Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond

It seems to be a condition of becoming a card-carrying greenie that you must have two qualities. Firstly you must be an unrelenting pessimist. Secondly you must have a broad knowledge of all the social sciences with the massive exception of economics. The subtitle of this book gives away its premise: how societies choose to fail or survive, not choose to fail or thrive. In short, it's all about evil humans being too stupid/arrogant/short-sighted/greedy/selfish in our unrelenting rape of Mother Nature and our certain path to destruction unless we renounce our ways.

Now, in long...

It's hard to know where to start with a book that can get so much so wrong. Where Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel was an interesting compilation of why Europeans have been the seeming "winners" in the march of societies, this book follows a similar template but on much shakier ground.

As my wise Da put it, the book contains plenty of interesting research and anecdotes. The problem is the misguided conclusions Diamond often draws from them. Often there are glaring contradictions or morally dubious calls. For example Diamond basically lauds the aims of the Zero Population Growth movement and China's one child policy. He also borders on the ridiculous. On page 114, in discussing the Easter Islanders Diamond asks himself why they were thinking as they chopped their last tree down...

Like modern loggers, did he shout "Jobs, not trees!"? Or: "Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood"? Or: "We don't haev proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering"?

At times Diamond gets it plain wrong. On page 394 he says the Australian constitution gives a disproportionate vote to rural areas. There are no notes or references to back this assertion and to this Australian it seems outlandish.

I'm the kind of person who, much to my wife's chagrin, can easily stop reading a book if I don't enjoy it. Yet in this case I found myself 400 pages in, still reading despite a record high blood pressure. Why? I can only compare it to the morbid fascination people have as they drive past a car crash. It repels and attracts all at the same time. If you want to read a book that tempts you to throw it against a wall at regular intervals, this is the one for you.

But any book that authoratatively sites Lester Brown in its further reading is understandably built on shaky foundations. Diamond obviously doesn't see the irony in churning out almost 600 pages of hogwash, depleting our precious forests and blah blah.

The most obvious and damning problem with the book is the complete lack of understanding of the modern world and economics in particular. The final section of the book is Diamond's attempt to draw the lessons of the past and apply them to our modern world, trying to alter our headlong path to oblivion before it's too late. He has an attempt at answering "one-liner objections" to his thesis and yet most of his answers fall flat. For example he cannot see that environmental concerns are already being addressed by governments, companies and people because it has become clear it is in their economic as well as environmental interests. He dismisses the potential for technology to help, even though technology since the Industrial Revolution has lead to spectacular improvements in agriculture, living standards and in more modern times cleaner air and water, better forest management and so on. He falls for the common fallacy that our non-renewable resources will suddenly one day stop with dramatic consequences, whereas the miracle that is the price mechanism will help ensure smooth transitions, as it already has. He incredibly dismisses the massive improvements in human living standards (and not just in the rich world), saying it has been too great a cost to the environment but without backing it up at all. He also laments rising living standards for the Third World, because rising living standards (in Diamond's world) automatically means increased environmental destruction. He dismisses being labelled a gloom-and-doom merchant by saying while greenies have got it wrong, so did Julian Simon, so you can be both too pessimistic and too optimistic.

Diamond's problem is he has allowed his politics to overwhelm what his research supports. His lack of faith in modern humanity, in our ability to learn from history (such as what he's pointed out in this book), in our improved understanding and management of nature and the environment, in modern capitalism and globalisation to spread wealth and better living standards and reasonable cost, betrays the key theme of this book: Jared Diamond is smarter than you and doesn't think you deserve what you have.

Amazingly, he hasn't yet started a line of sackcloth.