Friends and colleagues keep sending me links to critiques of Jared Diamond's book 'Collapse'.
Following is a link to a short essay by Ronald Bailey that goes beyond Diamond's book and discusses what makes a successful society and also a longer piece by Kendra Okonski on Diamond's chapter on Montana (Chapter 1).
Ronald Bailey titled his essay 'Under the Spell of Malthus' and commented that:
"Why is Puerto Rico so much better off than its neighbors? In a word, institutions. Diamond vaguely recognizes the importance of social and political institutions, but his analysis doesn't go much deeper than arguing that Haitian dictators have been more rapacious than Dominican dictators. In fact, the last two centuries have shown that the more a country adheres to the rule of law, protects private property, reduces bureaucratic corruption, nurtures a free press, permits free markets, engages in trade, and allows democratic politics, the less likely it is to suffer from the Malthusian horrors of plagues, famines, and civil wars. What Haiti and Rwanda have in common is not just dense populations but shattered social and political institutions. What the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Puerto Rico have in common are not only dense populations, but adequately effective social and political institutions.
...As ecology teaches us, the simplest ecosystems are often the most fragile. Similarly, our modern globally interconnected economy that can draw upon a wide array of resources is far more stable and robust than either the fragile pre-modern or the marginally modern societies cited by Diamond. It's worth noting that in 1800, when the vast majority of people on the planet were farmers, the global average GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, was about $600.
Diamond adheres to the orthodox Malthusian claims that human population growth is exponential while "improvements in food production add rather than multiply; this breakthrough increases wheat yields by 25%, that breakthrough increases yields an additional 20%, etc." But just looking at the history of the 20th century, it is very clear that increases in food production have been exponential too; in fact, food production has been increasing faster than human population growth. Since 1961 world grain production has tripled, while world population has doubled. Consequently, per capita global food production increased by 25 percent between 1961 and 2004, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
"I have not met anyone," Diamond writes, "who seriously argues that the world could support 12 times its current impact, although an increase of that factor would result from all Third World inhabitants adopting first world living standards." But increasing human numbers and wealth do not translate automatically into more impact on the natural world. The British demographer Angus Maddison calculates that world GDP increased in real dollars from $2 trillion in 1900 to $37 trillion in 2001, while global per capita income rose from $1,300 annually to more than $6,000. This 18-fold increase in output was not achieved just by doing more and more of the same old things. Most of the increase was achieved through technological innovation: using better recipes to manipulate less physical stuff to give us more services....The only way to solve the allegedly impending global ecological crisis, according to Diamond, is "long-term planning, and a willingness to reconsider core values." Although vague about whom he would put in charge of global planning, Diamond evinces throughout Collapse an alarming affection for authoritarian rulers who issue top-down orders restraining their citizens' use of resources."
In Collapse Jared Diamond suggests Montana is in as big a mess as Australia. But Kendra Okonski, a Montana native who now lives in England, disagrees. She argues that Diamond has got it wrong and that he doesn't understand Montana's history, forests or anything else. Kendra's essay titled 'Montana: On the Verge of Collapse?' has just been published by PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center.
My critique titled 'Australia's Environment Undergoing Renewal Not Collapse' published by Energy and Environment, recently made it into Wikipedia.
"Chemicals" is a very general term, much like "experts". I can find no substantive evidence that the proper use of the chemical herbicide "glyphosate" has any residual adverse effects.
I can find some evidence that the wetting agent also used in the application may have some adverse effects on bacteria and mycorrhizoids, soil "biota". It has been suggested that wetting agents have a deleterious affect on some amphibians by reducing their protective mucous membranes.
Wetting agents act to reduce the protective surface tension and allow penetration, the commonest form of wetting agent being soap.
If any one thing had an impact here on our environmental thinking, it was probably best spelt out by the filming of “On the beach” in Australia (1959).
“Dangerous myths emerged in the vacuum of history. For example:
• That one book -- Rachel Carson's Silent Spring -- started all the uproar;
• That environmentalism is just an hysterical reaction to science and technology;
• That environmentalism is a passing fad with no serious ideas to offer.
The myths call us like sirens, telling us that environmental issues can be safely ignored. Nothing could be further from the truth”.
From my google on Rachel Carson green and history – why?
This – “Minimum tillage relying on herbicides, can be much better”. I am beginning to think detribe is a dangerous academic- why?
No one here has worked with more toxic chemicals over time in his city than me and this rhetoric is oh so familiar. I was a specialist in chemical plant commissioning and maintenance at a time multi nationals were flogging all kinds of stuff onto an unsuspecting Australian public including our rural sector. Plant safety was one issue well under control most of the time but distribution and end use was another.
