I was recently interviewed via email by a group of ecologists
in France. I’m sharing it with
English-speaking folks because it provides an easy map for learning, a basic
introduction to environmental history and ecological sustainability.
My blog now contains reviews of 170+ sustainability-related
books, and dozens of essays — stuff that would take more than a month to
read. Over the years, a number of
important reviews have gotten buried in the pile, and get fewer views than
recent work. In the following interview,
I have included links to my reviews of a number of important books. Most reviews are less than three pages. Bookworms may discover some neat books to add
to their reading list. Have fun!
1.
How would you define the concept of sustainability?
There are two varieties of sustainability.
(1) The form you encounter many times every day is what I
call ersatz (fake) sustainability — sustainable forest mining, sustainable fish
mining, sustainable soil mining, sustainable development, sustainable growth,
sustainable cities, and so on (even “sustainable mining!”). Ersatz sustainability is oriented to the
ongoing viability and profitability of business enterprises. It’s a deceptive marketing buzzword intended
to befuddle the clueless, and grease the wheels of destruction.
Recently, I watched a video of Derrick
Jensen being interviewed. He said,
“Somewhere along the way, environmentalism stopped being about protecting the
Earth, and it became about ‘sustainability,’ which is about continuing this culture
that’s killing the planet.”
(2) The rare form is the essential one — ecological
sustainability. An ecologically sustainable way of life is one that can continue for
millennia without causing permanent degradation to the ecosystem. All (normal) animals have succeeded at living
in this manner, and they have done so for millions of years.
For example, the San people of the Kalahari, in southern
Africa, have been living in a very low-tech manner for maybe 100,000 years. Until recent decades, they did not use
nonrenewable resources, and they did not overuse renewable resources. See The
Art of Tracking, and Great Leaps.
2.
The “dominant” society or culture, based on the ideology of unlimited growth
that now proposes (because it needs evermore primary resources) to mine
meteorites, the moon or the ocean floor isn’t very sustainable, would you
agree?
I agree! Understand
that we don’t “need” more nonrenewable resources; we “want” more. What all living things “need” is simple, stuff
like food, water, air. What modern
consumers “want” is everything in the world.
Other important words include finite, carrying capacity, drawdown,
renewable, nonrenewable, bottleneck, and overshoot. To understand these, Overshoot by William Catton is outstanding. The
Essential Exponential by Albert Bartlett does a superb job of debunking the
idiotic fantasies of perpetual growth.
Afterburn, Snake
Oil, and The End
of Growth, by Richard Heinberg, introduce
readers to Peak Oil, and the dangers of creating a super-complex civilization
that is fatally dependent on finite nonrenewable resources. Scarcity by
Christopher Clugston discusses the current consumption and remaining reserves
of other nonrenewable resources that are essential to industrial civilization.
Renewable
Energy Cannot Sustain a Consumer Society by Ted Trainer explains why alternative energy cannot replace the
current levels of energy consumption provided by sequestered carbon (fossil
fuels). Too Hot
to Touch by William and Rosemarie Alley reveals a
super-important challenge that gets far too little attention — the failure of
industrial civilization to figure out how to safely store nuclear waste, which
remains highly toxic for a million years or so.
Limits
to Growth by Meadows and Randers was a classic,
warning humankind of troubles ahead. Living
Within Limits by Garrett Hardin contributed to this discussion. Foolishly disregarding limits led to a
growing human mob. The
Population Bomb and The
Population Explosion by Paul and Anne Ehrlich
sounded alarms. The
Ostrich Factor by Garrett Hardin, and The
Rapid Growth of Human Populations by William
Stanton, provided additional insights.
In Old
Fashioned Family Planning I commented on
approaches used in different civilizations.
3.
What do you think of the fact that most people believe in “progress” despite
the growing social unrest and the unraveling of numerous ecological crises?
Do fish believe in water?
No, fish spend their lives in water.
When youngsters learn the meanings of words, they begin to absorb the
beliefs of their culture, and imprint its worldview, which almost everyone will
carry throughout their lives. The worldview’s
memes are constantly reinforced by education, religion, government, mass media,
advertising, and everyone around them.
