usually the process takes decades or even centuries); it can be complete
or partial; and it can be controlled or chaotic. Such an understanding
leads one to envision the possibility of a managed collapse.
Given Jared Diamond's emphasis on choice, it might have been helpful
if he had studied what people chose to do during previous periods of collapse,
and how certain actions helped or hindered personal survival and the survival
of culture.
In our own instance, efforts to manage the collapse might take several
forms. Initial work along these lines might be indistinguishable from
actions taken to try to prevent collapse-the sorts of things many people
have been doing at least since the 1970s: the active protest of war, the
protection of ecosystems and species, the defense of indigenous and traditional
cultures, and the adoption of lifestyles of voluntary simplicity.
Then, as fossil-fuel-based support infrastructures began to disintegrate,
other strategies might come to the fore: efforts to re-localize economies,
to build intentional communities, and to regain forgotten handcraft skills.
Like the European monks of the Middle Ages, forward-thinking groups with
useful knowledge and abilities could build cultural lifeboats-communities
of preservation and service that help surrounding regions cope with change
and stress.
It would be foolish to assert that such a program could avert all of
the potholes on the road down to a sustainable level of societal complexity;
however, if we do not make efforts to manage the process of economic and
societal contraction, it is easy to imagine collapse scenarios that would
be hellish indeed.
One hesitates to criticize too harshly a book that tries to tell the
world a truth that all too many refuse to hear. And yet this isn't the
book that it could have been. At this point in time, we could stand a
prominent book by an important author that finally announces what so many
of us know all too well: collapse has begun.
Such a message need not be fatalistic in tone, because fatalism implies
absence of choice. Diamond is right: we always have some control over
events, or at least our response to events. The choice we have now is
not as to whether our society will collapse, but how. Ladies and gentleman,
the ship is sinking. I suggest that we set aside our immediate plans and
consider how best to proceed, given the facts.
--
Richard Heinberg is the author of Powerdown: Options and Actions for
a Post-Carbon World and The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial
Societies; he is a Core Faculty member of New College of California in
Santa Rosa.
February 22, 2005
Imperial Entropy
Collapse of the American Empire
By KIRKPATRICK SALE
Don't Be Fooled: Advanced and Rational Societies Can Commit Environmental
Suicide
By Johann Hari
The Independent UK
Wednesday 08 June 2005
The way our economy is structured actually encourages environmental
destruction.
When Tony Blair flew to Washington on Monday to discuss the rapid changes
to the earth's climate caused by man, it is a shame he could not make
a pit-stop on Easter Island. True, it is several thousand miles out
of the way, and the carbon emissions from the flight would have been
a further act of ecological destruction - but Easter Island is the most
vivid illustration of the stakes human beings face.
The grimacing statues of Easter Island have - over the past 2000 years
- witnessed the purest example in history of human beings committing
unwitting environmental suicide. The story is startlingly simple: the
human settlers on the island - living in perfect isolation from the
rest of the world - systematically destroyed their own habitat. In a
burst of over-development, they cut down their forests much faster than
they could grow back. The result? At first, the island was plunged into
war as different groups scrambled to seize the remaining natural resources
for themselves. They turned on their leaders and staged revolutions,
enraged that they had been misled into such a disaster. They even toppled
some of their famous statues, symbols of the despised former chiefs.
And then - finally - they were left with nothing. They went slowly mad,
committed mass cannibalism, and almost completely died out.
In his chilling new book Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or
Survive, the Pulitzer-prize winning geographer, Jared Diamond, describes
how some of the most advanced civilizations in history - like the Maya
- committed ecocide without realizing it. "What," he asks,
"were Easter Islanders saying as they cut down the last tree on
their island?" He dryly wonders if they said - as George Bush effectively
does now - "Jobs not trees!", or "Technology will solve
our problems; never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood." Perhaps
they said, "We need more research, not scare-mongering! What are
you, some kind of anti-Easter Island fanatic?"
It's a cute analogy, but the world of Bush and Blair is an infinity
away from these pre-modern disasters, isn't it? I would like to think
so - but, according to the world's leading climatologists, we must stop
kidding ourselves. Ecocide has happened before to advanced, rational
societies, and it can happen again. They warned yet again this week
that we seem to be five minutes away from environmental midnight, and
are now on-course for the most rapid increase in global temperatures
since the last Ice Age.
And Easter Island is salient for another reason. When the Islanders'
environment collapsed, they had nowhere to go; they were an isolated
island cut off from the rest of the world. Now - for the first time
- we have a global society where we are all dependent on each other.
There are no alternative environments, no human settlements beyond the
reach of the decisions we make. If our environment collapses, the human
game is up. As Diamond puts it: "For the first time in history,
we face the risk of a global decline." In this sense, we are all
Easter Islanders now.
Of course, the ultimate fate of the islanders is only the most extreme
possible end-game for global warming. (Even the Pentagon, however, has
mapped out the possibility of this scenario unfolding globally in the
21st century, in a report leaked last year). More likely is that environmental
damage - unless it is reversed now - will cause a drastic fall in living
standards and rapid shifts in the way we live. It is a recipe to Make
Poverty the Future.
Yet the Easter Islanders were not incomprehensibly mad. Like all societies
that unknowingly commit collective suicide - from the Maya to Norse
Greenlanders - they became afflicted with dozens of symptoms, each of
which seemed understandable at the time. They might sound familiar.
