first 5 questions,

Jared Diamond is professor of Geography at UCLA and formerly professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine. His widely acclaimed Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates ofHuman Societies was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. Diamond is also known for his work as a conservationist and as director of the World Wildlife Fund. His field experience includes seventeen expeditions to New Guinea and neighboring islands, where he helped to establish Indonesian New Guinea’s national park system. In the following essay, which appeared in the August 26, 2002, issue of Time magazine, Diamond derives some lessons from the historical precedent of past societies that failed to respond to environmental crises similar to those that currently face our global community.

What is your chief concern about the world your grandchildren will inherit? Why does this one concern take precedence over the others? How are your concerns logically related to one another?

Children have a wonderful ability to focus their parents’ attention on the essentials. Before our twin sons were born in 1987, I had often heard about all the environmental problems projected to come to a head toward the middle of this century. But I was born in 1937, so I would surely be dead before 2050. Hence I couldn’t think of 2050 as a real date, and I couldn’t grasp that the environmental risks were real.

After the birth of our kids, my wife and I proceeded to obsess about the 2 things most parents obsess about-schools, our wills, life insurance. Then I realized with a jolt: my kids will reach my present age of 65 in 2052. That’s a real date, not an unimaginable one! My kids’ lives will depend on the state of the world in 2052, not just on our decisions about life insurance and schools.

I should have known that. Having lived in Europe for years, I saw that 3 the lives of my friends also born in 1937 had been affected greatly by the state of the world around them. For many of those overseas contempo­ raries growing up during World War II, that state of the world left them

Jared Diamond, “Lessons from Lost Worlds,” TIME, August 26, 2002. Copyright TIME INC. Reprinted by permission. TIME is a registered trademark of Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Jared Diamond Lessons from Lost Worlds 417

orphaned or homeless. Their parents may have thought wisely about life insurance, but their parents’ generation had not thought wisely about world conditions. Over the heads of our own children now hang other threats from world conditions, different from the threats of 1939-45.

While the risk of nuclear war between major powers still exists, it’s 4 less acute now than 15 years ago, thank God. Many people worry about terrorists, and so do I, but then I reflect that terrorists could at worst kill “only” a few tens of millions of us. The even graver environmental problems that could do in all our children are environmental ones, such as global warming and land and water degradation.

These threats interact with terrorism by breeding the desperation that 5 drives some individuals to become terrorists and others to support terrorists. Sept. 11 made us realize that we are not immune from the environmental problems of any country, no matter how remote-not even those of Somalia and Afghanistan. Of course, in reality, that was true before Sept. 11, but we didn’t think much about it then. We and the Somalis breathe and pollute the same atmosphere, are bathed by the same oceans and compete for the same global pie of shrinking resources. Before Sept. 11, though, we thought of globalization as mainly meaning “us” sending “them” good things, like the Internet and Coca-Cola. Now we understand that globalization also means “them” being in a position to send “us” bad things, like terrorist attacks, emerging diseases, illegal immigrants and situations requiring the dispatch of u.S. troops.

A historical perspective can help us, because ours is not the first society 6 to face environmental challenges. Many past societies collapsed partly from their failure to solve problems similar to those we face today-especially problems of deforestation, water management, topsoil loss and climate change. The long list of victims includes the Anasazi in the U.S. Southwest, the Maya, Easter Islanders, the Greenland Norse, Mycenaean Greeks and inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, Great Zimbabwe and Angkor War. The outcomes ranged from “just” a collapse of society, to the deaths of most people, to (in some cases) everyone’s ending up dead. What can we learn from these events? I see four main sets of lessons.

First, environmental problems can indeed cause societies to collapse, 7 even societies assaulting their environments with stone tools and far lower population densities than we have today.

