Environmental Perils of our Times
Professor Jared Diamond giving a Deakin Lecture in Melbourne, sums why some civilizations flourish, decline and then die, in his new book, Collapse.What makes them fail and what lessons can we learn from their history? Is there enough time to avoid the obvious environmental perils of our age?
There have been surprises in working on my book. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that question that my University of California students raised about how on earth a society can end up making a bad decision that will finally destroy the society and end up killing more people. My students ask me, why on earth don’t people see these problems coming and why do they make such stupid mistakes as chopping down all their trees, or building cities where there isn’t enough water? (Unfamiliar problems to you Australians.) There’s not a simple reason why people tragically and inadvertently may end up doing thing, damaging themselves. We all know individually, we as individuals sometimes make mistakes: some of us marry the wrong person, take the wrong job, make bad investments and there are complicated reasons why we blunder into these mistakes. There are also complicated reasons why societies blunder into these mistakes.
One can make a road map of societal decision-making. Perhaps the first question is whether even before a problem arises, does the society anticipate it or not? Some problems we just don’t anticipate because they are unprecedented, for example, global warming. One might say to date, why on earth did we stupid people of 30 years ago, we stupid Americans and Australians and other people in the first world, why didn’t we see global warming and climate change coming when it’s so obvious that it’s such a big problem today? It’s not that we were stupid or blind, it’s that until 30 years ago there was just no precedent for the planet heating up due to human action. There had never before been so many people on earth producing so many greenhouse gases to heat up the whole atmosphere and it was not something that we could anticipate. Instead, 30 years ago we were worried about global cooling, not global warming. That’s why we didn’t see it coming. Not only may societies fail to anticipate problems, when a problem actually arrives the society may fail to perceive it, and that’s because some problems are literally imperceptible in their early stages, or they creep on slowly so that you don’t notice they’re coming.
Again, let’s talk about global warming or climate change. Why has it taken us 30 years until every knowledgeable scientist agrees that there is global warming today and that humans are the cause of the global warming. Why didn’t we recognise it after seven years? Again, it’s not because we were blind or stupid, we know perfectly well from Australia that temperatures do not creep up inexorably year after year, the data indicates that in one year the temperature would have been one degree warmer, in two years two degrees warmer and after seven years seven degrees warmer, and there would be no more argument, it would have been clear there’s global warming. But no, the temperature doesn’t creep up inexorably year after year. Instead, there’s a warm year, another warm year and then a cool year and a couple of cool years and then a warm year, cool year, warm year, warm year, warm, cool. Temperature fluctuates up and down and it took 30 years before climatologists could convince themselves that, amidst this noise, this up and down fluctuation, there really was a long term warming trend. And that’s also why it took 30 years until the heads of state of every country in the world, with just four exceptions, now acknowledge the importance of global warming. And those four exceptions are the powerhouses of Lichtenstein and Monaco, and I regret to say, the leaders of your and my countries.
The third reason why societies may fail to solve problems, the most puzzling one, is that often societies don’t even attempt to solve a problem once they perceive it – and that’s especially paradoxical. Why on earth, when a problem is staring you in the face and you know it’s there and you talk about it, why don’t you try to solve the problem? There are many reasons; those reasons include conflicts of interest. Creating the problem may be good for some people although it’s bad for the rest of society.
An example, in Australia again, has to do with global warming and climate change. Why is it that in some circles in Australia there is still reluctance to admit the fact of global warming? I was discussing this earlier today with Australian friends and they suggested that part of the reason is that your production of greenhouse gases, global warming in Australia is profitable for some segments of the Australian economy, namely especially the coal mines that produce coal and the aluminium smelters that are incredibly prodigal of energy, so that global warming is profitable for some people in the short run although it’s bad for most Australians – and although it’s also bad for the coal miners and for the aluminium smelters in the long run because ultimately they will do themselves out of business. But this illustrates conflicts of interest that often make it difficult to mobilise the public opinion to solve a problem even when it’s acknowledged.
Jared Diamond is a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles His books have also won the Pulitzer Prize. And here he was giving a Deakin Lecture in Melbourne-September 2005 – Full Transcript
Tags: Collapse, Jared Diamond