One is simple denial. They said: surely it can't be this bad? Doesn't
it always work out in the end? Aren't we decent people? This mentality
is common in Bush' s Republican Party, with swathes of oil cash and
bogus research to reinforce it. Another problem is group-think: if everyone
else is doing it, why shouldn't I? Why should I be the one who has to
stop?
But the biggest common factor in past ecocides has been the pursuit
of short-term "rational bad behavior" arising from clashes
of interests between people. For example, one logging company decides
to destroy great chunks of the Amazon, on the grounds that if they don't,
some other logging company will. It seems rational, but it places the
transitory and fragmentary interests of the individual or group ahead
of the long-term interests of us all. Destroying forests leads in the
long-term to a hideously irrational outcome for the world at a time
when we need all the carbon sinks we can find.
The way our economy is currently structured actually encourages this
environmental destruction. Try finding out how to get from London to
Edinburgh: you'll find that the most environmentally disastrous form
of travel (flight) is the cheapest, while the least damaging (train)
costs a fortune. This model is now spreading across the world.
So what can we do? Despair would be foolish, and a gift to the environmental
vandals; the solutions are all around us. For example, the British government
has announced that the G8 summit will be "carbon neutral":
the 4000 tonnes of carbon dioxide released will be counterbalanced by
the planting of trees in Africa that will absorb the same amount.
It's a smart gesture, but if the Prime Minister really wants to deal
with climate change, he should introduce legislation to make all our
air travel carbon neutral. It's simple: if you want to get a flight,
you should also have to pay the cost of the carbon debt you are building
up by paying for trees in Africa.
Some environmentalists call this "true cost economics": instead
of only paying the market price, you also pay the environmental price
for your actions. This would roughly double the cost of air travel.
Yes, that would be a pain, but dealing with runaway climate change will
cause far more grief.
It will take dozens of tough political decisions like this to fend off
disaster, but whenever these ideas are put to the Prime Minister, he
says they are morally attractive but "politically impossible."
Can't he see this is a classic example of "rational bad behavior"?
The British government is currently making plans for a massive expansion
of flight-paths and airports, and last year, this country's carbon emissions
actually rose. We are still trapped in a destructive mindset, never
mind the even-worse Americans. Recriminations against Bush aren't enough:
we have been living beyond our environmental means for too long as well.
The long and winding road to Easter Island is far from inevitable; but
every day we carry on polluting, we step further into the shadow of
those dark granite statues.
from the December 28, 2004 edition www.csmonitor.com/2004/1228/p15s01-bogn.html
How to succeed in history
Societies don't die by accident - they commit ecological suicide
By David Shi
Why did once flourishing societies collapse and disappear? Jared Diamond,
a Pulitzer Prize-winning geographer at UCLA, has spent much of his career
wrestling with this profound question. It is not merely a romantic mystery;
the answers, he believes, offer us the prospect of self-preservation.
"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" is remarkable
for its ambitious sweep and interpretive panache. Diamond studies four
ancient societies across space and time: Easter Island in Polynesia, the
native American Anasazi tribe in what is now the southwestern United States,
the Maya civilization in Central America, and the isolated Viking settlement
on the coast of Greenland. Although diverse in nature and context, these
four societies experienced what Diamond calls "ecocide," unintentional
ecological suicide.
COLLAPSE:
How Societies Choose
to Fail or Succeed
By Jared Diamond
Viking
575 pp., $29.95
For example, seafaring Polynesians settled on Easter Island 1,100 years
ago. They cut the trees for canoes and firewood and used logs to help
transport huge statues weighing as much as 80 tons. Eventually, they chopped
down all the forests, and their society collapsed in an epidemic of cannibalism.
By 1600, all of the trees and land birds on Easter Island were extinct.
"The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world,"
Diamond notes, "are chillingly obvious."
Diamond details how other societies pursued the same errors. But what
makes the issue doubly fascinating is that some ancient cultures have
found ways to persist for thousands of years. Japan, Java, and Tonga,
for example, have flourished. What factors made some societies implode
and others prosper?
Diamond, an evolutionary biologist trained in biochemistry and physiology,
deftly uses comparative methods and multidisciplinary tools - archaeology,
anthropology, paleontology, and botany - to marshal evidence that sustaining
societies over time depends primarily on the quality of human interaction
with the environment.
All of the vanished societies experienced environmental damage such as
deforestation, soil erosion, the intrusion of salt water, or overhunting
game animals. The second common factor was climate change, such as cooling
temperatures or increased aridity. Add to that mix hostile neighbors,
rapid population growth, and a loss of trading partners, and few societies
can survive for long.
In each case, though, what ultimately caused ecocide was a series of flawed
responses to societal crises. Environmental degradation does not ensure
collapse. A society's fate, Diamond concludes, depends upon how it manages
challenging situations.
He reveals, for instance, how the Vikings who settled in Greenland after
AD 984 established a pastoral economy, raising sheep, goats, and cattle.
They also hunted caribou and seal, and developed a flourishing trade in
walrus ivory with Norway. But 300 years later, the Vikings vanished from
Greenland. Documentary sources along with physical evidence reveal that
their settlements gradually experienced deforestation and soil erosion.
A colder climate in the 14th and 15th centuries impeded commerce with
Norway and reduced the production of hay, which diminished their herds.
At the same time that the Vikings were being cut off from Norway, the
Inuits began attacks on the Norse settlements in Greenland. Cultural prejudices
prevented the Vikings from adopting Inuit technologies, such as harpoons,
so they could not harvest whales. Nor were they willing to mimic the Inuits
in developing dog sleighs, sealskin kayaks, and seagoing boats. As a result
of these cultural prejudices, by 1440 the Vikings had all died out in
Greenland, whereas the Inuits survive to this day.