The need for a fresh political approach to a range of pressing social issues such as photo chemical smog over Melbourne that grew largely out of activity in its Western Suburbs may well have started in night classes at our Swinburn College of Technology in the late 1960’s. The first opportunity began with the rapid decline of the DLP in the early 1970’s.
Two people flew to Hobart in 1972 to influence the folk considering a launch, that became the UTG. Others went on to lever liberals like Chipp and step over the old Victorian EPA and their cozy relationship with industry in Melbourne’s Western suburbs.
Someone tell detribe the green smell is still right under his nose.
In R O E L H A M M E R S C H L A G Environ. Sci. Technol.2006, 40,1744-1750 which I quoted before, David Pimental's work is described as an "outlier". This is a polite way of saying that of four similar independent studies compared with one another, his was different to and disagreed with ALL the others. His studies tend to use out of date and pessimistic data values. Whether "energy expert" is an accurate descriptor for him could be disputed, then, as he is a person who hasn't used up to date data performance data for an industry whose performance is changing over time.
I find it interesting that in so many words of the long Harpers article when talking about the "Green Revolution" they can't find any space to discuss the victims of famine in India prior to the Green revolution. The fact that it saved many lives does rather interfere with the story line contrived by the story. Where taking about a process thats feeding about one BILLION EXTRA people, so the onus is on those who deride it to explain the consequences and timing of the counter revolution they propose for reverseing it. They'd better get their arguments right with a billion lives at stake, ad oh, also I nearly forgot, also need to explain about the land from forests cut down and wilderness ploughed to to create the farmland to feed that billion.
I take your point - energy used in farming needs to be discussed thoroughly. But there gets to a point where over use of drama and emotion gets in the way of understanding and analysis. Also I take the point: tillage of the earth is very ecologically disruptive. Minimum tillage relying on herbicides, can be much better.
Don't misunderstand me Ender, I'm not ignoring what your saying, but trying to make the point that "Green" emotionalism is getting in the way of considering some hard counter arguments that are highly relevant. Green emotionalism started with Rachel Carson, and is both good and bad: good because it get action going, bad where emotion lead to errors.
joe said - "My concern is that the system will become unhinged some time off over the next 10 years".
Would you mind expanding on this a little?
A link to an article - The Oil that we Eat.
Probably relevant
http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html
Thinksi; you can be, what you want to be, blog or no blog.
This blog is but a flash in the pan in the whole of life, but let’s not forget, people need other people somewhere and some how. Science and evidence (or lack of it) is as good a topic as any on which to engage and do the battle of wits. But is it worthwhile communication?
We each must practice the art of communication. The fact that I can’t write to save myself must be obvious to many but the fact that I can’t remember what I first thought of may not be. I need tricks to hold it together and that could stop me if I let it.
For many years since I went there and back I tried to practice hitting people with my ideas door to door and I say the hardest of all communication is to listen. On this point alone I learn more from their eyes than their words. This is what we miss most on a blog.
When I worked briefly at Kodak they discovered quickly I had a keen sense of smell and many a lady there I discovered were even keener on deception as we battled in darkness with our process instrumentation. Meeting dozens of new people everyday with out the help of vision is a big challenge. Orientation in a group can be destroyed by a perfume as it is by absolute silence on a prearranged signal.
As I said, people need other people. This is most obvious in the deepest part of a dry mine. Water dripping in a wet one is something. We should never deny someone the knowledge that someone else is there for them in any situation.
Science with numbers only is a cold art. I reckon we put life back into this blog when we drift off the topic. An inverse relationship compared to a drifting instrument.
Out in the sun this morning was another chance to drift when a delighted chap grabbed an armful of my books, mostly light on life. It turned out he was curious in my collection and its origin so we discussed my failure and his rise in the art world. Let’s say its unlikely my stuff will be hung in the Myer Sulman Prise or any other part of the next Archibald series. But within moments there was a gathering of his acquaintances around my market card table, a writer and so on.
Seconds later we all discussing the outback, the forests and Murray Darling Basin, the Commission and its sponsorship of this other lot of people and a guy I knew back home.
Friends; it’s a small world in environment circles. What’s the difference between us?
Nah, I can't betray my long line of survivors! I shoulda said 'goodbye cruel blog' (but then someone throws up a few biodiversity posts and hook line sinker fishky)
As long as it's not the preparation of your goodbye cruel world note!