They tell us that our way of life is excellent, and the best is yet to
come. There is no challenge that technology
cannot remedy. Acceptance of this worldview
makes you appear to be sane and normal.
To question it is heresy, lunacy, or stupidity. In The
Myth of Human Supremacy Derrick Jensen vigorously questions it.
Too
Smart For Our Own Good by Craig Dilworth
introduced the Vicious Circle Principle.
“Humankind’s development consists in an accelerating movement from
situations of scarcity, to technological innovation, to increased resource
availability, to increased consumption, to population growth, to resource
depletion, to scarcity once again, and so on.”
It was a merry-go-round that kept spinning faster and faster.
A
Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright was a
best-selling critique of the myth of progress.
We have fallen into a “progress trap.”
The benefits of innovation often encourage society to live in a new way,
while burning the bridges behind them as they advance. Society can find itself trapped in an
unsustainable way of living, and it’s no longer possible to just turn around
and painlessly return to a simpler mode.
The
Earth Has a Soul by Carl Jung examined how modern urbanization packs humans
together in stressful density — insectification. “The most dangerous things in the world are
immense accumulations of human beings who are manipulated by only a few heads.” Growing crowds multiply the stupidity level,
and create psychic epidemics. “We have
plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with
even wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots.”
4.
What would you say to those who believe that happiness is a recent phenomenon?
Many observers who have spent time in uncivilized cultures were
often surprised by the happiness of wild people.
In The
Continuum Concept, Jean Liedloff described the natives she met in South
America. The Tauripan people of
Venezuela were the happiest people she had ever met. All of their children were relaxed, joyful,
cooperative, and rarely cried — they were never bored, lonely, or
argumentative. The Yequana people seemed
unreal to Liedloff, because of their lack of unhappiness. As an expedition was moving up a challenging
jungle stream, she noticed that the Italians would get completely enraged at
the slightest mishap, while the Yequana just laughed the struggles away. Their daily life had a party mood to it.
Peter Freuchen spent a lot of time with the Eskimos, and
married into their culture. In Book of
the Eskimos, he wrote that “they always enjoy life with an enviable
intensity, and they believe themselves to be the happiest people on earth
living in the most beautiful country there is.”
In his book, In Search of the Primitive, Lewis Cotlow
visited Eskimos in arctic Canada. One
night, he spent several hours talking to local officers of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police. They kept repeating one
idea in different ways: “The Eskimos are the happiest people in the world.”
Colin Turnbull spent years with the Mbuti Pygmies, and
described them in The Forest
People. He was amazed by their
joyful way of living — he said that Pygmies laugh until they can no longer
stand, then they sit down and laugh.
In The Human
Cycle, Turnbull compared how Pygmies and
Westerners move through the phases of life.
Pygmies do it beautifully, but Western culture damaged its
occupants. We tend to regard our
childhood as a golden age of innocence and joy — before we’re shipped off to
dreary schools, jobs, and nursing homes.
The Pygmies did not idolize childhood, “because, for them, the world has
remained a place of wonder, and the older they get the greater the wonder.”
In Original
Wisdom, Robert Wolff described the Sng’oi people of Malaysia. They knew each other’s unspoken thoughts,
communicating telepathically. “They had
an immense inner dignity, were happy, and content, and did not want
anything.” They loved to laugh and joke. They were often singing and smiling. Angry voices were never heard.
Daniel L. Everett was sent to the Amazon to translate the
Bible into the language of the illiterate Pirahã hunter-gatherers. He described his efforts in Don’t Sleep,
There Are Snakes. He eventually
realized that it was pointless “to convince happy, satisfied people that they
are lost and need Jesus as their personal savior.” He became an atheist. “I would go so far as to suggest that the
Pirahãs are happier, fitter, and better adjusted to their environment than any
Christian or other religious person I have ever known.”
IMPORTANT: In the
above, I am asserting that happiness is not new. I am not suggesting that wild people were
angelic beings, flawlessly wise, and always lived in perfect harmony.
5.
What would you say to those who think that human beings in the distant past led
sad and painful lives?
Misfortune is a normal part of every life. Wild people got sick. They got injured. They starved.
