Scientists, archaeologists, and others have begun examining the claims of Jared Diamond's best-selling Collapse, and some are finding that many of his claims do not hold up to serious scrutiny.
For example, Diamond claims that the collapse of the Rapa Nui on Easter Island provides "the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources." Yet Diamond's account is contradicted by the available archaeological evidence, as documented in this article by Terry L. Hunt from The American Scientist. (Link via Daniel Drezner) Whereas Diamond blames deforestation and population growth, Hunt finds that newly introduced diseases, invasive species (rats) and conflict with Europeans had a greater impact.
Using Rapa Nui as an example of "ecocide," as Diamond has called it, makes for a compelling narrative, but the reality of the island's tragic history is no less meaningful. . . .
I believe that the world faces today an unprecedented global environmental crisis, and I see the usefulness of historical examples of the pitfalls of environmental destruction. So it was with some unease that I concluded that Rapa Nui does not provide such a model. But as a scientist I cannot ignore the problems with the accepted narrative of the island's prehistory. Mistakes or exaggerations in arguments for protecting the environment only lead to oversimplified answers and hurt the cause of environmentalism. We will end up wondering why our simple answers were not enough to make a difference in confronting today's problems.
Hunt is hardly the only one to raise questions about Diamond's accounts and his underlying thesis. In 2005, the interdisciplnary journal Energy and Environment devoted a special issue to essays critiquing Diamond's work. Several of the papers are available here. Among other things, the various authors fault Diamond for failing to give sufficient attention to the role of instituions in economic development and environmental performance (a criticism that can also be made of his earlier book, Guns, Germs, and Steel). For those interested in Diamond's thesis, the various papers are worth a look.
However, I don't see in the critiques a refutation of his overall thesis, or a contention that all the examples he writes of are wrong. Scientists can and should examine such theories, but it's a long way from proving him totally wrong.
The irony is that Diamond goes out of his way to laud the oil industry for their environmental efforts, and acknowedges that this stance upsets many environmentalists.
I guess Energy And Environment has no problems with THAT part of the book, right?
I didn't bother with Collapse because I figured it would be yet another pet idea presented with hectoring, special pleading, and misdirection.
He had to stretch too far in this book. To claim the Greenland Norse did not eat fish makes a great story, but is a rather silly conclusion to try and prove. Extraordinary claims (people in Greenland didn't eat fish, whereas their fellow citizens in Iceland did) deserve some better evidence than debating how quickly fish bones decay in dry environments like Iceland versus wet ones like Greenland.
I liked Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade much better for a discussion of how people moved from Africa to populate the world.
If Easter Island were only deforested, or only faced conflict from Europeans then perhaps the society would have survived.
The lesson is that there are a number of unpredictable outside forces that could hurt our society -- a few years of drought limiting staple crops, or political turmoil disrupting a society we depend on for resources. Because of this, we should always strive to mitigate the causes of collapse that we have control over, such as deforestation or uncontrolled population growth.
When environmentally responsible solutions are available, why not use them? The example of Home Depot and the Forest Stewardship Council is a great one given in the book, as well as the oil companies previously mentioned.
Quick - grab a racial, ethnic, religious, or political group you don't like and start sterilizin' 'em.
That's a joke, of course. But some of these people need to realize how flawed some of their theories are.
It means we shouldn't foreclose opportunities to appease radical environmentalists who get it wrong. As an earlier poster mentioned, we're all dead about nine times, according to various alarmists.
You ought to read 1491. Interesting. Among other things, what we now think of as virgin rainforest of the Amazon is an artifact of smallpox. Prior to the intro of said bug, the area was largely farms and domesticated fruit trees. We apparently got along just fine without the Amazon rainforest for some centuries. This, I should say, is not a conclusion of the author's. He doesn't address that issue. It is a question which arises upon finding out how the previous inhabitants raped Gaia for their own purposes and farmed the land now considered the lungs of the earth or something.
He should have stuck to birds.
Yawn so far we have seen five Atlantic tropical depressions, three tropical storms, no hurricaines -- even a Cat 1, and this is about the anniversary of Katrina by which time there had been 12 tropical depressions and [I think] five hurricaines ranging up to a Cat 4 [?].
