A
review of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
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 ("
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
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 factors-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.
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
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
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.
* * *
If Diamond focuses on the
environmental aspects of collapse, Jane Jacobs-the legendary historian of cites
who, in the 1960s, worked heroically to save the neighborhoods of
"Writing, printing, and the
Internet give a false sense of security about the permanence of culture,"
writes Jacobs. The most important aspects of culture are continually reinforced
through example, and are thus as perishable as flesh itself. Dark ages are terrible
times when entire societies experience mass amnesia, forgetting arts, sciences,
mathematics, and even fundamental conventions of conviviality. And this is the
future that Jacobs sees as likely for us, given the perceived decay of what she
declares to be the five pillars of civilized culture:
Jacobs devotes a chapter to each of
these pillars, offering unequivocal examples of dissolution-from soaring levels
of household debt to Enron accounting fraud. Many of these individual problems
are well known; Jacobs shows how they are related to one another as elements of
a systemic cultural decline.
The author also cites examples to show
that culture can be protected even in times of great challenge, as
Jacobs' writing is wonderfully sane,
urbane, and intelligent. Her prose is never dry or pedantic, but glows with the
richness of a lifetime's experience ranging from the Great Depression through
activist struggles in the turbulent 1960s and '70s and up to the present.
If the book has a flaw, it is that
Jacobs does not appear to understand the relationship between culture and
energy: in her last chapter, "Dark Age Patterns," she discusses the
differences between agrarian and post-agrarian society, yet she never mentions
the single element that mostly accounts for the transformation from one to the
other: access to cheap fossil fuels.
Alas, the vibrant urban North American
and European industrial culture of the early twentieth century rode on a wave
of expanding resource availability, and hence expanding savings, expanding
technological competence, and expanding manufacturing capacity. For all its
virtues and vices (and there were plenty of the latter), much of that culture
is gone forever, as surely as is the oil that was burned to build it. We cannot
revive or preserve any part of that culture that depends upon our use of still
more fossil fuel. Instead, we and our descendants will have to invent new forms
of culture appropriate to the available resource base. If these cultural forms
are agrarian in nature, so be it.
* * *
A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil
Politics and the New World Order, by William Engdahl (Pluto Press, 2004), is essential reading for anyone
who wonders how oil shaped world events during the twentieth century.
While Daniel Yergin, in The Prize:
The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (Touchstone, 1993), focused
primarily on the oil industry per se, Engdahl looks more at the geopolitical
situation as it responded to new discoveries in the Middle East and elsewhere,
and also brings to bear his considerable insight into monetary policy. The
result is breathtaking, as the reader learns the background to wars,
assassinations, and political upheavals-from the 1912 battle between the
A major theme in the book is the drive
of the British banking and financial establishment to control global resources,
and the dominating influence of these same interests in American policy
decisions during the latter half of the century as the
Along the way we learn the eerie
similarities between
We see how the Second World War grew
inevitably from the first, as
We also discover the basis of the post-war global economic and petroleum
regimes, with the
Unfortunately, toward the middle of
the book Engdahl reveals himself to be a pro-nuclear cornucopian who sees no
peril in a rapidly expanding human population and who assumes that the answer
to global problems lies in more industrial growth. This opinion skews his
statements on a number of issues, including the 1972 Limits to Growth
study, which he badly mischaracterizes (he says in apparent seriousness that
the authors merely "added modern computer graphics to the discredited
essay of Malthus"). This is not a small failing, and one cannot help but
wonder where else the author's ostensible statements of fact may actually
constitute mere supposition or prejudice.
Nevertheless, in other respects the
author's account of events meshes closely with other sources, and Engdahl fills
in blanks believably and with explanatory potency. Even with its flaws, this
book helps immeasurably to make sense of recent history. And without historical
perspective, it is almost impossible to understand our current global political
and economic situation, or to imagine what to do about it.