They had conflicts. In The Falcon,
John Tanner described the 30 years he lived with the Ottawa and Ojibwa Indians,
from about 1790 to 1820. He was
kidnapped at nine years old, fully integrated into their culture, became an
excellent hunter, and forgot his first language. Whites resented his Indian aspects, and
Indians resented his white heritage. His
life was a harsh one.
The philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) believed that
without the beneficial protection of government, primitive folks lived in “continual
fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short.” Hobbes was not a
hungry, dirty peasant, but most people in his society were, and their quality
of life really sucked, despite the presence of government. Twentieth century anthropologists, who
actually spent time in wild societies, reject Hobbes’ belief.
A
New Green History of the World by Clive Ponting
is an amazing 400-page summary of environmental history. He concluded that life in civilization was often nasty, brutish, and short. He wrote, “Since the rise of settled
societies some ten thousand years ago the overwhelming majority of the world’s
population has lived in conditions of grinding poverty. They have had few possessions, suffered from
appalling living conditions, and have been forced to spend most of their very
limited resources on finding enough food to stay alive.”
We’re living in a bizarre era,
soaring on a joyride of extreme waste, a temporary onetime-only explosion of
mindless consumption, made possible by a reckless binge of energy guzzling. We’re hammering the planet in ways never
before possible. When the fuel gauge
approaches empty, the floor will drop out from under seven-point-something
billion people. Life will get exciting.
6.
What would you say to those who believe that human existence has recently
become cooler, and indeed has become bearable thanks to the washing machine,
the refrigerator, the car and industrial medicine?
My path to becoming a wordsmith began with fat black pencils,
followed by ballpoint pens, huge manual typewriters, the highly unstable word
processing software of the late 1980s, and my current laptop, which has
miraculous, incredibly amazing functionality.
Now we have the internet. My
writing is available to several billion, a quarter million have viewed my blog,
and I have friends in dozens of nations.
In one sense, this is very cool; in another sense, a costly mistake.
Five days ago, I had surgery on my right eye, which removed a
cataract-clouded lens. Today, the world
is strikingly clear. I can see like an
eagle. I’m astounded by the improvement.
When I was born in 1952, there were no personal computers, color
TVs, nuclear power plants, satellites, cell phones, shopping malls, or birth
control pills.
When my father was born in 1913, there were no antibiotics,
plastics, air conditioners, chainsaws, televisions, radios, missiles, or jet
planes. Almost all agriculture was
organic.
When my grandfather was born in 1885, there were no
airplanes, automobiles, refrigerators, or aluminum products.
When my great-grandfather was born in 1843, there were no oil
wells, metal boats, tractors, telephones, electric lights, sewing machines,
repeating rifles, or dynamite.
When my great-great grandfather was born in 1818, there were
no railroads, cameras, bicycles, wooden matches, or telegraph systems. Detroit and Chicago were trading posts in the
wilderness.
When my great-great-great grandfather was born in 1798, there
were 900 million people on Earth, and Los Angeles had 300 residents.
Note that none of the benefits cited above were
sustainable. All had enormous ecological
costs and numerous unintended consequences.
Humans lived sustainably for tens of thousands of years without any of
these amazing things. In my 64 years, I
have sent a mountain of trash to landfills, and I am not proud of this.
Carl Jung summed it up nicely: “Unfortunately, there is in
this world no good thing that does not have to be paid for by an evil at least
equally great.” The Earth Crisis is a
planet-wrecking disaster created by the unintended consequences of countless
clever innovations. There is no “free
lunch,” everything has a cost.
Civilization would be impossible without the clever discovery
of how to kindle and control fire, a technology that all other species have avoided. Fire:
A Brief History by Stephen J. Pyne is fascinating. He wrote, “Without fire humanity sinks to a
status of near helplessness, a plump chimp with a scraping stone and digging
stick, hiding from the night’s terrors, crowding into minor biotic niches.”
Techno-Fix
by Michael and Joyce Huesemann does a good job of analyzing our toxic obsession
with technology. Huesemann’s Law of
Techno-Optimism states, “Optimism is inversely proportional to knowledge.”
