Another modern "collapse" occurred in Haiti, which Diamond says is "among the most overpopulated countries in the New World." To make his case, Diamond compares it to the Dominican Republic, with which it shares the island of Hispaniola. Haiti has a population density of 670 people per square mile; in the Dominican Republic, the figure is 460. Haiti's per capita GDP is $1,600 per year; the Dominican Republic's is $6,000. Today 28 percent of the Dominican Republic is forested; only 1 percent of Haiti is. Diamond asserts that the combination of Haiti's population density and lower rainfall "was the main factor behind the more rapid deforestation and loss of soil fertility on the Haitian side."
This simplistic analysis doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Diamond overlooks an even more "overpopulated" island right next door, Puerto Rico. Its population density is almost twice that of Haiti, at 1,120 people per square mile. By 1900 Puerto Rico's primary forests had been reduced to 1 percent of their original extent, and in 1953 its secondary forests covered only 6 percent of the island. Today 32 percent of Puerto Rico is forested, and the island's per capita GDP is $16,800 per year.
Why is Puerto Rico so much better off than its neighbors? In a word, institutions. Diamond vaguely recognizes the importance of social and political institutions, but his analysis doesn't go much deeper than arguing that Haitian dictators have been more rapacious than Dominican dictators. In fact, the last two centuries have shown that the more a country adheres to the rule of law, protects private property, reduces bureaucratic corruption, nurtures a free press, permits free markets, engages in trade, and allows democratic politics, the less likely it is to suffer from the Malthusian horrors of plagues, famines, and civil wars. What Haiti and Rwanda have in common is not just dense populations but shattered social and political institutions. What the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Puerto Rico have in common are not only dense populations, but adequately effective social and political institutions.
Nor does low population density correlate with ecological health and social peace. Consider Bolivia, which has 20 people per square mile and a per capita GDP of $2,400. Or Laos, which has 62 people per square mile and a per capita GDP of $1,700. Or Angola, which has 22 people per square mile and a per capita GDP of $1,900. Bolivia, Laos, and Angola all suffer from "Malthusian" problems, including pestilence, hunger, and civil unrest. Diamond has confused poverty with overpopulation.
Diamond also has some odd notions about economics. He claims, for example, that "socially stratified societies, including modern American and European society, consist of farmers who produce food, plus non-farmers such as bureaucrats and soldiers who do not produce food but merely consume the food grown by the farmers and are in effect parasites on farmers." He points out that only 2 percent of Americans are farmers today and calls the rest of us "non-producers."
Let's give Diamond the bureaucrats and soldiers as "parasites." What about the roughnecks who produce and refine the petroleum that drives the farmers' tractors, heats their homes, and is transformed into fertilizer? What about the textile workers who make their clothing, or the miners and steelworkers who produce the steel that makes their plows and tractors, or the academic scientists who create new high-yielding crop varieties, or the pharmaceutical researchers who produce medicines to cure them and their livestock? The list is endless. This elaborate division of labor is what allows modern civilization to become ever wealthier, healthier, and more environmentally benign. Complex modern societies are composed of cooperative networks of people making their livings by supplying the needs of their fellow citizens, not a bunch of "parasites" subsisting off the surpluses of farmers.
As ecology teaches us, the simplest ecosystems are often the most fragile. Similarly, our modern globally interconnected economy that can draw upon a wide array of resources is far more stable and robust than either the fragile pre-modern or the marginally modern societies cited by Diamond. It's worth noting that in 1800, when the vast majority of people on the planet were farmers, the global average GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, was about $600.
Diamond adheres to the orthodox Malthusian claims that human population growth is exponential while "improvements in food production add rather than multiply; this breakthrough increases wheat yields by 25%, that breakthrough increases yields an additional 20%, etc." But just looking at the history of the 20th century, it is very clear that increases in food production have been exponential too; in fact, food production has been increasing faster than human population growth. Since 1961 world grain production has tripled, while world population has doubled. Consequently, per capita global food production increased by 25 percent between 1961 and 2004, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
"I have not met anyone," Diamond writes, "who seriously argues that the world could support 12 times its current impact, although an increase of that factor would result from all Third World inhabitants adopting first world living standards." But increasing human numbers and wealth do not translate automatically into more impact on the natural world. The British demographer Angus Maddison calculates that world GDP increased in real dollars from $2 trillion in 1900 to $37 trillion in 2001, while global per capita income rose from $1,300 annually to more than $6,000. This 18-fold increase in output was not achieved just by doing more and more of the same old things. Most of the increase was achieved through technological innovation: using better recipes to manipulate less physical stuff to give us more services.
For example, in the United States producers use less than half the energy they used in 1949 to produce a dollar of GDP. In 2000 a report from the Cap Gemini Ernst and Young Center for Business Innovation calculated that the value of America's GDP per pound of finished product rose from $3.64 in 1977 to $7.96 in 2000. This trend toward ever greater efficiency is driven by the relentless market process that pushes producers to economize on resources. The smart bet is that humanity's steadily dematerializing economy in the 21st century will have less and less "impact" on natural systems while enabling much higher living standards.