-dk
I am disappointed in Mr. Adler's willingness to point us to a "journal" that obviously has an axe to grind, without acknowledging that fact in his blog post.
Still, as a survey of geographical knowledge, Diamond's works are an interesting read.
This is 2006 -- "radical environmentalists" are disavowed by serious conservationists who work with business to find solutions that benefit both industry and the environment. WWF's work in creating the Tortugas reserve in the Florida Keys in a great example. Fishing had been declining there for years, but with the creation of a reserve containing a few stratigically placed no fishing zones the wildlife is protected and the fishing as consistantly improved. Fisherman who initially campaigned against the prorject are now among its greatest supporters. Also look at their work with IBM, Nike, Lafarge... A number of businesses are learning there are economic benefits to environmental stewarship and some of them are detailed in Collapse.
Yes, there are stupid wacko idiots out there saying the speak for the environmental movement. And there are also credible scientists who thoughtfully consider and study environmental problems around the world. I expect that readers of this blog are able to distinguish between them.
David, I agree -- this was almost precisely my feeling. There were a few ideological preconceptions that I thought JLD let slip into the book. It was a while ago, so I can't remember many specifics.
One I seem to remember from the intro: Diamond says something like -- "Of course there are no racial differences in innate genetic intelligence, so what then are the causes of the varying degrees of success?" or something like that. Now I hope it goes without saying that I'm not suggesting there *are* racial differences -- I personally doubt it -- but it just seems to me to be unscientific to summarily dismiss any possibility just because it makes us (and I include myself here) uncomfortable.
- Alaska Jack
Hawaii also ended up with no canoes capable of long-distance voyaging, but its society did not collapse because of it. It then entered into its period of greatest cultural elaboration.
I will not read 'Collapse,' because 'Guns, Germs and Steel' revealed Diamond as a poseur. Here's a clue for him: if you want to establish yourself as an historian and philosopher of the effects of technology on society, don't include a whole chapter based on an imaginary technology that is physically impossible. (The one about when China ruled the seas.)
Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University, Faculty of Science
Liverpool L3 2ET, UK. b.j.peiser@livjm.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The 'decline and fall' of Easter Island and its alleged self-destruction has become the poster child of a new environmentalist historiography, a school of thought that goes hand-in-hand with predictions of environmental disaster. Why did this exceptional civilisation crumble? What drove its population to extinction? These are some of the key questions Jared Diamond endeavours to answer in his new book 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.' According to Diamond, the people of Easter Island destroyed their forest, degraded the island's topsoil, wiped out their plants and drove their animals to extinction. As a result of this selfinflicted environmental devastation, its complex society collapsed, descending into civil war, cannibalism and self-destruction. While his theory of ecocide has become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory secret hangs over the premise of Easter Island's self-destruction: an actual genocide terminated Rapa Nui's indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond, however, ignores and fails to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nui's collapse. Why has he turned the victims of cultural and physical extermination into the perpetrators of their own demise? This paper is a first attempt to address this disquieting quandary. It describes the foundation of Diamond's environmental revisionism and explains why it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny.
But as to the bigger point, What Diamond was essentially saying is that many societies, even strong vibrant ones, have died out. This is beyond dispute. Whether they were big and strong, or small and weak, some have survived, and some have died away. Why? If it's because of their own actions, shouldn't we take care to learn what those actions are, and try to avoid the same actions and potential consequences? I mean, that's a prudent thing to do.
Diamond talks a lot, for intance, about the potential collapse of the fishing industry. What says is that if trends continue, we will overfish the ocean past the point of recovery. And you know, these things HAVE happened. Whales were overfished to the point where they are a fraction of what they were pre-1800.
BUT he also says that there is hope -- the new technologies, new ways of doing things that preserve the environment, give us hope. He says that Scottish farming of salmon produce a whole lot of environmental damage. So that's bad. But, they have been learning and reducing the garbage, so that in the future it will be cleaner. so he supports farm raised salmon over wide for the long term benefits. How is that bad, deceitful, or alarmist?