Health
& the Rise of Civilization by Mark Nathan
Cohen describes how domestication and civilization ushered in the era of deadly
infectious diseases. Bird Flu by Michael Greger reveals how current methods for raising
livestock and poultry encourage the emergence of deadly new strains of
influenza viruses that could zoom around the planet in days, killing hundreds
of millions. The
Antibiotic Paradox by Stuart Levy tells readers why we’re moving into the
post-antibiotic era, when our wonder drugs will quit working. Once again, bubonic plague will be incurable,
and infections caused by tiny paper cuts could be fatal.
The history and harms of soil mining are discussed in Topsoil
and Civilization by Tom Dale and Vernon Gill
Carter, Against the
Grain by Richard Manning, and Dirt:
The Erosion of Civilizations by David Montgomery. A Forest
Journey by John Perlin is a great book on the
history of forest mining. Water mining
is the subject of Pillar of
Sand by Sandra Postel, and Cadillac
Desert by Marc Reisner.
Fish mining is the subject of The End of
the Line by Charles Clover, The Mortal
Sea by Jeffrey Bolster, and Sea of
Slaughter by Farley Mowat. Swimming
in Circles by Paul Molyneaux reveals the dark
side of fish farming (aquaculture).
A number of factors indicate that
we are not too far from Peak Food. There
are enormous obstacles to producing enough food to feed the expected mob of 11
billion. Today, feeding a mere 7.4
billion is intensely unsustainable and destructive. Three books on the subject include The End
of Plenty by Joel Bourne, The
Coming Famine by Julian Cribb, and Who
Will Feed China? by Lester Brown.
7.
What would you say to those who imagine that freedom and democracy are recent
inventions?
My focus has been on sustainability, not philosophy or
politics. I would think that freedom is
not an invention, but the normal state for wild organisms. Abstractions drive me crazy. Are the chimps who are subordinate to the
alpha male not free? I don’t know.
Hunter-gatherer clans require teamwork, so it’s important for
them to avoid conflicts, and to be good at conflict resolution. Some tribes made decisions by consensus, all
agreed. Was this democracy? Other tribes allowed dissent — lads who
didn’t want to join a war party were not forced to. John Tanner mentioned this in The Falcon.
I was taught that democracy was invented in Greece. The democracy of Athens in the fifth century
B.C. allowed 30,000 to 40,000 people to participate, but excluded 80,000 to
100,000 slaves.
8.
What would you say to those who have difficulty imagining a world where life
couldn’t be enjoyable living generation after generation within a society,
culture, which doesn’t feel the need to innovate frantically just for the sake
of innovation?
This is complicated.
In Cradle
of Humankind, I discussed our ancestors’ shaky beginnings as bipedal apes
on the savannah. We were slow, weak, and
highly vulnerable to large predators.
Innovations like spears and fire increased our odds for survival, and
this was a shift away from the traditional lifestyles of all other primates.
In Great Leaps
I discussed how moving out of tropical Africa, into colder climates, presented
us with new challenges — preserving and storing food, and surviving cold
winters. Hunters living in tropical
savannahs needed no tools for killing fish, seals, or seabirds, but the pioneers
did, and innovation provided them.
The
Food Crisis in Prehistory by Mark Nathan Cohen described how growing
population and diminishing wildlife eventually led to the domestication of
plants and animals. Growing crowds also
led to growing conflicts between groups.
Innovation provided ongoing technological improvements for both offense
and defense. This led to a nonstop,
continuously accelerating arms race, brilliantly described in Throwing
Fire by Alfred W. Crosby — our journey from
throwing stones to throwing nuclear weapons.
Today, in a consumer economy, innovation boosts survival in a
different way. The objective is no
longer getting meat, but a maniacal pursuit of wealth and status, via
inventing, manufacturing, and selling stuff like smart phones, self-driving
cars, big screen TVs, and a million other varieties of silly nonsense.
9.
What would you say to those who believe that, throughout time, all human
cultures have destroyed their environments?
Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich described a
trip to Hudson Bay, Canada, where he spent time with Inuit
hunter-gatherers. He was astonished to
realize that every person in the group knew the tribe’s cultural information in
its entirety. They all knew how to tan
hides, clean fish, weave baskets, and so on.
Yet, in our advanced civilization, nobody knows even a millionth of our
cultural information.
