COLLAPSE

How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed

 

by

 

Jared Diamond

 

Viking

Penguin Group, Inc.

375 Hudson Street

NY, NY 10014

 

Hardcover, 575 pages

ISBN 0-670-03337-5

 

Previously published in Bloomsbury Review

 

 

Homicide, suicide, and ecocide all a form of killing, either the killing of another, the killing of oneself, or the killing of a culture by killing the environment on which the culture depends. In Collapse, Jared Diamond has focused his sharp eye, and his just as sharp pen, on the causes of ecocide and cultural collapse. The basics we should know without reading his book: deforestation, soil erosion and salination, improper water management, excessive population growth. What he also concludes is that past societies have failed not so much from moral culpability, or blind or conscious selfishness, but the unforeseen, unintended consequence of their best efforts. And while a root cause of a culture s collapse may be environmental damage, it may also be caused by climate change, hostile neighbors, disruption of trade, and, largely, how a culture chooses to respond to its problems.

A classic example is Easter Island, where the inhabitants cleared away all trees both for farming and for sledges to drag stone statues from a quarry to the coastline each clan competing for the grandest statue, ultimately turning a subtropical forest into a wasteland with no trees, no fruit from trees, no firewood for fuel, no logs for dugout canoes which left them unable to fish at sea or emigrate. As Diamond asks, what were the Easter Islanders saying as they cut down the last tree on their island? Well, yes. And what will they say in Brazil when they cut down the last tree in the Amazon rain forest? What will Americans say when the last gallon of gas goes into a SUV? What will the world say when global warming melts the polar ice caps, floods coastal cities, and sends millions upon millions fleeing into the interior?

And what happened on Easter Island when they exhausted their resources and could not escape? Fierce competition among clans for limited resources, civil war, living in the safety of caves with entrances partly sealed to create a narrow opening for defense, a collapse in population. In place of their former sources of wild meat, islanders turned to the largest hitherto unused source available to them: humans. The oral traditions of Easter Island are obsessed with cannibalism, so much so that the most inflammatory taunt that could be snarled at an enemy was The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth.

The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter s dozen clans. Polynesian Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the Earth is today in space.

If you consider what happened on Easter Island as an irrelevant example of a small, overcrowded island, and antithetical to the much larger Earth as a whole, consider the recent genocide in Rwanda, substantially fueled by an excessive population competing for too few resources. The genocide in Rwanda wasn t just Hutu killing Tutsi, but also Hutu killing Hutu, with violence an opportunity and means to settle scores, and, for those who had nothing, they now had a chance, through violence and war, to get something they didn t have.

As G rard Prunier, a French scholar of East Africa, puts it, The decision to kill was of course made by politicians, for political reasons. But at least part of the reason why it was carried out so thoroughly by the ordinary rank-and-file peasants in their ingo [=family compound] was the feeling that there were too many people on too little land, and that with a reduction in their numbers, there would be more for the survivors.

 

Such a harsh reality may be challenged by some, and may be asserted by others as too simplistic, but Marie Antoinette was not the first nor the last person of wealth who failed to perceive the unrest of those who have nothing to lose by turning to violence when there is no other hope of betterment. As Prunier observed:

All these people who were about to be killed had land and at times cows. And somebody had to get these lands and those cows after the owners were dead. In a poor and increasingly overpopulated country this was not a negligible incentive. (p.328)

 

And if you cannot accept Prunier s observation, then consider what a Tutsi survivor said, alive only because he was gone when his wife and four of his five children were murdered:

The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs.

 

This is not a condemnation of the poor or the desperate, but the reality of not dealing with problems of too many people competing for too few resources. If our planet is an island in space, what happens when China and India compete aggressively with the West for oil and other resources? What happens if we, the parents whose children wear shoes to school, do nothing to share resources, create alternative resources, and help parents in third-world countries have shoes for their own children? As Diamond emphasizes, it is often the choices we make or don t make that determine our fate.

Take, for example, Haiti and the Dominican Republic two countries that share the same island. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, with its forests and soils depleted, while the Dominican Republic has preserved much of its forest and, compared to Haiti, is better off. Why? Cultural tradition and choices made by society. While the Dominican Republic made a top-down decision by a dictator to save its forests, there was no top-down or bottom-up decision in Haiti to do the same thing. Compare, also, how Easter Island chiefs erected ever larger statues at the expense of the environment; how the Anasazi elite in severe drought treated themselves to necklaces of 2,000 turquoise beads while the poor starved so much they were hunting mice, beheading them, and eating them whole; how Mayan kings sought to outdo each other with more impressive temples while overpopulation outstripped available resources; and how all of this is reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEO s. Like Michael Eisner at Disney making $90 million a year to run a fantasy world of entertainment for suburban Republicans. How many poor children could be fed, clothed, and educated with that kind of money?

