I've been reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed". Diamond studies a number of societies from the past for lessons we can use today. He discusses the usual suspects (Easter Island, the Maya, the Anasazi, etc.) within a five-point framework:
". Diamond studies a number of societies from the past for lessons we can use today. He discusses the usual suspects (Easter Island, the Maya, the Anasazi, etc.) within a five-point framework:- Cumulative environmental damage
- Gradual climate change
- Conflict with neighbors
- Support from neighbors
- Adaptability
The most interesting story is that of Viking Greenland. The Vikings settled Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period (984 AD) and vanished sometime in the 15th century at the beginning of the Little Ice Age. Climate change is the obvious explanation, with the colder weather reducing crop yields and the increase in sea ice making it more difficult for ships from Iceland to get there.
And yet, the Inuit had the technology to survive in harsher climates than the Vikings' protected fjords. All the Vikings needed to do was copy the Inuit. Here is where the last factor, adaptability or the lack thereof, comes into play. The Vikings thought of themselves as Europeans, and apparently preferred to die as Vikings than live as skraelings.
The modern notion of sustainability seems to be about reaching equilibrium with a more or less constant environment. Equilibrium leads to conservatism which leads to a lack of adaptability. But nature is not constant. Sooner or later, Mother Nature will try to kill us with earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, floods, droughts, forest fires, ice storms... even if we get our carbon dioxide under control. When that happens, we need adaptability, not sustainability.
3 comments:
Question: Did the Vikings in Greenland mope around on the ever more ice covered beaches until they died out, or did they just up and leave for climes where the beaches were warmer and the babes were blond?
The first suggests lack of adapability, the second, for it. Or at least for the gumption to pick up and leave for second cousin Louie's couch.
Good question. They didn't have enough wood in Greenland to build the Viking longboats that would cross open ocean. Nor could they make their own iron. They could have built boats in Vinland, if they hadn't antagonized the locals. So they were dependent on boats built in Iceland or Norway.
The numbers are ugly. The archaeolgical remains suggest a peak population of maybe 5,000. The settlers came in fleets of 25 ships at a time, but 450 years later, their descendants might go years without seeing a single ship. So, by the numbers alone, most of them couldn't have up and left.
They could have built kayaks out of local materials like the Inuit did, and made it to Vinland, but not back to Iceland.
I'm not sure if "sustainability" is the correct term here. "Sustainability" means the ability to continue for an extended period. The Vikings were not able to continue by adapting. I would think that "sustainability" would include adaptation, which would make it the opposite, or at least the foe, of conservatism. I may be off here since I haven't read Diamond's book, and he may define "sustainability" in a way that equates it with conservatism. If so, sorry about that.
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