Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (93 page)

so on. New technologies, whether or not they succeed in solving the problem that they were designed to solve, regularly create unanticipated new
problems. Technological solutions to environmental problems are routinely far more expensive than preventive measures to avoid creating the problem
in the first place: for example, the billions of dollars of damages and cleanup
costs associated with major oil spills, compared to the modest cost of safety measures effective at minimizing the risks of a major oil spill.

Most of all, advances in technology just increase our ability to do things,
which may be either for the better or for the worse. All of our current problems are unintended negative consequences of our existing technology. The
rapid advances in technology during the 20th century have been creating difficult new problems faster than they have been solving old problems:
that's why we're in the situation in which we now find ourselves. What
makes you think that, as of January 1,2006, for the first time in human his
tory, technology will miraculously stop causing new unanticipated prob
lems while it just solves the problems that it previously produced?

From thousands of examples of unforeseen harmful side effects of new
technological solutions, two must suffice: CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and motor vehicles. The coolant gases formerly used in refrigerators and air
conditioners were toxic ones (like ammonia) that could prove fatal if those appliances leaked while the homeowner was asleep at night. Hence it was hailed as a great advance when CFCs (alias freons) were developed as synthetic refrigerant gases. They are odorless, non-toxic, and highly stable un
der ordinary conditions at the Earth's surface, so that initially no bad side
effects were observed or expected. Within a short time they became viewed
as miracle substances and adopted throughout the world as refrigerator and air-conditioner coolants, foam-blowing agents, solvents, and propellants in aerosol cans. But in 1974 it was discovered that in the stratosphere they are
broken down by intense ultraviolet radiation to yield highly reactive chlo
rine atoms that destroy a significant fraction of the ozone layer protecting
us and all other living things against lethal ultraviolet effects. That discovery
provoked vigorous denial by some corporate interests, fueled not only by
the $200 billion value of CFC-based industrial efforts but also by genuine
doubts because of scientific complications involved. Hence the phasing-out
of CFCs has taken a long time: not until 1988 did the DuPont Company
(the largest manufacturer of CFCs) decide to stop manufacturing them, in
1992 industrialized countries agreed to cease CFC production by 1995, and
China and some other developing countries are still producing them.

Unfortunately, the amounts of CFCs already in the atmosphere are suf
ficiently large, and their breakdown sufficiently slow, that they will continue to be present for many decades after the eventual end of all CFC
production.

The other example involves the introduction of the motor vehicle.
When I was a child in the 1940s, some of my teachers were old enough to
remember the first decades of the 20th century, when motor vehicles were in the process of replacing horse-drawn carriages and trams on city streets
of the United States. The two biggest immediate consequences experienced by urban Americans, my teachers recall, were that American cities became wonderfully cleaner and quieter. No longer were streets constantly polluted
with horse manure and urine, and no longer was there the constant din of
horse hoofs clicking on the pavement. Today, after a century's experience of
cars and buses, it strikes us as ludicrous or inconceivable that anyone could praise them for being non-polluting and quiet. While no one is advocating a
return to the horse as a solution to smog from engine emissions, the exam
ple does serve to illustrate the unanticipated negative side effects even of
technologies that (unlike CFCs) we choose to retain.

"If we exhaust one resource, we can always switch to some other resource
meeting the same need."
Optimists who make such claims ignore the unfore
seen difficulties and long transition times regularly involved. For instance,
one area in which switching based on not-yet-perfected new technologies has repeatedly been touted as promising to solve a major environmental
problem is automobiles. The current hope for breakthrough involves hy
drogen cars and fuel cells, which are technologically in their infancy as ap
plied to motor transport. Thus, there is not a track record justifying faith in
the hydrogen-car solution to our fossil fuel problem. However, we do have a
track record of a long series of other proposed new car technologies touted as breakthroughs, such as rotary engines and (most recently) electric cars, that aroused much discussion and even sales of production models, only to
decline or disappear because of unforeseen problems.

Equally instructive is the automobile industry's recent development of
fuel-efficient hybrid gas/electric cars, which have been enjoying increasing
sales. However, it would be unfair for a believer in switching to mention hy
brid cars without also mentioning the automobile industry's simultaneous
development of SUVs, which have been outselling hybrids by a big margin and more than offsetting their fuel savings. The net result of these two tech
nological breakthroughs has been that the fuel consumption and exhaust
production of our national car fleet has been going up rather than down.

Nobody has figured out a method to ensure that technology will yield only increasingly environment-friendly effects and products (e.g., hybrid cars),
without also yielding environment-unfriendly effects and products (e.g.,
SUVs).

Another example of faith in switching and substitution is the hope that
renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, may solve the energy crisis. These technologies do indeed exist; many Californians now use
solar energy to heat their swimming pools, and wind generators are already supplying about one-sixth of Denmark's energy needs. However, wind and solar energy have limited applicability because they can be used only at lo
cations with reliable winds or sunlight. In addition, the recent history of
technology shows that conversion times for adoption of major switches
—
e.g., from candles to oil lamps to gas lamps to electric lights for lighting, or
from wood to coal to petroleum for energy—require several decades, because so many institutions and secondary technologies associated with the
former technology have to be changed. It is indeed likely that energy
sources other than fossil fuels will make increasing contributions to our
motor transport and energy generation, but this is a long-term prospect.
We'll also need to solve our fuel and energy problems for the next several
decades, before new technologies become widespread. All too often, a focus
by politicians or industries on the promise of hydrogen cars and wind energy for the distant future distracts attention from all the obvious measures
needed right now to decrease driving and fuel consumption by existing
cars, and to decrease consumption by fossil fuel generating plants.

