Studying the Past to Survive the Future
J ared Diamond teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is a professor of geography. It's a discipline that's hardly fashionable in an age in which many of us are convinced we know our planet as well as we need to. It takes only a few minutes for this conviction to disappear when talking to the 72 year old professor, who's spent years studying the reasons for the collapses of past civilizations to try to find a way to avoid that of our own. A collapse which, as he explains, is a quite a concrete possibility.
We met at his home in Hollywood. He lives among movie stars and has seen some solid economic success with the publication of a series of best-selling books which mix several academic disciplines with intelligence and creativity in order to explain the world we live in. Despite the Hollywood address, he leads quite quiet life. He drives a hybrid car and speaks like an academic from another age. He's currently learning Italian, his sixth language. And so speaking in Italian he was willing to give me an hour of his time, in order to help me better understand how serious the condition of our civilization's health is and what we can do to improve it.
Professor Diamond, humanity is growing, both in terms of demographics and of consumption. I am aware that this is a problem. But it's also a natural fact, wouldn't you say? All of the civilizations of the past followed a similar path, growing steadily as their capacities increased. So why does this represent a problem for us?
That's true. Growth is a normal fact for most civilizations. But ours, for the first time, has found itself facing an absolutely new situation: the resources we depend upon are running out. Our civilization, as it behaves today, has an expiration date. Therefore, if over the course of the next forty years we aren't able to limit our consumption we will inevitablely end up overpassing the limit of sustainability that this planet offers us. For example: if we continue to destroy tropical forests at the current rate, by the year 2030 all of them will have disappeared, with the exception of those in the Amazon and in Congo. And an analogous situation can be seen for water, soil, oil.
How have we managed to get to this point? Is our society too complex? Are there too many of us carrying out tasks that are not directly tied to our sustenance?
That is not a fundamental problem, because over time the productivity of agriculture has increased significantly. In Ancient Egypt a farmer was able to feed four people in addition to himself. Among the Maya, two thousand years before Christ, two farmers we able to produce food for their families and for one other person. Today however one farmer in America is able to produce food for himself and for one hundred other people, and it's probable that technological improvements will further increase this ratio in the future. No, the real problem doesn't have to do with complexity, but in our relationship with the environment.
Do you believe that in order to avoid the collapse of our society we should reduce the rate of our growth, or instead use technology and science to help ourselves maintain our current rhythm while reducing our environmental impact?
We mustn't stop growing, but rather change the way in which we do it. Nevertheless, as an unconventional economist wrote years ago, in world of limited resources there are only two kinds of people who believe in the myth of unlimited growth: the insane, and economists. The idea that humanity can grow limitlessly with the current model is without any factual basis. The truth is that we have now nearly reached our limit in terms of useable resources and we must act as quickly as possible to preserve them, which means a change in the way we live. Thirty years ago we believed that our civilization's most relevant problem was overpopulation. We grew from 1.5 billion people to 6.5 billion in little more than a century and it scared us. Today however we know that the crucial question is not, at least for the moment, the number of people living on Earth, but the quantity of natural resources which each of these people consumes. In light of this fact the picture changes radically, because the level of consumption is not equal for all human beings. An African consumes a volume of resources 32 times lower than an American. Therefore, looking at it from an environmental perspective, an American is 32 times more dangerous than a Kenyan.
Today it seems that the growth rate of the world's population is slowing down and it's thought that in the space of about 30 years the number of individuals populating the Earth will be equal to "only" nine billion people. This is good news, as our planet is theoretically capable of sustaining this number of people. The problem is that those living in the third world wish to reach the level of consumption of those living in the first world, and this, were it to happen, would quickly render life on Earth unsustainable.
And yet the first world continues to make promises to the third world that its level of consumption will increase...
It's a cruel illusion. We persist in deluding developing countries that if they learn to adopt the economic policies which we suggest to them through the International Monetary Fund and pressure from our governments, if they learn to invest wisely, according to the rules which we suggest to them, they will eventually be able to reach our level of material well-being. But it's an impossible equation. For if the third world did not exist, the first world would have already exhausted the planet's resources long ago. What, therefore, could be a solution? Finding a balance, working so that the most developed countries reduce their consumption and thereby allowing at the same time developing countries to increase theirs to an acceptable level. To bring these two worlds closer together is the only possible way to guarantee our civilization the sustainability which it needs in order to continue to exist. If we do not find quickly a way to reach this goal, our planet will cease to be hospitable and at the same time our civilization will become less and less stable.
Ok. But how can a civilization like ours make such a difficult decision like voluntarily reducing our standard of living? There are so many interests in play... And after all pursuing material well-being is natural for each of us. So, if you'll allow me a provocation, how can our civilization decrease, while continuing to guarantee its members the satisfaction they seek?
