I’ve been meaning to review Jared Diamond’s Collapse and James Howard Kunstler’s Long Emergency for a while. Now that so-called environmentalists Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger have done me the favor of including both in their recent what-me-worry piece of sophistry, I have an excuse to cover both in one swoop.
Nordhaus & Shellenberger’s characterization of recent environmental writing, including Kunstler & Diamond’s works, is that they consist of “the tragic narrative of humankind’s fall from Nature.” This hardly applies to Kunstler; the tragic narrative he writes is of America’s addiction to cheap fossil fuels, which doesn’t go back more than a century or so. I don’t recall a single passage from Kunstler’s book that shows any concern for the idea of capital-N Nature that has Nordhaus & Shellenberger so agitated; instead, his utopia revolves around sustainable communities whose citizens thrive without depending on abundant fossil fuels.
It’s not a very good characterization of Diamond’s work, either. He examines a number of small and old civilizations and shows where they came up short against natural resources. Nordhaus & Shellenberger suggest his argument requires that “the Greenland Norse…convened tribal councils to choose collective suicide”, which is of course ridiculous, and also not something Diamond ever claims. He does talk about societies choosing how they respond to environmental challenges, but not in such a literal-minded way. Instead, for example, he shows how the Greenland Norse continued to depend on forms of agriculture that worked in Norway but clearly weren’t sustainable in Greenland’s harsher climate.
Honestly, I was hoping that the Nordhause & Shellenberger essay would provide some meaty criticism that would make the substance of Kunstler & Diamond’s books clearer, but the sad fact is that most of the essay is cheap insults, flaky logic, and sensationalist accusations. One moment they’re trying to discredit Diamond’s book by claiming that today’s ecological crises are better understood by “research into political psychology and social values” than by his studies, the next they’re throwing around phrases like “biblical rather than scientific” to get us to dismiss others’ analysis. The middle of the essay would fit right into a middling Relativist Philosophy 101 paper. I will grant them that including some half-hearted questioning of human-caused climate change was a little unexpected. Thanks to Salon for publishing this excerpt — I would have hated to waste the library’s time by checking a copy out.
As for Kunstler and Diamond’s books, I’d recommend them both. Kunstler certainly lives on the gloomy side of things, but his perspective is important to take into consideration. I hope things don’t turn out like he suggests, but I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t. His histories of the 20th century as a whole, and American politics of the last few decades through the prism of oil availability, are both fresh perspectives. It’s also hard to argue that a finite supply of fossil fuel, steadily increasing demand, lack of proven alternatives, and drastic implications for significant energy price increases demand serious planning.
Diamond’s survey of cultures is more hopeful, as it includes examples where people have succeeded in adopting to limits on available resources, as well as where they have not. Implications for the intensely interconnected societies we live in now aren’t clear, but there are surely some relevant lessons to be found.
Nordhaus and Shellenberger seem to think the key to our society’s survival is smiling and thinking happy thoughts, but if they can’t do that while honesty dealing with their critics, they’ll get no support from me. Anyone interested in further, better informed criticism of Nordhaus & Shellenberger’s recent work might want to check out this, this or this — none of which was presumably written over the authors’ lunch break.