"There really isn't a world food problem; there is already enough food; we only need to solve the transportation problem of distributing that food to places
that need it."
(The same thing could be said for energy.) Or else:
"The
world's food problem is already being solved by the Green Revolution, with its new high-yield varieties of rice and other crops, or else it will be solved by ge
netically modified crops"
This argument notes two things: that First World
citizens enjoy on the average greater per-capita food consumption than do
Third World citizens; and that some First World countries, such as the
United States, do or can produce more food than their citizens consume. If
food consumption could be equalized over the world, or if surplus First
World food could be exported to the Third World, might that alleviate Third World starvation?

The obvious flaw in the first half of this argument is that First World
citizens show no interest in eating less, in order that Third World citizens
could eat more. The flaw in the second half of the argument is that, while

First World countries are willing occasionally to export food to mitigate starvation occasioned by some crisis (such as a drought or war) in certain
Third World countries, First World citizens have shown no interest in paying on a regular basis (via their tax dollars that support foreign aid and sub
sidies to farmers) to feed billions of Third World citizens on a chronic basis. If that did happen but without effective overseas family planning programs, which the U.S. government currently opposes on principle, the result would
just be Malthus's dilemma, i.e., an increase in population proportional to an increase in available food. Population increase and Malthus's dilemma also contribute to explaining why, after decades of hope and money invested in the Green Revolution and high-yield varieties, starvation is still widespread
in the world. All of these considerations mean that genetically modified (GM)
food varieties by themselves are equally unlikely to solve the world's food
problems (while world population supposedly remains stationary?). In ad
dition, virtually all GM crop production at present is of just four crops (soy
beans, corn, canola, and cotton) not eaten directly by humans but used for animal fodder, oil, or clothing, and grown in six temperate-zone countries
or regions. Reasons are the strong consumer resistance to eating GM foods; and the cruel fact that companies developing GM crops can make money by
selling their products to rich farmers in mostly affluent temperate-zone
countries, but not by selling to poor farmers in developing tropical coun
tries. Hence the companies have no interest in investing heavily to develop GM cassava, millet, or sorghum for Third World farmers.

"As measured by commonsense indicators such as human lifespan, health, and wealth (in economists' terms, per-capita gross national product or GNP), conditions have actually been getting better for many decades."
Or:
"Just look
around you: the grass is still green, there is plenty of food in the supermarkets,
clean water still flows from the taps, and there is absolutely no sign of imminent collapse."
For affluent First World citizens, conditions have indeed been
getting better, and public health measures have on the average lengthened
lifespans in the Third World as well. But lifespan alone is not a sufficient in
dicator: billions of Third World citizens, constituting about 80% of the
world's population, still live in poverty, near or below the starvation level.
Even in the United States, an increasing fraction of the population is at the
poverty level and lacks affordable medical care, and all proposals to change this situation (e.g., "Just provide everyone with health insurance paid by the
government") have been politically unacceptable.

In addition, all of us know as individuals that we don't measure our economic well-being just by the present
size
of our bank accounts: we also look

at our
direction
of cash flow. When you look at your bank statement and
you see a positive $5,000 balance, you don't smile if you then realize that
you have been experiencing a net cash drain of $200 per month for the last
several years, and at that rate you have just two years and one month left be
fore you have to file for bankruptcy. The same principle holds for our
national economy, and for environmental and population trends. The pros
perity that the First World enjoys at present is based on spending down its environmental capital in the bank (its capital non-renewable energy
sources, fish stocks, topsoil, forests, etc.). Spending capital should not be
misrepresented as making money. It makes no sense to be content with our
present comfort when it is clear that we are currently on a non-sustainable
course.

In fact, one of the main lessons to be learned from the collapses of the
Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies (as well as
from the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society's steep decline
may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers,
wealth, and power. In that respect, the trajectories of the societies that we
have discussed are unlike the usual courses of individual human lives, which
decline in a prolonged senescence. The reason is simple: maximum popula
tion, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum
environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips re
sources. On reflection, it's no surprise that declines of societies tend to fol
low swiftly on their peaks.

"Look at how many times in the past the gloom-and-doom predictions of fearmongering environmentalists have proved wrong. Why should we believe
them this time?"
Yes, some predictions by environmentalists have proved incorrect, favorite examples of critics being a prediction made in 1980 by Paul
Ehrlich, John Harte, and John Holdren about rises in prices of five metals,
and predictions made in the Club of Rome forecast of 1972. But it is mis
leading to look selectively for environmentalist predictions that proved wrong, and not also to look for environmentalist predictions that proved right, or anti-environmentalist predictions that proved wrong. There is an
abundance of errors of the latter sort: e.g., overly optimistic predictions that
the Green Revolution would already have solved the world's hunger prob
lems; the prediction of the economist Julian Simon that we could feed the
world's population as it continues to grow for the next 7 billion years; and
Simon's prediction "Copper can be made from other elements" and thus
there is no risk of a copper shortage. As regards the first of Simon's two pre
dictions, continuation of our current population growth rate would yield