Crimes of the Islanders (5 of 6)

There could not be two islands more different than Greenland and Easter. Greenland is the world's largest island, relatively accessible from both North America and Europe. It is a cold, icy place, inhospitable to most life and mostly untouched by civilization. The first European colonists, Icelandic Vikings, had to battle to survive, especially as the climate cooled and contact was eventually lost with Iceland.

Easter, on the other hand, is one of the most isolated pieces of land in the world. It was empty until well after year 0, and might have even been uninhabited until the middle ages. However, the island was blessed with a verdant ecosystem, and the first settlers probably thought they had stumbled into a paradise. Unlike in Greenland, the island's resources allowed a dynamic civilization to quickly spring into being. The islanders erected massive statues across the island, and developed a complex society.

Despite their clear differences, both Greenland and Easter suffered the same fate. Both civilizations were decimated by poor resource management. By the time new waves of explorers arrived on the two islands, the non-Inuit Greenlanders were completely extinct and the society of Easter had degenerated into poorly nourished and warring factions, with many of the massive statues toppled to the ground.

The reason for these collapses was that the islanders did not have the ability to maintain sustainable resource usage. In Greenland, the lack of natural forests and the marginal agricultural yields could not support a European agricultural civilization once the climate began to cool. Even as their situation became more dire, with falling crop yields and the cessation of wood imports, the Greenlanders held on to their way of life.

Only once it was too late did the Greenlanders attempt to adapt to their situation. They began to rely more on the sea for their food, but with no way to repair or replace their aging wooden ships, they could not feed everyone. They never learned to build boats out of animal material, as the Inuit did, and they never abandoned their farms. Because they were unable to adapt, they vanished.

On Easter, something slightly different happened. The island was so plentiful when the colonists arrived that there was no thought of resource conservation. Trees were felled en masse to provide wood for various uses, including the rollers probably used to build the moai. The birds and sea life on the island were hunted to provide food for an exploding population.

By the mid-second millennium AD, the resources of Easter were beginning to run dry. The forests that had once covered the island were gone, and the birds and marine life were harder and harder to find. At this stage, however, Easter was still an absolute monarchy. It is possible that a prescient ruler could have implemented resource management policies, as happened in Hawaii and other places.

Unfortunately, perhaps in response to the island's problems, the monarch was deposed and a new system was put in place whereby the first islander to capture the egg of a particular bird each year became the custodian of the island's resources. Thus, frequent leadership changes and inexperienced administration prevented the establishment of any coherent policy, and the complex society of Easter slowly faded away.

The modern world can learn much from these two stories, seeing as how we are essentially an island within a vast universe. The Earth is not as harsh (on average) as Greenland nor is it changing at as rapid a pace. Likewise, the resources of the Earth are not depleted to the extent that Easter's were. Despite this, the fact remains that many of our resources are being depleted rapidly, and those resources are at least as integral to our society as timber and food resources were to Greenland and Easter.

There are two key lessons that come from these histories that can be a helpful framework for policy development. The first is perhaps self evident, but our islanders certainly did not grasp it. It is the simple truth that prudent (and global) resource management is necessary to avoid catastrophe. Despite the fact that we are a fragmented world, with no strong leadership on resource management, we must not let that be our downfall, as it was for Easter's people.

The second lesson is that we must not be afraid to change, as the Greenlanders were. Our current model is not sufficient, and we should be aware of this. It is painfully obvious that we are using up the Earth's resources at an alarming rate. I liken this to a corporate balance sheet. The resources regenerated/discovered each year can be though of as revenues and the consumption as expenses. Any expenses in excess of revenues must be covered through debt, essentially a reduction of net assets.