Diamond's perspective is not solely historical. He also discusses contemporary
developments in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, China, and Australia, as well
as in Montana, a state that once was among the wealthiest in the nation
but now struggles with poverty, population decline, and environmental
problems.
Diamond complements his sobering analysis of collapsed civilizations with
more uplifting examples of societies that have found ways to sustain themselves
without overexploiting their environments.
What determines a society's fate, Diamond concludes, is how well its leaders
and citizens anticipate problems before they become crises, and how decisively
a society responds. Such factors may seem obvious, yet Diamond marshals
overwhelming evidence of the short-sightedness, selfishness, and fractiousness
of many otherwise robust cultures. He reveals that many leaders were (and
are) so absorbed with their own pursuit of power that they lost sight
of festering systemic problems.
Today, Diamond observes, the world is "on a nonsustainable course,"
but he remains a "cautious optimist." The problems facing us
are stern, he notes, but not insoluble. They demand stiff political will,
a commitment to long-term thinking, and a willingness to make painful
changes in what we value.
The fact that the United States over the past 30 years has reduced major
air pollutants by a quarter at the same time that energy consumption and
population have risen 40 percent gives Diamond hope. So does the success
of many nations in slowing their rates of population growth.
He concludes, "We have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes
of distant peoples and past peoples." But the question remains, will
we?
• David Shi is the president of Furman University in Greenville,
S.C.
Disasters waiting to happen
The tsunami may have been an act of nature, but further environmental
catastrophes caused by humans will be much worse, says Jared Diamond
Thursday January 6, 2005
The Guardian
The events of Boxing day have shown us all how fragile our existence
is. The tsunami was an unavoidable natural disaster, which could happen
anytime. But not all disasters are so beyond our control. Our own actions
may provoke global catastrophes just as forceful as those in the Indian
ocean.
Take the human impact on sea levels. Imagine you live on an island safely
15 feet above sea level. If human-induced climate change raises those
levels by only a few feet, the difference man has made could spell disaster
in the event of a 12ft tsunami. We cannot stop another tsunami. But the
threats of man-made environmental collapse are now more pressing than
ever.
Ask some ivory-tower academic ecologist, who knows a lot about the environment
but never reads a newspaper and has no interest in politics, to name the
overseas countries facing some of the worst problems of environmental
stress, overpopulation, or both. The ecologist would likely answer: "That's
a no-brainer, it's obvious. Your list of environmentally stressed or overpopulated
countries should surely include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi, Haiti,
Indonesia, Iraq, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, and Somalia, plus others".
Then ask a first world politician, who knows nothing and cares less about
the environment and population problems, to name the world's worst trouble
spots: countries where state government has already been overwhelmed and
has collapsed, or is now at risk of collapsing, or has been wracked by
recent civil wars; and countries that, as a result of those problems,
are also creating problems for us rich first world countries. Surprise,
surprise: the two lists would be very similar.
Today, just as in the past, countries that are environmentally stressed,
overpopulated, or both, become at risk of getting politically stressed,
and of their governments collapsing. When people are desperate, undernourished,
and without hope, they blame their governments, which they see as responsible
for or unable to solve their problems. They try to emigrate at any cost.
They fight each other over land. They kill each other. They start civil
wars. They figure that they have nothing to lose, so they become terrorists,
or they support or tolerate terrorism.
The results of these transparent connections are far-reaching and devastating.
There are genocides, such as those that exploded in Bangladesh, Burundi,
Indonesia, and Rwanda; civil wars or revolutions, as in most of the countries
on the lists; calls for the dispatch of troops, as to Afghanistan, Haiti,
Indonesia, Iraq, the Philippines, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, and Somalia;
the collapse of central government, as has already happened in Somalia
and the Solomon Islands; and overwhelming poverty, as in all of the countries
on these lists.
Hence the best predictors of modern "state failures" prove to
be measures of environmental and population pressure, such as high infant
mortality, rapid population growth, a high percentage of the population
in their late teens and 20s, and hordes of young men without job prospects
and ripe for recruitment into militias.
Those pressures create conflicts over shortages of land, water, forests,
fish, oil, and minerals. They create not only chronic internal conflict,
but also emigration of political and economic refugees, and wars between
countries arising when authoritarian regimes attack neighbours in order
to divert popular attention from internal stresses.
In short, it is not a question open for debate whether the collapses of
past societies have modern parallels and offer any lessons to us. Instead,
the real question is how many more countries will undergo them.
As for terrorists, you might object that many of the political murderers,
suicide bombers, and 9/11 terrorists were educated and moneyed rather
than uneducated and desperate. That's true, but they still depended on
a desperate society for support and toleration. Any society has its murderous
fanatics; the US produced its own Timothy McVeigh and its Harvard-educated
Theodore Kaczinski. But well-nourished societies offering good job prospects,
like the US, Finland, and South Korea, don't offer broad support to their
fanatics.
