Are we collapsing? A review of Diamond's Collapse
Are we collapsing? A review of Diamond’s Collapse By Scott E. Page What is all about? Decline of past civilizations They did not slowly fall apart They suffered drastic reduction in population and productivity 4 books in 1 Collapse and survival of past civilizations Techniques used by scientists Allegory How we might save ourselves How do we collapse? By collapse, Diamond means unsustainable trajectories that precipitously fall. A society output consists of labour and capital applied to a single natural resource Q If Q is renewable, it ↓ from extraction X and ↑ from regeneration R. Otherwise, it always ↓. X=R X>R Why do we collapse? Mismanagement of renewable natural resources Institutional and cultural failures Environmental change Loss of allies Gain in enemies Institutional and cultural failures Institutional failures refer to poor institutional choices that result in the failure to solve collective action problem Cultural failures refer to ways of organizing social and economic life, ways of seeing the world that create blind spots and limit opportunities Institutions and cultures change very slowly Climate change • A change in climate ↓ R • E must ↓ to maintain sustainability Discerning climate change is very difficult now, maybe impossible for them Friends and enemies Decrease of friendly relations with outsiders (trade) Increase in hostilities with enemies But irrelevant with environmental stewardship Youngston and Ohio collapsed when the trade of steel with friendly neighbours ceased Poland collapsed when relations with Germany turned sour and Germany attacked Friends and enemies << It is not that a reduction in trade causes the collapse but that the collapse causes the reduction in trade >> As a society begins its collapse, it has less to trade and therefore trade falls Enemy attacks are not independent of a civilisation strenght Anasazi Inuit Maya To summarize Fluctuations and shifts in R (overharvesting), climate change and institutional/cultural failure contribute to the collapse Physical characteristics of a place A civilisation existing on marginal land, isolated from others, that does not strictly control population, that mismanages the natural resources and suffers climate changes will probably collapse. When modern collapses have occured, those conditions have also existed. Rwanda The Big Easter Island << The world is one big Easter Island >> Mismanagement of renewable natural resources Institutional and cultural failures Environmental change Loss of allies Gain in enemies Institutional and cultural failures << Those of us living on the Big Island have diverse culture and institutions >> But: the diversity may be shrinking as market based economies and democracies forms of governments continue their spread or it may be increasing as coalescing ethnic identities support nationalist movements Climate change 1 Before drouthts or other climate changes were local phenomena. Now willingness to respond globally to these local catastrophes mitigates their impact. 2 In the past, climate change was an exogenous force. Now, it is a confusing mixture of exogenous and endogenous forces. Mismanagement of natural resources 1 2 3 4 • Before the problem was about renewable resources. • Now it is more about nonrenewable resources. • Now we have well established property rights. • Resources are owned and priced • Deforestation matters less then the destruction of ecosystems. • However tree re-plantings occure on multiple scale • The complexity of our environmental interactions far exceeds those of previous societies. • We are fundamentally altering multiple ecosystems in myriad ways. Problems that arise in complex systems are harder to anticipate and harder to solve Failures in group decision making According to Diamond four types of failurs in groupe decision making provoke leading societies' failure to prevent collapse: 1. Difficulty of anticipation 2. Problem complexity 3. Failure to recognize the problem (we have an abundance of mesures of our invironmental impact) 4. Failure to try to respond (we have too many problems to fix: terrorism, nuclear weapons etc) Environmental/technology trade-off People in the developed world have ecological footprints nearly three dozen times as large as people living in more primitive societies. But if we want Ford and iPod, we need to generate a little pollution along the way. Diamond claims that the history of technology demonstrates that it has created more environmental problems than it has solved. Scott E. Page gives technology some chance to save our modern society. Environment and political instability Diamond suggests that those places that are most politically unstable are also the most environmentally stressed that today as the past, environental problems induce political instability. Political and economic instability allow for unchecked exploitation of resources and ecosystem mismanagement. Thise twin failings create a positive feedback loop with extremly sad consequences. Solutions PLOTT’S EXPERIMENT Participants know the probability distribution over the dividends that are to be paid each period. The bubbles emerge anyway. Standard price bubbles: the price of the stock exeeds the possible future value. Inverted bubbles: the price of stocks are too low given future demand. Solutions NATURAL RESOURCES AND PLOTT’S EXPERIMENT The value of a unit of virgin forest has three components: 1) The value of the timber used in production; 2) The value of the ecosystem; Throughout the increase of our environmental concern (captured by a lower discount rate (a higher δ)), we can change prices of natural resources. 3) The value of the carbon in the trees as a reducer of global warming. Diamond: we are in inverted bubble People are unaware of the second and the third components of the forest value. => systematic underpricing How can we increase this concern? 3 Solutions Bottom up environmentalism Letting markets work Government prodding • Globally fails. Individually even more harmful. But can be efficient in case of small comunities in order to solve a common pool resources problem. • No free market can solve a common pool resource problem, but the market can create incentives that lead to new technology. • Can be efficient (gasoline, carbon taxes) Ex: Smoking; Hispaniola Island: Dominican Republic (28% forest, GDPDR =5GDP Haiti ) vs Haiti (1% forest). Conclusions 1 Environmental problems are not the minor ones, because they can cause the collapse of a society. 2 The importance of government incentives through adequate policies to avoid the mispricing and mismanagment of natural resources. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION Olga Yurchenko and Michele Tuccio
© Copyright 2024