The effect of cultural tradition and choices is further shown by the Norse in Greenland. While Greenland has lush pasture deep inside its deepest fjords, it also suffers the cold of the West Greenland Current flowing south from the Arctic. Drift ice can block access to the fjords even in summer, making travel by boat impossible most of the year. The temperature can also radically change, swinging quickly up and down within the same hour. It also varies greatly from year to year, affecting the ability to grow and store hay. For the Norse, who brought with them their tradition of raising sheep and cattle, such yearly swings in the climate were critical to their survival. Because their culture required stock animals, they had to adapt to survive when the climate changed for the worse with the Little Ice Age in 1200 CE. But if the environment changed, why didn t the Norse change to adapt to it? If we have a shortage of oil, why don t we drive more efficient vehicles? If the Middle East is politically unstable, threatening our source of oil, why don t we allocate resources to develop solar power and other alternative, sustainable energy sources?

The answer is in the choices we make. The Norse culture prized cows despite the fact cows were and are ill suited to Greenland s cold, requiring them to be in barns nine months of the year, and also requiring far more hay than any other animal, with hay being difficult to grow. Although sheep could remain outside for nine months of the year, tradition and culture held them in less esteem. And goats, even better suited to the environment than sheep because goats could digest the rough grass and twigs naturally available, were considered even less desirable. Thus, the most highly esteemed animal the cow was the most difficult to raise. And the most despised animal the goat was the easiest to raise. These cultural traits, imported from Norway, gave the Norse a disadvantage in an already hostile environment. Although they supplemented their protein diet by hunting caribou and seals, they did not domesticate caribou which the Lapps had done back in the north of their native Norway, nor did they ever adapt the simple and efficient hunting technology of the Inuit. And despite fjords teeming with fish, excavated garbage middens reveal barely any fish bones in them. In fact, in one midden, a mere two fish bones were found in a total of 35,000 bones.

Combined with these cultural choices was the fact society was controlled by a few chiefs on a few wealthy farms, so that any attempt at innovation, which threatened the interest of wealthy chiefs, could be quickly squelched. Compare this to our Congress, greatly influenced by lobbyists with large financial backing, and the extreme difficulty at obtaining reform.

The rigid Norse power structure was also aided by the rigidity and hierarchy of the Catholic church. Similar to the waste of resources in erecting large stone statues on Easter Island, the Norse also spent large resources to build churches all out of proportion to the size of the tiny society that erected and supported them. One church was built with lower walls made of carved stone, each weighing about three tons. We, too, face this kind of religious rigidity. Consider the opposition from fundamentalists to stem cell research. While we sit stranded in this new area of research, other countries are passing us by.

Another cultural rigidity for the Norse was their view of the Inuit. They were skraelings, meaning wretches, which probably reveals why the technology of the Inuit was never adapted by the Norse. For example, an Inuit parka is far better suited to the cold climate, but the Norse shunned such clothing in favor of less practical but more in style European dress. The Bush Administration s arrogance in dealing with other countries is not so far removed from this kind of cultural disdain.

While sea-ice might lock Norse ships and boats in fjords all winter and sometimes much of the summer, the Inuit could travel by dogsled and skin boats, including kayaks which were worn by the paddler because the seat included a waist-skirt joined to the hunter s parker to guarantee a waterproof seal from the icy Arctic water. The kayak itself was armed with a dart to throw at birds ( with not only an arrow point at the tip but three forward-facing sharp barbs lower on the dart shaft to hit the bird in case the tip just missed ), a harpoon shaft with a spear-thrower extension, a toggle device by which the harpoon shaft was released and a sealskin bladder to drag behind the whale or seal to tire it, and a lance for the final death blow on the worn-out prey. The Inuit were also adept at hunting ringed seals through their blowholes in the ice a type of seal abundant when other seals became scarce due to variations in the weather. None of this technology was adopted by the Norse, and they were the worse for it. So while the Norse starved and died out, the Inuit survived.

The end for the Norse seems particularly instructive. It apparently occurred at the wealthiest farm Gardar where refugees from outlying areas came to survive, possibly slaughtering the last available stock animals. As Diamond observes:

We are increasingly seeing a similar phenomenon on a global scale today, as illegal immigrants from poor countries pour into the overcrowded lifeboats represented by rich countries, and as our border controls prove no more able to stop that influx than were Gardar s chiefs and Los Angeles s yellow tape.

