Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [259]
Another case that has come in for much recent discussion involves industrial-scale cotton-growing in southern Queensland and in northern New South Wales, on the upper reaches of tributaries of the Darling River (flowing down through agricultural districts of southern New South Wales and South Australia) and of the Diamantina River (flowing down into the Lake Eyre Basin). In a narrow sense, cotton is Australia’s second most profitable agricultural export, after wheat. But cotton-growing depends on irrigation water provided at low cost or no cost by the government. In addition, all major cotton-growing areas pollute the water with their heavy applications of pesticides, herbicides, defoliants, and high-phosphorus and high-nitrogen fertilizers (causing algal blooms). Those pollutants even include DDT and its metabolites, last used about 25 years ago but still persisting in the environment because they resist breakdown. In the downstream reaches of those polluted rivers are wheat and cattle growers who appeal to a high-value niche market by raising wheat and beef without adding their own chemicals. They have been protesting vigorously, because their ability to sell their supposedly chemical-free produce is being undermined by those side effects of the cotton industry. Thus, while growing cotton unquestionably brings profits to the owners of the cotton agribusinesses, one would have to calculate indirect costs, such as those of subsidized water and damage to other agricultural sectors, if one wanted to evaluate whether cotton produces a gain or a loss to Australia as a whole.
The remaining example considers Australia’s agricultural production of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane. That’s an especially serious problem for Australia, because global warming (thought to result in large degree from greenhouse gases) is breaking down the pattern of reliable winter rains that turned wheat grown in southwestern Australia’s wheat belt into Australia’s single most valuable agricultural export. The carbon dioxide emissions from Australian agriculture exceed those produced by motor vehicles and all the rest of the transport industry. Even worse are cows, whose digestion produces methane, 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing global warming. The simplest way for Australia to fulfill its stated commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions would be to eliminate its cattle!
While that and other radical suggestions have been put forward, there are currently no signs of their being adopted soon. It would be a “first” for the modern world if a government voluntarily decided to phase out much of its agricultural enterprise, in anticipation of future problems, before being forced in desperation to do so. Nevertheless, even the mere existence of these suggestions raises a larger point. Australia illustrates in extreme form the exponentially accelerating horse race in which the world now finds itself. (“Accelerating” means going faster and faster; “exponentially accelerating” means accelerating in the manner of a nuclear chain reaction, twice as fast and then 4, 8, 16, 32 ... times faster after equal time intervals.) On the one hand, the development of environmental problems in Australia, as in the whole world, is accelerating exponentially. On the other hand, the development of public environmental concern, and of private and governmental countermeasures, is also accelerating exponentially. Which horse will win the race? Many readers of this book are young enough, and will live long enough, to see the outcome.
PART FOUR
PRACTICAL LESSONS
CHAPTER 14
Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?
Road map for success ■ Failure to