Few in modern America receive a competent education in
environmental history and ecological sustainability. I’ve taken two online sustainability courses
from reputable universities, and both were very low quality. Universities train the teachers who will
educate the school kids, so grand myths of magical thinking cascade from one
generation to the next. Thus, almost the
whole population is largely ignorant, handicapped by dodgy beliefs. The belief that humans are inherently stupid
and destructive is false, but many use the belief as an excuse for our current
consumer savagery. “Hey, we can’t help
it, we’re humans!”
I’ve communicated with a number of professors, and the impression
I get is that most pursue a “don’t scare the students” approach. If we tell them the truth, they will be
overwhelmed with despair, and give up (as if they are currently trying). Most people don’t smoke because we’ve taught
them the truth about smoking and cancer — fear inspires intelligent life
decisions. Why wouldn’t teaching the
truth about the Earth Crisis have similar benefits? Unfortunately, the global economy and
perpetual economic growth are more important than a living planet, or the
generations that come after us. So, the truth
would be inconvenient, therefore we sweep it under the bed. Let’s go shopping!
10.
What would you say to those fatalistic people who believe that humanity is
vowed to this path of destruction no matter what?
What is the alternative?
Is humankind likely to suddenly wake up and unite in revolutionary
change? Are we eager to see coercive
birth prevention programs? Are we ready
to stop soil mining, forest mining, and fish mining? Will we voluntarily cease burning sequestered
carbon? What will happen when the
cooling ponds evaporate, and many tons of nuclear fuel are exposed to the air,
and begin burning? Guy McPherson wrote,
“Civilization is responsible for life-destroying, abrupt climate change. Turning off civilization kills us all
faster.”
Our present way of life is extremely unsustainable, and therefore
temporary. A sustainable future is
inevitable, because only the sustainable can endure. We are zooming toward a solid wall of
resource limits and other surprises.
Many agriculture-based civilizations collapsed, regrouped, and resumed,
in several cycles, until their land base was reduced to a wasteland.
Like every civilization, our industrial civilization will also
collapse, but depleted resources (energy, minerals, groundwater, topsoil, etc.)
ensure that our super-intensive way of life will be a onetime catastrophe. We’ll try like crazy to keep it on life
support, but it will never again be so complex, because the planet has been
pounded so hard. Muscle power will
eventually become humankind’s primary energy source once again.
So, we’re on the path to a bottleneck, in which the carrying
capacity for humankind will be lowered to levels suitable for the new, much
simpler, way of life. Humans are both
clever and remarkably adaptable to a wide variety of living conditions. But, in addition to resource depletion and
ecological devastation, another enormous predicament is emerging at the same
time, climate change.
There is compelling evidence that humans are able to survive
without smart phones, automobiles, and nuclear reactors. Food, on the other hand, is an absolute
necessity. All food-producing plants and
trees can only survive within a range of conditions — temperature, moisture,
soil nutrients. One source suggested the
threshold temperatures for the three primary grains: wheat 26°C (78.8°F), corn
(maize) 38°C (100.4°F), and rice 34°C (93.2°F).
Too much heat or aridity affects plant growth, pollination, and
reproductive processes. When crop yields
decline, famines increase, and the herd downsizes.
Near
Term Extinction is, by far, the most
visited post on my blog. This community
is also known as Near Term Human Extinction (NTHE). They are certain that the final generation of
our species is alive today. A prominent
NTHE spokesperson is Dr. Guy McPherson. They have a support group on Facebook. I have no doubt that this will be a
tumultuous century, but I have not been convinced that some humans won’t make
it through the post-industrial bottleneck.
11.
And finally, what do all of the sustainable cultures you have studied have in
common?
They don’t utilize nonrenewable resources, like metallic
minerals or sequestered carbon (coal, oil).
They don’t overuse renewables, like wood, freshwater, or wildlife. They comprehend the carrying capacity of
their ecosystem, and they mindfully strive to limit their numbers, when
needed. Most are nomadic, which
discourages the accumulation of belongings, competition for status, and the bloody
conflicts it generates.
The safest approach is adapting to your ecosystem, rather
than attempting to control it. Growing
annual or perennial food crops, in dense concentrations or monocultures,
creates ideal conditions for pests and plant diseases (like Ireland before the
blight). Agriculture based on tilling is
a destructive process — soil mining. Agroforestry
seems to work in Tikopia, but
the island is extremely isolated, and less likely to be visited by exotic pests
and diseases. It is vulnerable to rising
seas, super storms, and an unstable climate.