The problems of all these environmentally devastated, overpopulated, distant
countries become our own problems because of globalisation. We are accustomed
to thinking of globalisation in terms of us rich advanced first worlders
sending our good things, such as the internet and Coca-Cola, to those
poor backward third worlders. But globalisation means nothing more than
improved worldwide communications, which can convey many things in either
direction; globalisation is not restricted to good things carried only
from the first to the third world. We in the US are no longer the isolated
Fortress America to which some of us aspired in the 1930s; instead, we
are tightly and irreversibly connected to overseas countries. The US is
the world's leading importer nation, we import many necessities and many
consumer products, as well as being the world's leading importer of investment
capital. We are also the world's leading exporter, particularly of food
and of our own manufactured products. Our own society opted long ago to
become interlocked with the rest of the world. That's why political instability
anywhere in the world now affects us, our trade routes, and our overseas
markets and suppliers.
We are so dependent on the rest of the world that if, 30 years ago, you
had asked a politician to name the countries most geopolitically irrelevant
to our interests, the list might surely have begun with Afghanistan and
Somalia, yet they subsequently became recognised as important enough to
warrant our dispatching US troops. The US can no longer get away with
advancing its own self-interests, at the expense of the interests of others.
When distant Somalia collapsed, in went American troops; when the former
Yugoslavia and Soviet Union collapsed, out went streams of refugees to
all of Europe and the rest of the world; and when changed conditions of
society, settlement, and lifestyle spread new diseases in Africa and Asia,
those diseases moved over the globe.
We need to realise that there is no other planet to which we can turn
for help, or to which we can export our problems. Instead, we need to
learn to live within our means.
B y world standards, southern California's environmental problems are
relatively mild. Jokes by east coast Americans to the contrary, this is
not an area at imminent risk of a societal collapse. Los Angeles is well
known for some problems, especially its smog, but most of its environmental
and population problems are modest or typical compared to those of other
leading first world cities.
I moved here in 1966. Thus, I have seen how southern California has changed
over the last 39 years, mostly in ways that make it less appealing.
The complaints voiced by virtually everybody in LA are those directly
related to our growing and already high population: our incurable traffic
jams, the very high price of housing, the long distances, of up to two
hours and 60 miles one way, over which people commute daily in their cars
between home and work. Los Angeles became the US city with the worst traffic
in 1987 and has remained so every year since then.
No cure is even under serious discussion for these problems, which will
only get worse. There is no end in sight to how much worse Los Angeles's
problems of congestion will become, because millions of people put up
with far worse traffic in other cities.
Environmental and population problems have been undermining the economy
and the quality of life in southern California. They are in large measure
ultimately responsible for our water shortages, power shortages, garbage
accumulation, school crowding, housing shortages and price rises, and
traffic congestion. However, there are many reasons commonly advanced
to dismiss the importance of environmental problems. These objections
are often posed in the form of simplistic one-liners. Here are some of
the commonest ones:
"The environment has to be balanced against the economy"
This portrays environmental concerns as a luxury but puts the truth backwards.
Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run
and in the long run; cleaning up or preventing those messes saves us huge
sums.
Just think of the damage caused by agricultural weeds and pests, the value
of lost time when we are stuck in traffic, the financial costs resulting
from people getting sick or dying from environmental toxins, cleanup costs
for toxic chemicals, the steep increase in fish prices due to depletion
of fish stocks, and the value of farmland damaged or ruined by erosion
and salinisation. It adds up to a few hundred million dollars per year
here, a billion dollars there, another billion over here, and so on for
hundreds of different problems.
For instance, the value of "one statistical life" in the US
- ie, the cost to the US economy resulting from the death of an average
American whom society has gone to the expense of rearing and educating
but who dies before a lifetime of contributing to the national economy
- is usually estimated at around $5m (£2.6m). Even if one takes
the conservative estimate of annual US deaths due to air pollution as
130,000, then deaths due to air pollution cost us about $650bn (£340bn)
per year. That illustrates why the US Clean Air Act of 1970, although
its cleanup measures do cost money, has yielded estimated net health savings
(benefits in excess of costs) of about $1 trillion per year, due to saved
lives and reduced health costs.
"Technology will solve our problems"
Underlying this expression of faith is the implicit assumption that, from
tomorrow onwards, technology will function primarily to solve existing
problems and will cease to create new problems. Those with such faith
also assume that the new technologies now under discussion will succeed,
and that they will do so quickly enough to make a big difference soon.
But actual experience is the opposite. Some dreamed-of new technologies
succeed, while others don't. Those that do succeed typically take a few
decades to develop and be phased in widely: think of gas heating, electric
lighting, cars and airplanes, television and computers.
New technologies, whether or not they succeed in solving the problem they
were designed to solve, regularly create unanticipated new problems. Technological
solutions to environmental problems are routinely far more expensive than
preventive measures to avoid creating the problem in the first place:
for example, the billions of dollars of damages and cleanup costs associated
with major oil spills, compared to the modest cost of safety measures
to minimise the risks of a major oil spill.
All of our current problems are unintended negative consequences of our
existing technology. What makes you think that, as of January 1, 2006,
for the first time in human history, technology will miraculously stop
causing new unanticipated problems while it just solves those it previously
produced?
A good example is chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). The coolant gases formerly
used in refrigerators and air conditioners were toxic and could prove
fatal if the appliance leaked while the homeowner was asleep at night.
Hence it was hailed as a great advance when CFCs (alias freons) were developed
as synthetic refrigerant gases.
They are odourless, non-toxic, and highly stable under ordinary conditions
at the Earth's surface, so that initially no bad side effects were observed
or expected. But in 1974 it was discovered that in the stratosphere they
are broken down by intense ultraviolet radiation to yield highly reactive
chlorine atoms that destroy a significant fraction of the ozone layer
protecting us and all other living things against lethal ultraviolet effects.