There are many examples in the world of communities that were able to make these kinds of decisions. In Europe for example, the per capita consumption is nearly half of what it is in the United States, but in spite of this your level of satisfaction and your standard of living are not inferior to ours. To the contrary! In America we are used to wasting an enormous quantity of resources. Take for example off-road vehicles, so popular in America, which consume five times the amount of gas of a hybrid car. But an off-road vehicle does not lengthen people's lives, nor does it improve them.
Are there past civilizations which were able to find the way to maintain a balance in their consumption of resources for centuries, or millennia?
Certainly. Iceland for example managed to maintain its balance for more than a millennium because its inhabitants had quickly understood that they had to preserve their terrain raising sheep in a sustainable way. Another example is Japan, which has been the home of complex societies since the 14th century BCE, without ever having undergone a collapse, with exception of the one following World War II. Also on the tiny island of Tikopea, in the Pacific Ocean, the Polynesians have been able to manage their environment for millennia without destroying it.
In that case, I wonder just how it is that we're unable to simply do the right thing? What's stopping us from moving all together in the right direction in order to reduce our environmental impact? What should we do? And who should it be making this decision?
All of us. The decision is up to governments, but also up to single individuals. Some of the most important decisions, such as prohibiting the use of lead in industrial production, can be made only by institutions. And indeed it was institutions that did it, in the United States as in Europe and China. But many of the choices that count are within reach of individual people like you and me. For example I have many friends who have chosen to drive more ecological cars. Not because the government has suggested it to them, but on the basis of a personal ethical choice. They decided to buy a car that pollutes less because they were convinced that this was the right thing to do.
There is however a problem. Many people I know are aware that they ought to have an ecological lifestyle, but they haven't interiorized this idea yet.
People need time. Admittedly, time is not on our side, but I don't want to pessimistic. In the United States, so behind compared to Europe in ecological matters, enormous progress has been made over the last three years in terms of environmental awareness. Today most of the population finally believes in the evidence of global warming (not long ago this wasn't the case). And this is a great thing, something that I had not foreseen. I often describe our situation as race between two horses: the horse of environmental reason and the one of destruction. Both are galloping fast and are neck and neck, as of now it's unclear which of the two will win.
Looking at the past however it's difficult to find cases in which our society was able to make major decision together for the common good...
You're mistaken. I was born in 1937 and remember World War II well. Before then it would have been difficult to imagine that the great European nations would have ended up uniting and getting along. And yet a little while after it happened: the major European leaders understood that one hundred million deaths were enough and that they had to find a different, more peaceful way of living together. It was a lucid and thought out decision, and look at the situation today: just a few decades ago who could have imagined that it would be possible to travel from Paris to Berlin without a passport or that France and Germany would have the same money?
Every civilization passes through different phases. However, independent from the stage of development in which we find ourselves, each of us tends to believe that we belong to a special moment in time, one in which things are really changing. But how do we understand whether or not the historical phase in which we're living is truly so important? In other words: how can we measure the level of alarm in which we find ourselves in this moment?
All past generations have believed they were living in special historical moment. But the current time really is special, because for the first time in history we know with certainty that we will soon destroy the balance of the planet if we do not change our way of living.
In the Fifties the United States and Europe caused great damage to the environment, while today they are dedicating a lot of energy to protect it. And yet there are countries, China for example, onto which it is difficult to impose our environmental standards, because that period of development which we went through in the past is happening there right now, and they claim to have the right to it. Do you think that we'll be able to come to an agreement?
We are not capable of imposing anything on the Chinese, but fortunately it will be reality that does do it. The Chinese government is perfectly aware of the situation and on some occasions has proceeded in the right direction. As in 1998, when after the great floods of that year it recognized that the disaster was caused by the destruction of local forests and so it imposed very rigid laws on local businesses to prevent similar situations from repeating themselves in the future. But the problems that China must face are enormous. The life expectancy of policeman who works on the streets of Beijing is 42 years due to the heavy air pollution. The quality and the quantity of water are rapidly decreasing. China will make its own decision based its interests and not on the basis of the suggestions of us westerners. But the situation in China is different from that of Europe and the United States in the Fifties and we can moreover help the Chinese: with the technology at our disposal, but also by providing a good example.
If you had to describe our current situation with a metaphor, would you compare it to a baby, to an adult, or to an old man near to the end of his life?
It depends on the choices we make. If our decisions are stupid we will soon see our end. I don't speak of myself, but of my children and my grandchildren. If we however manage to make reasonable decisions then we will be able to live on, as a civilization, for much longer yet.
You have studied the reasons for the collapse of many civilizations of the past. Do these events have any common traits? What is the most common cause for the failure of a society?
If I told you that there was a single dominant factor I would be terribly superficial. There is however an ensemble of complementary causes. Among these is certainly the harm that human beings cause to the environment, climatic changes (which differently from today in the past mostly had natural causes), enemies (Carthage collapsed not for environmental reasons, but because it ran into Rome on its path) and friends too (if the society in question has the misfortune of having stupid friends or if the friends are so important for the society in question that they cause collapse if the friendship ends). Then there are political and social causes that can bring a civilization to collapse.