Second, some environments are more fragile than others; making some 8 societies more prone to collapse than others. Fragility varies even within the same country: for instance, some parts of the U.S., including South­ ern California, where I live, are especially at risk from low rainfall and

418 Chapter 11 The Fate of the Earth: Can We Preserve the Global Environment?

salinization of soil from agriculture that is dependent on irrigation­ the same problems that overwhelmed the Anasazi. Some nations occupy more fragile environments than do others. It’s no accident that a list of the wOlid’s most environmentally devastated andlor overpopulated countries resembles a list of the world’s current political tinderboxes. Both lists include Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Nepal, Rwanda and Somalia.

Third, otherwise robust societies can be dragged down by the envi- 9 ronmental problems of their trade partners. About 500 years ago, two Polynesian societies, on Henderson Island and Pitcairn Island, vanished because they depended for vital imports on the Polynesian society of Man­ gareva Island, which collapsed from deforestation. We Americans can well understand that outcome, having seen how vulnerable we are to instability in oil-exporting countries of the Middle East.

Fourth, we wonder, Why didn’t those peoples see the problems develop- to ing around them and do something to avoid disaster? (Future generations may ask that question about us.) One explanation is the conflicts between the short-term interests of those in power and the long-term interests of everybody: chiefs were becoming rich from processes that ultimately undermined society. That too is an acute issue today, as wealthy Americans do things that enrich themselves in the short run and harm everyone in the long run. As the Anasazi chiefs found, they could get away with those policies for a while, but ultimately they bought themselves the privilege of being merely the last to starve.

Of course, there are differences between our situation and those of past 11 societies. Our problems are more dangerous than those of the Anasazi. Today there are far more humans alive, packing far greater destructive power, than ever before. Unlike the Anasazi, a society today can’t collapse without affect­ ing societies far away. Because of globalization, the risk we face today is of a worldwide collapse, not just a local tragedy.

People often ask if I am an optimist or a pessimist about our future. I 12 answer that I’m cautiously optimistic. We face big problems that will do us in if we don’t solve them. But we are capable of solving them. The risk we face isn’t that of an asteroid collision beyond our ability to avoid. Instead our problems are of our own making, and so we can stop making them. The only thing lacking is the necessary political wilL

The other reason for my optimism is the big advantage we enjoy over the 13 Anasazi and other past societies: the power of the media. When the Anasazi were collapsing in the U.S. Southwest, they had no idea that Easter Island was also on a downward spiral thousands of miles away, or that Mycenaean Greece had collapsed 2,400 years earlier. But we know from the media what is happening all around the world, and we know from archaeologists

Jared Diamond Lessons from Lost Worlds 419

what happened in the past. We can learn from that understanding of remote places and times; the Anasazi didn’t have that option. Knowing history, we are not doomed to repeat it.

Thinking About the Essay

1. How are the opening paragraphs of the essay structured around multiple, counter pointed analogies? Does the author modulate convincingly from one to another?

2. Highlight instances of the author’s use of scare quotes and explain their function in the essay.

3. Where does Diamond introduce the issue of globalization? What connections are made in the essay between globalization, terrorism, and environmental problems?

4. What significance do you see in the order in which Diamond presents his four sets of lessons? Are any of the sets of lessons different in kind from the others?

5. How does globalization recur as a theme in the final paragraphs to distinguish the histories of past cultures from our own situation?

Responding in Writing

6. Write a letter addressed to your future grandchildren in which you relate your current concerns about the world they will inhabit. Is the future state of the environment near the top of your list of concerns? Why or why not?

7. Rwanda appears on Diamond’s list of “political tinderboxes” with environmental problems related to resource exploitation or overpopulation (paragraph 8). In an essay, attempt to explain how overpopulation and limited resources (in a country like Rwanda) could lead to political unrest and (in the case of Rwanda) mass genocide.

8. In paragraph 3, Diamond observes of children who grew up during World War” that “their parents may have thought wisely about life insurance, but their parents’ generation had not thought wisely about world conditions. h In a brief essay, respond to this distinction between individual parents and a generation of individuals. How can someone belong to both categories at the same moment in history?

Networking 9. Do you share Diamond’s optimism about the power of the media to inform

and educate? Do you agree that “knowing history, we are not doomed to repeat it”? Divide the class into two groups (“optimists” and “pessimists”)

420 Chapter 11 The Fate of the Earth: Can We Preserve the Global Environment?

and debate Diamond’s specific assertion about the media and the familiar and more general statement that ends the essay.