Unfortunately, the quantity of CFCs already in the atmosphere is sufficiently
large, and their breakdown sufficiently slow, that they will continue
to be present for many decades after the eventual end of all CFC production.
"We can switch to electric cars, or to solar energy"
Optimists who make such claims ignore the unforeseen difficulties and
long transition times regularly involved. For instance, one area in which
switching based on not-yet-perfected new technologies has repeatedly been
touted as promising to solve a major environmental problem is automobiles.
The current hope for a breakthrough involves hydrogen cars and fuel cells,
which are technologically in their infancy. Equally, there is the motor
industry's recent development of fuel-efficient hybrid gas/electric cars.
However, the automobile industry's simultaneous development of SUVs (Sports
Utility Vehicles), which have been outselling hybrids by a big margin
more than offset their fuel savings. The net result of these two technological
breakthroughs has been that the fuel consumption and exhaust production
of the American car fleet has been going up rather than down.
Another example is the hope that renewable energy sources, such as wind
and solar energy, may solve the energy crisis. These technologies do indeed
exist; many Californians now use solar energy to heat their swimming pools,
and wind generators are already supplying about one-sixth of Denmark's
energy needs. However, wind and solar energy have limited applicability
because they can be used only at locations with reliable winds or sunlight.
The recent history of technology shows that conversion times for adoption
of major switches, such as oil lamps to gas lamps to electric lights,
require several decades. It is indeed likely that energy sources other
than fossil fuels will make increasing contributions to our motor transport
and energy generation, but this is a long-term prospect.
"The world's food problems will be solved by more equitable distribution
and genetically modified (GM) crops"
The obvious flaw is that first world citizens show no interest in eating
less so that third world citizens could eat more. While first world countries
are willing occasionally to export food to mitigate starvation occasioned
by some crisis (such as a drought or war), their citizens have shown no
interest in paying on a regular basis to feed billions of third world
citizens.
If that did happen but without effective overseas family planning programs,
which the US government currently opposes on principle, the result would
just mean an increase in population proportional to an increase in available
food.
Genetically modified food varieties by themselves are equally unlikely
to solve the world's food problems. In addition, virtually all GM crop
production at present is of just four crops (soy-beans, corn, canola,
and cotton) not eaten directly by humans but used for animal fodder, oil,
or clothing, and grown in six temperate-zone countries or regions. Reasons
are the strong consumer resistance to eating GM foods and the fact that
companies developing GM crops can make money by selling their products
to rich farmers in mostly affluent temperate-zone countries, but not by
selling to poor farmers in developing tropical countries. Hence the companies
have no interest in investing heavily to develop GM cassava, millet, or
sorghum for farmers in developing nations.
"Just look around you: there is absolutely no sign of imminent collapse"
For affluent western citizens, conditions have indeed been getting better,
and public health measures have on the average lengthened lifespans in
the third world as well. But lifespan alone is not a sufficient indicator:
billions of third world citizens, constituting about 80% of the world's
population, still live in poverty, near or below the starvation level.
Even in the US, an increasing fraction of the population is at the poverty
level and lacks affordable medical care, and all proposals to change this
situation have been politically unacceptable. In addition, all of us know
as individuals that we don't measure our economic wellbeing just by the
present size of our bank accounts: we also look at our direction of cash
flow.
When you look at your bank statement and you see a positive £5,000
balance, you don't smile if you then realise that you have been experiencing
a net cash drain of £200 per month for the last several years, and
at that rate you have just two years and one month left before you have
to file for bankruptcy.
The same principle holds for our national economy, and for environmental
and population trends. The prosperity that the richer nations enjoy at
present is based on spending down its environmental capital in the bank.
It makes no sense to be content with our present comfort when it is clear
that we are currently on a non-sustainable course.
"Why should we believe the fearmongering environmentalists this time?"
Yes, some predictions by environmentalists have proved incorrect, but
it is misleading to look selectively for environmentalist predictions
that were proved wrong, and not also to look for environmentalist predictions
that proved to be right, or anti-environmentalist predictions that proved
wrong.
We comfortably accept a certain frequency of false alarms and extinguished
fires, because we understand that fire risks are uncertain and hard to
judge when a fire has just started, and that a fire that does rage out
of control may exact high costs in property and human lives. No sensible
person would dream of abolishing the town fire department just because
a few years went by without a big fire. Nor would anyone blame a homeowner
for calling the fire department on detecting a small fire, only to succeed
in quenching the fire before the fire truck's arrival.
We must expect some environmentalist warnings to turn out to be false
alarms, otherwise we would know that our environmental warning systems
were much too conservative. The multi-billion-dollar costs of many environmental
problems justify a moderate frequency of false alarms.
"The population crisis is already solving itself"
While the prediction that world population will level off at less than
double its present level may or may not prove to be true, it is at present
a realistic possibility. However, we can take no comfort in this possibility,
for two reasons: by many criteria, even the world's present population
is living at a non-sustainable level; and the larger danger that we face
is not just of a two-fold increase in population, but of a much larger
increase in human impact if the third world's population succeeds in attaining
a first world living standard.
It is surprising to hear some first world citizens nonchalantly mentioning
the world's adding "only" two-and-a-half billion more people
(the lowest estimate that anyone would forecast) as if that were acceptable,
when the world already holds that many people who are malnourished and
living on less than $3 (£1.60) per day.