What makes ME a bit alarmist is how casually the anti-environmental crowd thinks. They point to one flaw, or one wrong argument, and say everything therefore is flawed and wrong. Malthus lived 200 years ago and was wrong, ergo, every single argument regarding overpopulation must be wrong too. That's just stupid! Well, 200 years ago, doctors were bloodletting people, and that was wrong. Therefore, all medical science must be wrong too.
Sheesh -- it's amazing how hatred of environmentalists clouds everyone's reason.
I don't have time to evaluate all the science. I must assume that they do [they claim to, after all] and by continuing to battle against nuclear power they are telling us that global warming is less damaging than nuclear power.
-dk
As for being unscientific, Diamond starts with a hypothesis and then goes about citing evidence that supports his hypothesis. This is exactly what science is about and I doubt you will find any scientist who begins research on a topic without some expectation of the results. Diamond does reject the idea that genetic differences are responsible for global inequality but this is itself a falsifiable hypothesis. It is not a hypothesis that can be proven as it is a negative statement but it could be falsified with a sufficient body of evidence. Amassing this evidence and evaluating its explanatory power would be an entirely different book and probably not one that Diamond would be professionally equipped to write.
I believe that he is trying to take memetic differences off the table as well. I think he does not believe that the invention of private property and supporting institutions mattered, and he makes that claim by "showing" that it's all a matter of luck.
-dk
Fish traps are now illegal in Alaska. They were a huge political issue in the decades leading up to statehood, because they were all owned by Washington- and Oregon-based corporations that used them to extract money out of the territory of Alaska. When Bill Egan became the state's first governor, Executive Order #1 -- signed within hours of his inauguration -- was the banning of fish traps. Now, probably fewer than 1 in 1,000 Alaskans has any idea what a fish trap is.
In many ways it's a shame they're gone. They were marvelously efficient, safe, productive, etc. Of course, legalizing them would mean the end of our fishing industry and culture as we now know it, and once again there would be nothing to prevent Outside corporations from snapping them up.
- Alaska Jack
Again, so what? Pollution doesn't care if it's antagonists are smart or stupid. The question isn't the motives, or past predictions of these people. The question is whether it is true or not. The bottomline is that we really can't predict the future.
But suppose they are completely and totally wrong. The worst that would happen is that we reduce pollution from carbon based fuels, we wean ourselves off of foreign oil, we develope new technologies of sustainable energy, we have a cleaner planet and so on.
How is this bad?
In particular, they did not do it in, as Diamond claims, ships 400 feet long. Until the era of engineered wood, no ship could be more than a little over 200 feet long. Physically impossible, due to the bending moment of wood.
HMS Victory, which you can still see, was built about as big as it was possible to build a wooden ship. It is 227 feet, 6 inches long, maximum dimension.
Really? Are you counting the costs of pollution? What about the asthmatics, the cancer, all the health issues that arise from pollution? I would argue that losing a species due to extinction is a cost, but it can hardly be measured by dollars. Lives cut short to do pollution is very much a cost!
New York used to have an active oyster and sturgeon harveting industry in the 19th century. In fact, it contributed quite a bit to the economy. Today? Gone. Perhaps if we had harvested them sustainably, and didn't pollute the waters, NY would still have that industry -- which would employe people and pay taxes. Today, the Cheasapeake produces a fraction of oysters from even 10 years ago. Much is due to a drop in population, which in turn many people believe is due to the runoff of pesticides from people spraying their lawns. People could save money by NOT spraying their lawns, but then they would have weeds. And so an entire industry is collapsing, at least in part, due to this pollution.
Have you kept up with the technology of 'green buildings'? These buildings reduce the costs of operation, and reduce the pollution, AND reduce the need for more energy from coal or oil burning generators.
In other words, contra to your statement, at NO cost - and actual savings -- we could reduce all sorts of pollution.
Again, how is this a bad thing?
And yet, that's not at all true. First, Malthus was indeed correct, given the circumstances of his time. If we didn't increase the food supply, there would indeed be mass starvation. On this, everyone must agree, Malthus was correct.