 

What Diamond concludes is the Norse were undone by the same social glue that had enable them to master Greenland s difficulties. In other words, their original strength in surviving and prospering became their ultimate weakness when clinging to cultural values no longer viable when adaptation was required to survive. Similarly, our American pride in the rugged individual who conquered a continent may well be our undoing if we don t learn to work cooperatively with the rest of the world. Can we afford to go it alone and ignore the United Nations to invade another country such as Iraq, to the condemnation of much of the world? Can we ignore world diplomacy and compromise in the form of the Kyoto treaty? We might advocate democracy but when it comes to world affairs we want to have the only vote and only veto.

Compare the Norse, as well as our own attitudes, to the natives of the New Guinea highlands who have lived self-sustainably for 46,000 years, and who have practiced sustainable agricultural for 7,000 years. Or the tiny island of Tikopia in the Pacific, only 1.8 miles in size, with a population of 1,200 people, whose culture has survived almost 3,000 years by using collective-decision making, sharing of resources, advocating zero population growth, and using sustainable practices (they killed, for example, all their pigs when the pigs began rooting up gardens, competing with humans for food).

Similarly, Japan began forest management in the 17th century with the result that 80% of its land remains today as sparsely populated forest. The Germans also started aggressive forest management in the 16th century, followed by much of the rest of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, so that Europe s forested areas have actually increased since about 1800.

Some of these success stories depend on the ecological advantage of a particular location. Japan, for example, is located where trees grow fairly rapidly, while Easter Island is not so situated. But choices made by society, particularly decisions with a long-term view toward the future rather than for short-term profit or based on religious and cultural traditions and constraints, are significant factors in whether a society survives.

As Diamond points out, the challenge is deciding which of a society s deeply held core values are compatible with the society s survival, and which ones instead have to be given up. While he does not say so, why should Americans, with only 5% of the world s population, produce 25% of the world s carbon-dioxide emissions, and elect a president who remains resolutely against environmental compromise with the rest of the world? Why should the Chinese increasingly adopt our use of cars when we ve proven how wasteful and damaging they are? Why should the Japanese, so intent on preserving their own forests, participate in cutting down the forests in other parts of the world? Why should the Catholic church continue to advocate no birth control when the world is overpopulated?

As Diamond states, since world society is presently on a non-sustainable course, our limited resources are like time bombs with fuses of less than 50 years. Because of this, the world s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. And if you need proof our resources are nearly exhausted, then look at the list Diamond as put together. Half our forests are now gone, and half of what s left will be gone in another 25 years. Most wild fisheries, on which two billion people depend, have collapsed or are in steep decline. Farm soils are being eroded at 10 to 40 times the rate of soil formation (as an example, half of Iowa s topsoil has eroded away). Aquifers are being mined faster than they can be naturally replenished, so that they will ultimately be depleted. Readily accessible reserves of oil and gas will last only a few more decades. While the cost of cleaning up pollution in American can be measured in billions of dollars, pollution at those worse sites in the U.S. is mild compared to that in the former Soviet Union, China, and many Third World mines, whose cleanup costs no one even dares to think about. Citizens of First World societies consume 32 times more in resources, and cause 32 times more in waste, than do those of the Third World, and the impact of First World consumption and waste is growing as more inhabitants of the Third World adopt the standards of living of the First World. As to the choices we have to make:

The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation disease epidemics, and collapse of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history, their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability.

 

Perhaps more frightening is the fact that a society s steep decline may be only one or two decades after its peak, primarily because maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources. As Diamond concludes, well-nourished societies offering good job prospects don t offer broad support to fanatics like Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczinski, or Islamic terrorists. But people with nothing to lose, desperate for any sort of help, do support extremists.

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.

 

Today billions of humans exist in such extreme poverty they think only of food for the next day, such as the fishermen so hard put to feed their children they dynamite a reef to kill fish for their families, with full knowledge they are thereby destroying their future livelihood. If we want to feed our children, and our children s children, and all of their children after them, we cannot kill the planet, for we have no New World to go to.

What Diamond does best is make it clear it s our choice to allow problems to make choices for us, or for us to choose our own solutions. He does so by effectively marshaling facts, not like an advocate arguing a case, but more in the role of a wise guardian, objectively and even-handedly setting out different sides of different arguments. Despite all the problems and dilemmas and seemingly insurmountable odds against us, he presents a persuasive and believable hope that human ingenuity, and advances in technology, together with the right choices, can make a difference. In what all too often has become a bitter, polarized, and poisoned climate of politics in this country, the kind of dialog offered by Diamond is what we so rarely engage in, and even less rarely recognize.

 

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