"Environmental concerns are a luxury affordable just by affluent
first world yuppies"
This view is one that I have heard mainly from affluent first world yuppies
lacking experience of the third world. In all my experience of Indonesia,
Papua New Guinea, East Africa, Peru, and other third world countries with
growing environmental problems and populations, I have been impressed
that their people know very well how they are being harmed. They know
it because they immediately pay the penalty, in forms such as loss of
free timber for their houses, massive soil erosion, and (the tragic complaint
that I hear incessantly) their inability to afford clothes, books, and
school fees for their children.
Another view that is widespread among affluent first world people, but
which they will rarely express openly, is that they themselves are managing
just fine at carrying on with their lifestyles despite all those environmental
problems, which really don't concern them because the problems fall mainly
on third world people (though it is not politically correct to be so blunt).
Actually, the rich are not immune to environmental problems. Chief executive
officers of big western companies eat food, drink water, breathe air,
and have (or try to conceive) children, like the rest of us. While they
can usually avoid problems of water quality by drinking bottled water,
they find it much more difficult to avoid being exposed to the same problems
of food and air quality as the rest of us. Living disproportionately high
on the food chain, at levels at which toxic substances become concentrated,
they are at more rather than less risk of reproductive impairment due
to ingestion of or exposure to toxic materials, possibly contributing
to their higher infertility rates and the increasing frequency with which
they require medical assistance in conceiving.
In addition, in the long run, rich people do not secure their own interests
and those of their children if they rule over a collapsing society and
merely buy themselves the privilege of being the last to starve or die.
As for first world society as a whole, its resource consumption accounts
for most of the world's total consumption that has given rise to the impacts
described at the beginning of this chapter. Our totally unsustainable
consumption means that the first world could not continue for long on
its present course, even if the third world didn't exist and weren't trying
to catch up to us.
"If those environmental problems become desperate, it will be at
some time far off in the future, after I die"
In fact, at current rates most or all of the dozen major sets of environmental
problems discussed at the beginning of this chapter will become acute
within the life-time of young adults now alive.
Most of us who have children consider the securing of our children's future
as the highest priority to which to devote our time and our money. We
pay for their education and food and clothes, make wills for them, and
buy life insurance for them, all with the goal of helping them to enjoy
good lives 50 years from now. It makes no sense for us to do these things
for our individual children, while simultaneously doing things undermining
the world in which our children will be living 50 years from now.
This paradoxical behaviour is one of which I personally was guilty, because
I was born in the year 1937, hence before the birth of my children I too
could not take seriously any event (like global warming or the end of
the tropical rainforests) projected for the year 2037. I shall surely
be dead before that year, and even the date 2037 struck me as unreal.
However, when my twin sons were born in 1987, I realized with a jolt:
2037 is the year in which my kids will be my own age of 50. It's not an
imaginary year! What's the point of willing our property to our kids if
the world will be in a mess then anyway?
About the author
Professor of physiology at UCLA since 1966, Jared Diamond developed a
parallel career in the ecology and evolution of New Guinea birds while
in his twenties, then added a professorship in geography when, in his
fifties, his interest grew in environmental history. Boston-born son of
a physician father and teacher/musician/linguist mother, he is a Pulitzer
prize-winning author of bestselling books including The Third Chimpanzee
and Why is Sex Fun?. He and his wife Marie Cohen, a clinical psychologist
at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine have twin 17-year-old sons. In
his spare time he watches birds and is learning his 12th language, Italian.
Is Jared right?
The author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel will be talking live
online on Thursday January 20 at 3pm. Post your questions and messages
for Jared Diamond now here.
Read part two of this article
· Extracted from Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive
by Jared Diamond published by Allen Lane on January 17 at £20. To
obtain a copy at the offer price of £18.40 with free UK postage
call the Guardian book service on 0870 836 0875 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop
Ronald Wright: when CIVILIZATIONS collapse
Interview by Briony Penn in May 2005 - FOCUS (www.focusonline.ca)
COASTLINES: Writers, writing, and books from the West Coast and beyond
This winter, the 2004 Massey Lectures --broadcast to critical acclaim
on CBC Radio --featured the work of historian and novelist Ronald Wright.
He was chosen by the CBC and Massey College to expand on ideas developed
in his award-winning fiction and nonfiction, such as A Scientific Romance,
Stolen Continents and Time Among the Maya, writings that often explore
historical and archaeological evidence for what causes the downfall of
civilizations. The lectures are published under the title A Short History
of Progress by Anansi Press. http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey/massey2004.html
<http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/media/2004_massey.ram>
Listen to A Short History of Progress Part One (real player)
Last year, Wright and his anthropologist wife Janice Boddy moved to Salt
Spring Island, though Wright's forebears have lived in BC for a century.
I first met Wright at a local government meeting, where he gave an impassioned
speech urging local politicians to shut down an illegal quarry operating
in the headwaters of a watershed near his home. In between protests and
stops on his book tour across North America, Wright and I discussed the
ideas in his book and how they influence his local activism.
BP: What is A Short History of Progress about?
RW: The title is deliberately playful in that human progress often turns
out to have a short history. Most civilizations last about 1000 years
from start to finish, as did the Sumerians, Easter Islanders, Maya and
the Romans, all of whom I looked at in the book. Some go more quickly
and a few survive longer, but as a general rule of thumb, 1000 years is
all they last. And that isn't a very long period given that modern humans
--people exactly like ourselves-- have existed for more than 100,000 years.
