How societies collapse

The Philippines is one of the 14 Environmental trouble spots in the modern world. The other countries in the same list are Haiti, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Madagascar, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Solomon Islands.

This is vividly displayed in a map of “Environmental Trouble Spots in the World” in the book Collapse: How Societies Chose or Fail to Succeed by Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond  published by Viking Penguin Group. Here is the introduction to the book:

“Who hasn’t gazed upon the abandoned temples of Angkor Wat or the jungle-choked cities of Maya and wondered could the same fate happen to us? In this riveting book, Jared Diamond – whose [ book] Guns, Germs, and Steel ] revolutionized our understanding of history – explores how humankind’s use of and abuse of the environment reveal the truth behind the world’s great collapse, from the Ansazi of  North America to the Vikings of Greenland to modern Montana. What emerges is a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe – and whose warning signs surround us today and that we ignore at our peril.”

According to Diamond, the most serious problems facing past and present societies fall into a dozen groups. Eight of the 12 were already significant in the past while four – photosynthetic ceiling, toxic chemicals, energy, and atmospheric changes – became serious only recently. Here is a short summary of some of the  environmental problems:

• At an accelerating rate, we are destroying natural habitats or else converting them to human-made habitats such as cities and villages, farmlands and pastures, roads and golf courses. Losses of forests represent loss for humans because they provide timber and raw materials and ecosystem services such as protecting our watershed, steps in the water cycle that provide rainfall and habitat for most plant and animal species. Deforestation led to collapse past societies.  About one-third of the world’s coral reefs have already been severely damaged.  At this rate, about one half of the remaining reefs by the year 2030.

• The world’s major energy resources are oil, natural gas and coal. Likely accessible reserves of readily available oil and gas will last a few more decades. Reserves will be deeper underground, dirtier, increasingly expensive to extract or process or will involve higher environmental costs.

• Today, over a billion lack access to reliable and safe drinking water. Most of the world’s freshwater in rivers and lakes is already being used for irrigation, industrial water, boat transportation corridors, fisheries and recreation. Freshwater underground aquifers are being depleted faster that they are being naturally replenished so that they will eventually dwindle. Many past societies, like the Ansazi and Maya, were undone by water problems.

• Human activities produce gases that escape into the atmosphere where they either damage the protective ozone layer or else act as greenhouse gases that absorb sunlight and thereby lead to a global warming. The burning of fossil fuels and firewood increases carbon dioxide from combustion and respiration while herds of cattle and sheep have also increased methane from fermentation in the intestines of ruminant animals. The rise in global sea levels as a result of snow and ice melting poses dangers of flooding and and coastal erosion for densely populated low-lying coastal plains and river deltas already barely above or even below sea level. The areas threatened include much of the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and the seaboard of eastern US, many low lying Pacific islands, the deltas of the Nile and Mekong rivers and coastal And riverbank cities of the United Kingdom ( London), India, Japan and the Philippines.

• Soil of farmlands used for growing crops are being carried away by water and wind erosion at rates between 10 and 40 times the rates of soil formation and between 500 and 10,000 times soil erosion rates on forested land. Soil erosion rates are much higher than soil formation rates which means a net loss of soil. Other types of soil damage are caused by human agricultural practices including salinization, losses of soil fertility, alkalinisation, and soil acidification. All of these have resulted in an estimated 20 percent and 80 percent of the world’s farmlands becoming severely damaged during an era when increasing human population needs more farmlands. Soil problems have contributed to the collapse of all past societies.

• It might seem that the supply of sunlight is infinite, so one might reason that the Earth’s capacity to grow crops and wild plants is also infinite. This is not so. The amount of solar energy fixed per acre by plant photosynthesis depends on temperature and rainfall. The first photosynthetic ceiling, carried out in 1986, estimated that human then already used ( e.g. for crops, tree plantations and golf courses) or diverted or wasted ( e.g. light falling on concrete roads and buildings) about half of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity Are projected to be utilizing most of the world’s terrestrial photosynthetic capacity by the middle of this century. Most energy fixed from sunlight will be used for human purposes, and little will be left over to support the growth of natural plant communities such as natural forests.

Among the other environmental problems Diamond discussed in his book are the collapse or steep decline of a great majority of valuable fisheries; the loss of a significant fraction of wild species , populations and genetic diversity; introduction of alien species that devastate populations of native species which they come in contact; the growth of Third World population requiring more food, space, water, energy and other resources; and, the agonizing choice of encouraging and helping all people to achieve a higher standards of living without undermining that standard through overstressing through global resources.

The book shows that resilient societies are nimbler ones capable of long term planning and abandoning deeply entrenched but ultimately destructive core values and beliefs.

Summer creative writing classes for kids and teens

Young Writers’ Hangout on May 26, June 2, July 7 & 21 (1:30 pm-3 pm; independent sessions) at Fully Booked BGC. For details and registration contact 0945-2273216 or [email protected].

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