Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [360]
Three classics in the large literature on human population are Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968); Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, The Population Explosion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990); and Joel Cohen, How Many People Can the Earth Support? (New York: Norton, 1995).
To place my assessment of the environmental and population problems of my city of Los Angeles in a wider context, see a book-length corresponding effort for the whole United States: The Heinz Center, The State of the Nation’s Ecosystems: Measuring the Lands, Waters, and Living Resources of the United States (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
Readers interested in more detailed statements of the dismissals of environmentalists’ concerns that I list as one-liners may consult Bjórn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). For more extended responses to the one-liners, see Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Betrayal of Science and Reason (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1996). The Club of Rome study discussed in that section of my chapter is Donella Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972), updated by Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows, The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green, 2004). For the issue of how to decide whether there are too few or too many false alarms, see S. W. Pacala et al., “False alarm over environmental false alarms” (Science 301:1187-188 (2003)).
Some entries to the literature on the connections between environmental and population problems on the one hand, and political instability on the other hand, include: the website of Population Action International, www.populationaction.org; Richard Cincotta, Robert Engelman, and Daniele Anastasion, The Security Demographic: Population and Civil Conflict after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Population Action International, 2004); the annual journal The Environmental Change and Security Project Report, published by the Woodrow Wilson Center (website www.wilson.org/ecsp); and Thomas Homer-Dixon, “Environmental scarcities and violent conflict: evidence from cases” (International Security 19:5-40 (1994)).
Finally, readers curious about what other garbage besides dozens of Suntory whiskey bottles drifted onto the beaches of remote Oeno and Ducie atolls in the Southeast Pacific Ocean should consult the three tables in T. G. Benton, “From castaways to throwaways: marine litter in the Pitcairn Islands” (Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 56:415-422 (1995)).
For all of the 12 major sets of environmental problems that I summarized at the beginning of Chapter 16, there already exist many excellent books discussing how governments and organizations could address them. But there still remains the question that many people ask themselves: what can I do, as an individual, that might make a difference? If you are wealthy, you can obviously do a lot: for example, Bill and Melinda Gates have decided to devote billions of dollars to urgent public health problems around the world. If you are in a position of power, you can use that position to advance your agenda: for example, President George W. Bush of the U.S., and President Joaquín Balaguer of the Dominican Republic, used their positions to influence decisively, albeit in different ways, the environmental agendas of their respective countries. However, the vast majority of us who lack that wealth and power tend to feel helpless and hopeless in the face of the overwhelming power of governments and big businesses. Is there anything that a poor individual who is neither a CEO nor a political leader can do to make a difference?
Yes, there are half-a-dozen types of actions that often prove effective. But it needs to be said at the outset that an individual should not expect to make a difference through a single action, or even through a series