BP: The premise of the book is that civilizations keep falling into what
you call "progress traps." What are they?
RW: A progress trap is something that starts out as a good idea but ultimately
leads people down a dead end.
Take a seductive idea like irrigation, which in the short-term is a good
thing. People benefit from the idea, but in the long term it proves disasštrous,
which is what happened to the Sumerians. They invented irrigation to grow
wheat in the desert, but what they didn't realize is that the salt was
getting left behind in the soil as the water evaporated in the hot sun.
Over centuries, their fields turned saline, their yields declined and
they had to switch crops. In the end, their civilization fell because
they'd ruined their land. That is a classic progress trap, and history
is full of them.
BP: You started off as a student of archaeology; is that what got you
looking at the collapse of civilizations?
RW: Obviously, archaeologists are dealing with failed civilizations.
When you see ruins, it's usually because people screwed up in some way.
One of the civilizations I studied as a graduate student was the ancient
Maya in Guatemala and southern Mexico. They are another classic case of
people who had a brilliant civilization, which collapsed due to the overuse
of the environment and overpopulation.
I came to realize that we seem to be doing the same thing on a worldwide
scale as these ancient civilizations did in their small parts of the world.
Then, they were more or less isolated from each other, so if they destroyed
their local envišronment, people elsewhere could carry on. Now, we have
just one big civilization.
BP: Why do you refer to civilizations as "the great experiment?"
RW: The great experiment is the "invention" of agriculture-actually
it was an accident, or series of steps-which allowed civilizations to
arise. I mean civilization in the anthropological sense--big societies
with large populations, cities, temples, kings, professions, armies and
statešlevel organization.
The past shows us that the experiment tends to work well for a while,
then fails. Now, because the whole world is interdependent through international
trade, all our eggs are in one basket. This is very dangerous. The experiment
has been too successful. There are more than six billion people on this
planet, four times the number that existed only a century ago.
BP: You attribute the problem to the fact that our cultural evoluštion
has outstripped our physical evolution. What do you mean?
RW: Biological change is slow. We have not changed physically, either
in our skeletal structure or in the size of our brain, for at least 50,000
years. We evolved as ice-age hunters. The change in our ways of life since
then is through the growth of culture, and the ability to pass on the
growing complexity of knowledge from generation to generation. You could
say that culture is our "software." So we are running 21st century
software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago. That's part of our
trouble. We are smart enough to get ourselves into trouble, but not smart
enough to get ourselves out of it.
Culture is accelerating. The amount of cultural change in a decade now
is far more than the change of a lifetime two centuries ago. We can't
see far enough ahead to control or even foresee the consequences of what
we are doing.
What really worries me, and is at the heart of this book, is the idea
that change is running out of control. We no longer have control over
our technologies, or our population. We keep inventing new technologies,
such as genetic engineering, or before that, atomic weapons and power,
whose consequences we can neither control nor foresee. We have a hard
time giving up our toys.
BP: Given that we have the minds of Paleolithic hunters and gatherers,
what is it about our minds that leads us so easily into these progress
traps?
RW: I think it is the difference between short-term and long-term thinking.
We tend to hope for the best and think that things will turn out well.
If we've -had one good year or one technology has served us well, we think
next year will be even better.
Evolution has produced a creature that has benefited from being extremely
good at solving short-term problems. As hunters, we are very clever at
ambushing game, but not so clever at long-range planning. The Sumerians
didn't see that their fields were going to salt up. Even when they did
understand the trouble, they failed to make intelligent adjustments towards
conservation, to reduce the load on nature of their extravagant building
projects. They didn't do that, nor did the Maya, nor the Romans.
The only thing that saved the Egyptians and the Chinese was their generous
ecologies, like the annual flooding of the Nile, that subsidized their
mistakes. Civilizations have gone full throttle, hoping nature will take
care of itself. Our inherent flaw is that we just aren't careful enough.
BP: It seems to be extraordinary that we have been so seduced by the
great experiment. As the archaeological record suggests, civilization
for the vast majority of people meant harder work, more monotonous work,
less leisure time, less security, and we lived shorter lives with a less
nutritious diet, so why did we change?
RW: People didn't have a choice once they started down that path because
the first progress trap was the perfection of hunting. Upper Paleolithic
hunters got so good that they were killing game faster than it could breedšthey
were already spending nature's "capital," not the interest on
the capital. So they got caught in this trap that as they became better
hunters, they were putting more food on the table. This led to the women
having more babies so they had to go out and kill more game. When they
got to the stage of over-killing the game, the survivors were forced to
look for new food sources. Gathering developed into gardening and gardening
developed into large-scale agriculture. As people switched, the food supply
did increase but it was more monotonous and less diverse. At that point,
there was no going back; for everyone except the upper classes, the natural
diversity of wild food was gone.
BP: That is an interesting fact-that there hasn't been been one new staple
food crop developed since the Neolithic.
RW: All of the big food crops that feed us today (wheat, corn, potatoes,
rice, etc.) were developed by prehistoric people in the early stages of
the development of civilization. For all the boasting about the new varieties
of the green revolution in the 1960s, or genetically modified organisms
of today, modern scientists have not developed a single staple crop from
scratch.
BP: In addition to not being able to think long-term, you also state
that we have an evolutionary weakness for "ideological pathologies."
What does that mean?
RW: There is a susceptibility of human societies to crazy delusions.
These tend to be of a religious nature and anthropologists call these
delusions, or runaway ideas that cause problems, "ideological pathologies."