I don’t recall reading about sustainable cultures that
possessed domesticated livestock. Tribal
Ireland might have been ideal for mindful low impact herding (once they
eliminated the wolves). Topography
of Ireland by Giraldus Cambrensis (1146 –
1223) was written when the island was still mostly
rainforest, and the tribes raised cattle.
Wildlife was still abundant. Fish,
flesh, and milk were all they ate, and they wore nothing but animal skins.
The Irish climate was mild,
rainfall was gentle and abundant, and the grass was green all year. Snows were rare, and soon melted away. It was a paradise for herbivores and herders. Herders needed no structures to protect the
livestock from the cold, and they had no need for cutting, drying, and storing
hay. When Cambrensis wrote, population
pressure was growing, and tribes had mutated into warrior cultures. A few centuries earlier, it might have been a
happier story.
Germania by
Tacitus described tribal Germany in A.D. 98.
They were also herders, and very warlike. They kept the Roman Empire from spreading to
their side of the Rhine. In general,
around the world, nobody owned wild grazers, but domesticated livestock were
someone’s private property. The more
animals you owned, the richer you were, and the higher your social status.
Richard
Manning once noted that telling a Samburu herder he is overgrazing is
telling him he has too many cattle, which in his terms is like saying he’s too
rich. Telling him to protect wildlife is
telling him to harbor the enemy.
There was no benefit in capturing and slaughtering 100 wild
cattle at once, because most of the meat would be wasted. But the lad that owned and confined 100
domesticated cattle or horses could exploit his livestock more efficiently. He was wealthy, respected, and envied, but
grazing enslaved animals was likely to degrade the grassland over time. A
Plague of Sheep by Elinor Melville discusses
overgrazing in Mexico. The
Roots of Dependency by Richard White talks about
Navaho country. Grassland by Richard Manning examines the damages caused by the
grazing industry in the American west.
Paul Shepard had a lot to say about
our relationship with wild animals. In
his brilliant book, The Others, he described the importance of having daily exposure to wild
animals, and how their presence is essential for our normal psychological
development. Shepard was not at all fond
of domesticated animals. In Where We
Belong, he raged against the “total potato-heads,” the “hoofed locusts”
(sheep, goats, asses, horses, cows, mules, yaks, camels) that scalped the
slopes. “Their dexterous tooth work and
footwork buried cities” (with eroded soils).
“The magnificent forests of the Mediterranean rim and islands
were progressively demolished and their seedlings and root-shoots chewed and
trampled by livestock.” The Minoan city
of Jerash, a village of 3,000, was once home to 250,000, before the soil was
trashed. “Like the dinosaurs, which are
known mainly for their vanishing, the ancestors we know best, and from whom we
take our style, are those who seem to have lived mainly to call down calamity
upon themselves.”
The
Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest written story
ever discovered. King Gilgamesh was the
madman who built the city of Uruk in the Fertile Crescent. He destroyed the ancient forest, which led to
catastrophic erosion and flooding.
Today, Uruk is a crude pile of
brown rubble sitting amidst a desolate barren moonscape.
Man and
Nature, by George Perkins Marsh, was published in
1864. It was an early masterpiece of
environmental history. He visited the
sites of many ancient civilizations, and was shocked to realize that they were
all victims of self-destruction. Marsh
saw ancient seaports that were now 30 miles (48 km) from the sea. He saw ancient places where the old streets
were buried beneath 30 feet (9 m) of eroded soil. He stood in mainland fields, 15 miles (24 km)
from the sea, which used to be islands. He
tried to warn America that they were following the same doomed path. America ignored him.
Finally, what (almost) all
sustainable cultures have in common is that they have gone extinct —
absorbed or destroyed by the unsustainable cultures that overwhelmed them. Throughout history, civilization has trumped
wild cultures. Folks with jets and
missiles will not be massacred by folks with spears and bows. One exception is the Sentineli
who fiercely resist colonization (and are extremely lucky to inhabit a place
worthless for colonization and resource mining). I will offer no magical solutions today.
All the best!
