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01/30/2005: "The Science Fiction Solution to Our Environmental Challenges"

I’ve been working my way through Collapse – the book I referenced recently when writing about the Greenland Norse who paid the ultimate price for the inflexibility of their non-sustainable way of life. I’m thoroughly enjoying it. It starts with a portrait of modern-day Montana. By coincidence, I happened to be wearing my Bozeman Montana shirt, picked up during a memorable visit to this beautiful state. Even more than most states, it’s polarized. On one side are the right wing anti government militia types, many who have ties to the original industries of Montana – mining and timber, whose historical ascendancy created a legacy of environmental poisoning and despoliation. On the other are those who want to preserve the beauties and natural bounty of Montana, characteristics gravely at risk because of historical hostility to any constraints whatsoever to any use whatsoever of available resources. I got a surprise this weekend when I looked over the New York Times Book review of Collapse. Considering that the Times is supposed to be liberal, imagine my surprise when the review took some pretty cheap shots at Diamond’s line of reasoning. These shots are worth examining, since they echo some of the arguments used by the right wing, but, this being the Times, are expressed more elegantly. Here’s a quote from the review: “most people do not live on islands, yet “Collapse” tries to generalize from environmental failures on isolated islands to environmental threats to society as a whole.” The obvious flaw in the reviewer’s argument is that Earth is indeed an island, and that the example of peoples who couldn’t bail out of ecological disaster by moving a bit down the road is the only analogy relevant to modern global society’s environmental challenge. Furthermore, the reviewer says “”Above us in the Milky Way are essentially infinite resources and living space. If the phase of fossil-driven technology leads to discoveries that allow Homo sapiens to move into the galaxy, then resources, population pressure and other issues that worry Diamond will be forgotten.” I just about fell out of my chair when I read that. He’s essentially proposing a science-fiction ending to our ecological challenges. Perhaps I’d feel more optimistic about science-fiction possibilities had I not picked up the book “The Year 2000,” a book that by chance I recently mentioned here. None of the stories in that book even came close to our present-day reality. As someone who has read a lot of science fiction over the years, I can tell you that SF’s track record for predicting advances is not very good. And if the solution to our environmental problems is moving down the road to the next planet, shouldn’t we be making a whole lot bigger investment in the currently undiscovered science that had better be there if it turns out we really need it? Instead, we’re hamstringing science by substituting pseudo-sciences like creationism, and slashing research and education budgets to the bone to support permanent tax cuts. Both of these arguments against environmental action boil down to a single thought, something like “won’t we feel silly when it turns out we didn’t need to constrain ourselves after all!” I for one would take that risk, considering that the alternative is feeling sorry that we courted and then experienced disaster despite the obvious warning signs that the failed societies in Diamond’s important work all should have plainly seen.