If one accepts that we are currently using up the net assets of the Earth, and one also accepts that active management is necessary (i.e. the problem will not fix itself), there are essentially three ways to deal with the problem. Continuing with my balance sheet analogy, you can either increase revenues, decrease expenses, or decrease the average expense per unit of revenue. Let's look at these three options in detail:

1. Increasing Revenues - Whether or not this approach is even possible depends on the resource you are looking at. For resources like metals and land, this approach has no relevance, because those resources are generally non-substitutable and finite.

For a second set of resources, including energy resources, limited increases to revenue might be possible through technology, but the biggest gains can come from a change in "revenue mix". Think of this as being akin to Apple realizing in the late 1990's that its revenue stream from computers was essentially maximized. They shifted their strategy to obtain revenue from other, related, products (like music players and phones). This same shift can be accomplished by transferring energy usage to underutilized resources like solar and wind.

Finally, there are a third set of resources where revenues can be increased with prudent management and technology development. Some underutilized energy resources (like uranium and deuterium) and many renewable resources (like timber and food) fall into this category.

2. Improving Efficiency (expense per unit of revenue) - This is the most self explanatory of the three areas. Efforts to improve the efficiency of resources are concentrated in two areas. The first area is technological improvements, such as more efficient power plants or vehicles. The second area is improved recycling, which is especially important for resources like metals.

3. Decreasing Expenses - This is the category where the biggest potential for change exists, but it is also the one that is the most politically difficult. Reductions in "expenses" can only be achieved in one of two ways, by decreasing per-capita consumption or by decreases in population. Neither of these will be easy sells, and any policy of population control could turn out horribly wrong. Still, it is likely that part of any solution to our consumption problem will have to be found in this category.

I know that this post is less specific than others in terms of the actual externalities that need to be addressed, but I feel that the problems have been sufficiently illustrated. I will therefore jump right to some potential policy solutions.

1. Implementation of my previous proposals will help to correct our resource imbalance, especially for land and energy resources. It will also advance the development of new resource technologies.

2. Technology must be seen as an important part of environmental solutions. I will discuss this more in my next post.

3. A long-term tax policy shift away from income tax and toward consumption taxes, as I have previously advocated, would be an excellent place to start on the "expenses" side of things.

4. Supporting the sustainable development and urbanization of poor countries is one of the best ways to decrease our population growth rate. All the evidence suggests that the richer and more urbanized a country is, the lower its growth rate. This is because children are no longer an economic benefit, like they are in subsistience-agriculture based societies.

5. Making sure appropriate contraceptive methods, and information on their use, are available in developing countries for free will not only slow the spread of AIDS, but will also help contain population growth and the consequent consumption increases.

6. It is important that current recycling programs be maintained, and new ways of recycling (like making biofuel from garbage) are explored.

7. These proposals will not be enough. It is likely, that even with new technologies, that the Earth will only be able to sustainably support a few billion people at current North American levels of consumption. Since our population will likely be higher than that well into the future, and since we hope to bring many more people up to an acceptable standard of living, it is probable that those of us in the rich world will have to make some sacrifices.

I am just as unwilling as the next person to give up many of the material pleasures I have gained at the expense of the earth. For example, I will never be a vegetarian, even if it is better for the planet. Nor will I stop travelling. However, I do believe that everyone does use things they don't really need, or even want. I believe that if appropriate public policy is implemented and people start to change their mindset on consumption, that a long-term, sustainable Earth can be built, with around 7-8 billion people living on our planet with similar quality of life to what Canadians enjoy today.

Food for thought:

How much energy would be saved if all buildings were only heated to 15 degrees in the winter and cooled to 25 degrees in the summer (subject to the relaxation of corporate dress codes)? Wouldn't the inconvienience of wearing a sweater or shorts be worth it?

If the average office worker could do 1/4 to 1/3 of their work remotely, using today's technology (which I think is entirely feasable), how much fuel use could be avoided? (not to mention sanity gained)

if US households used the same amount of electricity as European ones, total household energy consumption in the US would fall by 60%. Wow.

Most energy-efficient appliances easily pay for themselves.