But here's another point: In the 70s, there was a lot of talk about overpopulation, that it would lead to starvation and economic and environmental degredation. Well, they might have been wrong about the starvation part (much famine since then had political and distribution problems). But on the economic and environmental degredation issues, there is no doubt they were correct.
The population bomb hit most hard in third world countries, and those countries remain mired in poverty. Not only have they often not improved their economic lives, they have suffered. In China, one third of the people have no access to clean water. A friend of mine spend three months studying at the famous Shoalin Temple there, and he said they had water for one hour each day, and it was filthy. One HOUR! When you have a huge population that is growing uncontrollably, the people may not be starving, but that's hardly cause for celebration. Their lives are often short and unhealthy. And the land becomes so degraded you can't even find a clean stream to bath in or take a drink.
Just because an environmentalist says something you don't particularly like, does not automatically mean he is incorrect. He might be right, he might be wrong, but he might be both, too. Again, shouldn't the real conservative be the one who wishes to conserve the environment and take prudent measure to protect our lives and our livelihoods?
Throughout the 90s, environmentalists asked to have gas mileage increased on cars, and emissions reduced. Costs are too high, was the reply from Congress and the industry. No doubt that they were correct, at the time.
But HAD they actually taken those actions, today's gas prices wouldn't hit you so hard, because you would have better mileage. You would be SAVING money today. Since we know that gas prices have never gone down in modern history, but only increase, would not the prudent thing have been to prepare ourselves? Again, wouldn't that have been a good thing?
That premise is widely known to be false.
-dk
Harsh? Perhaps.
"Collapse is perhaps the prime upshot of the amalgamation of environmental determinism and cultural pessimism in the social sciences. It epitomises a new and burgeoning doctrine expounded largely by disillusioned left-wingers and former
Marxist intellectuals. In place of the old creed of class warfare and socio-economic driving forces that used to explain every single development under the sun, environmental determinism essentially applies the same one-sided rigidity to historical events and societal evolution (Peiser, 2003)."
And he's questioning Diamond's agenda?
Places like Bangladesh only prove my point -- too many people often equals squalor. You can't push millions of them anywhere without created a similar problem in their new home, either.
Just remember supply and demand and you will be less inclined towards such rash generalizations.
My guess is that it's an improvement.
As for having running water at the temple only one hour a day, the usual condition in premodern societies was no running water at all, Randy. The water carrier was a familiar figure on the steets of premodern cities, and still is in some places.
Actually, Randy, if you Google two lists--a list of countries by population or population density, and a list of countries by per capita affluence--you'll find essentially NO correlation. For every Bangladesh (pop. dens. 985 per sq. km.)there's a Hong Kong (pop. dens. 6407). For every Sri Lanka (316) there's a Japan (339) For every Cameroon (34) there's a United States (31). Long ago, economists including the late Lord Peter Bauer conclusively demonstrated that it is not "overpopulation" that causes third-world poverty.
For whatever reason, I happened to be looking at potable water supplies in SW Utah, St. George. Until very late in the 1800's, water was delivered for drinking and cooking by a ditch alongside the road.
In 'Guns, Germs,' one of his two opening anecdotes is the conquest of the Moriori by the Maori, once they obtained European firearms and shipping.
About the same time, the Hawaiian chief Boki obtained European firearms and shipping and set out to conquer a Polynesian empire among other island societies that, like the Moriori, were still living in the Stone Age.
We can understand why Diamond does not use Boki as his example. He and his two crews sailed over the horizon and were never heard of again.
In the first group, and increase of population will not much change the basic economics because the economies are large enought to handle it. In the second group, and increase in population only degrades the economies, because for whatever reason they simply can't handle the extra mouths to feed.
Instead of comparing population densities, you should compare economic productivity, and you will see a huge disparity. In Bangladesh, for instance, there are simply too many people to feed, and it's a constant drain on the economy.
As for the price of gas, certainly it has gone down a few cents recently, but it's still much much higher today than it was thoughout the 90s. Supply and demand? you bet. And because of China's voracious appetite for gas, the price will only increase in the future.