Diamond admits that many previous Malthusian predictions were wrong but feels compelled to defend earlier doomsayers such as Paul Ehrlich, arguing that "the reason that alarms proved false is often that they convinced us to adopt successful countermeasures." That's flat-out wrong. In his 1968 book The Population Bomb, Ehrlich wrote: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Unfortunately, influential bodies such as the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations listened to Ehrlich's population alarmism, and they diverted resources from their highly successful agricultural research programs and put them instead into largely fruitless efforts at direct (and often coercive) population control. It turns out that boosting food production through agricultural research is probably the best way to reduce population growth rates. The countries where food security is highest--Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and the U.S.--are precisely the places where one finds below-replacement fertility rates. Not only was Ehrlich wrong, but his false alarmist predictions probably made the world a worse place.
The only way to solve the allegedly impending global ecological crisis, according to Diamond, is "long-term planning, and a willingness to reconsider core values." Although vague about whom he would put in charge of global planning, Diamond evinces throughout Collapse an alarming affection for authoritarian rulers who issue top-down orders restraining their citizens' use of resources. For example, he praises China's leaders for restricting "the traditional freedom of individual reproductive choice, rather than let population problems spiral out of control." He approves of measures in feudal Japan that apportioned wood supplies based on social class. He applauds Indonesian and Dominican despots for establishing national parks.
Meanwhile, Diamond calls on Americans, Europeans, and Japanese to reject their "traditional consumer values." So in essence, Diamond's solution to the problems he believes humanity faces is to reduce the living standards of the world's wealthiest societies (U.S., Europe, Japan) and curb economic growth in the poorer countries. This is Malthus' legacy at its worst, and when Diamond embraces it, Collapse collapses into claptrap.
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Oldworldmonkey|3.5.10 @ 11:53AM|#
As far as Malthus goes, it seems you have missed the point. It is true that those modern European nations you (and Diamond) named have higher population densities than Rwanda and Burundi. But you admit that agricultural production (and importation) in such regions is far better than that available in Rwanda, yet you still poo poo Malthus? The core theory is that population will outstrip agricultural production unless certain measures are taken. There are obviously two choices: limit population growth; increase agricultural production. The methods by which to do either are varied. European nations have been able to practice both at varying degrees of success, while third world Rwanda has not. The result is contiguous with the analogy, and Holland's success by no means disproves Malthus because Holland has been able to produce and import enough comestibles for its dense population.
David|3.30.10 @ 4:44PM|#
The first paragraph incorrectly states that Jared Diamond is a biologist. Jared Diamond is not a biologist... he is a professor of geography.
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|1.18.11 @ 10:05PM|#
These criticisms are painfully incomplete. The final point that changing traditional consumer values means changing standard of living is baseless. Our standard of living emerged with traditional consumer values, but these may not be what sustains a high standard of living or what is essential to it. Research into quality of life and happiness by organizations such as the Positive Psychology Center's suggest that at a certain level of consumption and income, quality of life ceases to increase. On the other hand, voluntary simplicity and consolidation of technological innovations with an addition of better organic food, etc. has proven to greatly increase standard of living while fundamentally altering "traditional consumer values." As for comparing Puerto Rico to Haiti - Puerto Rico is supported by the United States and yes, by certain institutions, tourism, and oil. But that is exactly the point...Haiti does not enjoy these things and Ronald's assessment ignores this throughout his article. The rules of subsistence are very different without oil. Each year, in all developed countries, more food than necessary is produced for populations because the ground is pumped with petroleum-based and chemical fertilizers. This food productions system is incredibly fragile to collapse on many levels: discontinued supply of oil and the desertification of the land from industrial farming practices that leaves it unviable if manufactured fertilizers are not present and if water is not shipped in from a distance. These are just a few simple examples of the very low quality of this review. It's as if Ronald was simply trying to dismiss the book before even reading it. I didn't intend to leave a comment. I stumbled across this review. But it is shamefully ill-conceived for a publication called Reason. I understand free market mentality, but it does not preclude the common sense of the fragility of fundamental dependencies such as depending on oil for food production and other obvious vulnerabilities and increasingly insolent systems associated with "traditional consumer values."
|2.3.11 @ 7:28PM|#
Robby,
Your comments are complete nonsense, not the review. Diamond makes a number of arguments that are Malthusian fallacies. As the reviewer pointed out, food production grew geometrically over the past few decades, and population growth is declining. He could have touched on Demographic Transition Theory, which makes Malthus falsifiable, but he probably didn't have space.
Most modern epidemiologists, demographers, and scientists use demographic transition theory to model population growth, which is how they successfully prediced population declines in Europe, Russia, Japan, Korea, etc. I suggest you look into it.