One example would be the way the Easter Islanders devoted all the resources
from their small island to putting up statues to their ancestors. It got
to the point where they were prepared to cut down the last tree to put
up the last statue and not save any trees even for canoes to leave the
island. After deforestation and population collapse, they had few options
but cannibalism. They had been seduced by this mania.
It is easy to say, "Well yes, they were primitive people,"
but right now, we are seeing the same thing happening amongst the religious
right in the most powerful nation on Earth, the United States. Back in
the Reagan administration, the Secretary of the Interior got up in front
of Congress and said, "You don't have to worry about passing laws
to save the environment because it won't be long before the Lord returns."
These ideas are very much at work in the Bush administration too. There
is an enormous influence from fundamentalist messianic Christians who
think God will come down and clean up our mess. I don't want to dump on
anyone's religion, but when delusions like this dictate public policy,
they are extremely dangerous.
BP: Why is it that civilizations, like the Romans, tend to shift from
democratic republics to empires as resources get low?
RW: The American Republic seems to be more or less where the Roman Republic
was when Caesar came along. When democracies embark on conquests, you
often see democratic institutions withering and power passing into military
hands. The Americans are trying to impose their will all over the world,
and that is imperialism. While focusing on terrorism and national security,
they are ignoring the real problems posed by the progress traps we are
walking into.
If we had a catastrophic nuclear war, for example, we will have a trap
snapping shut on us in minutes. Even without that, we have depletion of
fisheries and farmland, pollution of land and water, overpopulation, with
half the world living in unhealthy malnourished conditions --a petri dish
for growing new diseases, obscene amounts of money going into fewer hands
and being used for military projects like the missile defense shield.
We are doing all the wrong things and making all the same mistakes as
those arrogant Maya kings and mad Roman emperors. We've done it all before.
I could describe my book as a police profile of a repeat offender.
BP: What about the response from the right, arguing that everything's
fine?
RW: You don't have to take my word that it's not. The Millennium Ecosystem
Assessment Report came out recently. This was a report put together over
the last five years by 1300 scientists from 95 nations. This isn't something
from greeny leftwing organizations; the US, UN and World Bank are involved.
Their findings are frightening and very sobering. For example, nearly
two-thirds of the world's ecosystems are already seriously degraded, 90
percent of fish are already gone from the oceans. Climate change is a
huge worry because we are destabilizing the Earth's climate, which can
lead to widespread crop failure. Extreme weather in several breadbasket
regions such as the prairies could lead to worldwide hunger.
BP: What do you think about Vancouver Island's resistance to collapse?
RW: We used to have enormous marine resources, but we have done terrible
things to them by silting up rivers from clear-cutting and releasing parasites
from fish farms. Although we have lots of water and a mild climate, we
don't have a lot of farmland. We are in the same situation as a country
like Peru, where only a tiny percentage of the land is arable. The ancient
Inca empire was smart enough to know that you don't build on that farmland.
We are doing exactly the opposite, allowing urban sprawl. The best land
in Canada is disappearing under shopping malls and subdivisions. That
is a really dumb mistake. All the civilizations that have done that in
the past have crashed, and they deserved to.
BP: Through the experiences of places like Easter Island we know that
islands are particularly vulnerable. What are your thoughts about the
long-term prospects of the island you live on, Salt Spring Island?
RW: There are lots of good things happening on Salt Spring, but even
here you have people making terrible uses of the land. Right nearby, someone
has been operating an unlawful quarry on a residential lot and blasting
away acres of hillside. This sort of thing destroys natural vegetation
and wildlife habitat, it causes topsoil to erode and silt up creeks, contaminating
drinking water. Even though the local government, the Islands Trust, has
a mandate "to preserve and protect," it has shown lethargy and
cowardice on this issue for years. If we can't organize our own little
societies here in the Gulf Islands, in a country as lucky and well-educated
as Canada, to be law-abiding and to use our land wisely and hand it down
to future generations in a healthy state, then what hope is there for
the rest of the planet?
BP: But you say in the concluding chapter of the book that hope is part
of our problem in that it drives us to invent new fixes for old messes,
which in turn create ever more dangerous messes, so what do you mean by
that?
RW: Irrational hope --merely hoping for the best instead of acting for
the best-- is what I mean there. We need to wake up and realize that we
are driving far too quickly for the range that we can see ahead. We need
to make do with what we have, rather than hoping for some new way to hit
the jackpot. This means redistributing the surplus wealth that is going
to space weapons, unnecessary wars and ridiculously large salaries for
heads of corporations.
The smart thing is to use the surplus to protect and refurbish the infrastructure
for the future. There is nothing stopping us doing that except lack of
political will. The UN calculated that with $40 billion US dollars we
could ease abject poverty and provide basic education and health to the
poor. Are we doing that? No. We have to work on the problems of how we
organize ourselves in a finite world so that we can all have a fair share.
Civilizations tend to behave like pyramid schemes. They only do well
when they expand. When they hit the natural limits, they tend to collapse.
We have now reached those limits. Humanity is living beyond its means.
So, we have to become frugal, clean up our act, and use wisdom, caution
and intelligence to get through the "progress trap" which now
threatens to foreclose on the entire experiment of civilization.
Writer, artist, educator, and environmentalist Briony Penn Brionyp@uvic.ca
is the author of A Year on the Wildside.
FOCUS Victoria's Monthly Magazine of People, Ideas and Culture (vol 17
#8) www.focusonline.ca May 2005