10. Go online and research the history of the collapse of a past culture alluded to in the essay. What are some other differences, not considered in the essay, between the environmental crisis faced by this past culture and the global problems that we face today?

A Place that Makes Sense BILL McKIBBEN I Bill McKibben was born in Palo Alto, California,

in 1960 and studied at Harvard University (B.A., 1982). His writing focuses on the global ecosystem and the human impact on it. Frequently, he brings moral and religious ideas to bear on the ways in which our behavior-from consumerism to industrial shortsightedness-degrades the natural world. McKibben says that with respect to nature and Earth’s ecosystem, he tries “to counter despair.” In books like The End of Nature (1989), Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth (1995), Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously (2000), Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (2003), and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (2007), McKibben balances a sense of alarm about our profligate waste of natural resources with a tempered optimism that we can revere and preserve our fragile planet. “What I have learned so far, ” McKibben observes, “is that what is sound and elegant and civilized and respectful of community is also environmentally benign.” This essay by McKibben, which appeared in The Christian Century on September 23, 2008, poses a challenge: Are we living too large?

Before Reading

In his essay, McKibben asserts that “most places in the U.S. make so little sense” (paragraph 11). What do you think he means by this statement, especially as it relates to sustainable lifestyles and the environment?

Not far from Siena, in the Tuscan hill town of Montalcino, is the Abbey of SaneAntimo. It was first built in-well, no one’s certain. Copyright © 2008 by THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY. “A Place That Makes Sense» by Bill McKibbon is reprinted by permission from the September 23, 2008 issue of THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY.

Bill McKibben A Place that Makes Sense 421

It was there by the ninth century. What you see now is a modern recon­ struction, modern meaning 12th century. In other words, it’s a part of the

landscape. And the landscape is a part of it. As I sat in the pews one afternoon 2

earlier this summer, listening to the monks chant Nones in sonorous har­ mony, I kept looking past the altar to two windows behind. They framed prime views of the steeply raked farm fields in back of the sanctuary-one showed rows of dusty-leaved olive trees climbing a hill, the other rank upon rank of grapevines in their neat rows. With the crucifix in the middle they formed a kind of triptych, and it was easy to imagine not only the passion, but also one’s cup running over with Chianti, one’s head anointed

with gleaming oil. ‘ And easy enough, I think, to figure out why this Tuscan landscape is so 3

appealing to so many. Its charm lies in its comprehensibility-its scale makes intuitive, visceral sense. If you climb one of the bell towers in the hill towns of Tuscany, you look out on a compassable world-you can see where the food that you eat comes from, trace the course of the rivers. It seems sufficient unto itself, as indeed it largely was once upon a time. And in the ancient churches it’s easy to construct a vision of the medieval man or woman who once sat in the same hard pew-a person who understood, as we never can, his or her place in the universe. That place was bounded by the distance one could travel physically-save for the Crusade years, it was probably easy to live a life without ever leaving the district. (Florentines speak of living an entire life in view of the Duomo.) And it was bounded

as powerfully by the shared and deep belief in the theology of the

church. You knew your place. Which is a phrase with several meanings. You would have been deeply 4

rooted in that world-it’s hard to imagine there the identity crises that are routine in our world. You would have been considerably more rooted than we’re comfortable with. You knew your place in the sense that you were born into it, and there was little hope of leaving if it didn’t suit. Peasants were peasants and lords were lords, and never the two met. Inequality was baptized, questioning unlikely. The old medieval world made sense, but it was often an oppressive sense-hence the SOO-year project to liberate

ourselves in every possible way. And though Tuscany still looks comprehensible-and is thus a suit­ 5

able backdrop for profitable tourism and powerful travel fantasy-it’s now mostly sham. The farms remain, largely supported by farm subsidies from the European Union and the wine-buying habits of affluent foreign­ ers. The villages are mostly emptied out, with only the old remaining-on

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