Coelho on Costanza, Graumlich and Steffen, eds., _Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of People on Earth_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (October 2007)

Robert Costanza, Lisa J. Graumlich, and Will Steffen, editors, 
_Sustainability or Collapse? An Integrated History and Future of 
People on Earth_. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. xvi + 495 pp. $38 
(cloth), ISBN: 978-0-262-03366-4.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Philip R. P. Coelho, Department of Economics, 
Ball State University.


This book consists of an introduction and twenty-two essays and 
reports with an overall focus on an "Integrated History and Future of 
People on Earth" (IHOPE). The authors are primarily sociologists and 
environmentalists with representation from earth sciences 
(climatology, geology) and history. In spite of its pretentious title 
and acronym there are some worthwhile essays. In history, a very good 
chapter is John R McNeill's essay on the twentieth century, "Social, 
Economic, and Political Forces in Environmental Change: Decadal Scale 
(1900 to 2000)." While I have some quibbles with it (the discussion 
of decolonialization is fuzzy at best), there are insights that make 
it worth reading and repeating. McNeill correctly states that the 
economic growth that occurred in the last half of the twentieth 
century "... is the most unusual in the history of economic growth, 
although many people, having experienced nothing else, now imagine it 
is as normal" (315). This is emphatically true; the human race has 
never experienced such a widespread and rapid rate of economic growth 
encompassing the majority of the globe's inhabitants. If it continues 
through the mid twenty-first century the world will have been 
transformed in a myriad of ways, some predictable others 
unpredictable. A possible prediction can be derived from McNeill's 
discussion of urbanization. McNeill states that: "[The low birth rate 
in cities] if it persists, means that cities are resuming their 
historic role as demographic black holes. Before 1880 they consumed 
population because their death rates were so high; after an interval 
of growth by natural increase they began to consume population 
because their birth rates were so low. London today, as in 1750, 
would shrink without in-migration." This essay is worth reading and 
assigning to undergraduates/graduates.

There are other good, more specialized essays in this volume. Timothy 
F. Flanney has a brief but comprehensive chapter ("The Trajectory of 
Human Evolution in Australia: 10,000 B.P. to the Present") on (the 
lack) of human evolution in Australia. Richard H. Grove's chapter 
("Revolutionary Weather: The Climate and Economic Crisis of 1785-1795 
and the Discovery of El Nino") correlating crop failures, famines and 
revolutions with shifting ocean currents is an intriguing hypothesis. 
His hypothesis is that the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and 
the turbulence associated with the late eighteenth and early 
nineteenth centuries can be traced back to crop failures and weather 
patterns attributable to changes in El Nino, the Pacific Ocean 
current. He marshals evidence well and he is persuasive, but I 
reserve acceptance until I see the hypothesis more widely debated and 
examined. Nevertheless Grove's chapter is well worth reading for an 
imaginative, well-researched and intriguing hypothesis.

In contrast to an essay with a novel hypothesis, is Nathan J. 
Mantua's data driven essay ("A Decadal Chronology of Twentieth 
Century Changes in Earth's Natural Systems"). He emphasizes and 
presents data throughout his paper, saving speculations for 
presentation in his summary. Mantua details the various consensus 
estimates for data series ranging from temperatures to nitrous oxide, 
to the North Atlantic Oscillation. Whether the juxtaposition of these 
series makes sense is a question for climatologists/meteorologists. 
However he does seem to attribute too much to natural forces, while 
ignoring economic forces. He credits (293) the, "[r]apid declines in 
large predators" in the oceans of the world to changes in the 
chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans. However cod 
fishery of the Grand Banks did not collapse because of 
climatological/oceanographic changes, but because of over-fishing. 
The over fishing was a predictable result of the lack of property 
rights in the Grand Banks cod fishery. Climatic change may have been 
occurring, but the Grand Banks cod fishery collapse could have been 
easily avoided by rigidly enforcing catch limits and/or assigning 
property rights to the fishery.

Another relatively good essay that could be improved by introducing 
economic analysis is that of Christian Pfister ("Little Ice Age-type 
Impacts and the Mitigation of Social Vulnerability to Climate in the 
Swiss Canton of Bern prior to 1800"). The essay is marred by the 
misuse of economic data. He uses eighteenth century data to calculate 
the percentage change in prices within localities and to assess 
relative scarcity among localities. For example, if the price of 
grain rose by 60 percent in London and 300 percent in Lwow, the 
difference is indicative of greater scarcity in Lwow relative to 
London. But if Lwow is an inland area (true) with high-transport 
costs (true) then it could be indicative of either scarcity in Lwow 
or scarcity elsewhere. Imagine that the price of transport is so high 
that in normal times Lwow is not an exporter of grain even though its 
prices are very low compared to the export markets of London and 
Amsterdam; the low prices are not sufficiently low enough to 
compensate for the high transport costs given the "normal" price of 
grain in the export markets. If the price of grain outside of Lwow 
rises sufficiently beyond the threshold where it becomes profitable 
to export grain (the additional price compensating the high transport 
costs) from Lwow, the price in Lwow will rise penny for penny with 
the market (non-Lwow) price. Whether this was the case, I do not 
know; however if it is not true, then were there grain imports into 
Lwow? If there were no grain imports into Lwow, what is the 
explanation? Regardless Pfister should be wary of criticizing Robert 
Fogel for "questionable statistical manipulation" (204) and 
completely rejecting the claims that famines are man-made 
catastrophes. Appealing to authority is not a strong argument, but 
when Nobel Laureates and other eminent economists claim (with 
evidence) that famines are typically not the result of natural 
phenomena, it would be wise to tread cautiously. Pfister has one 
citation (204) to buttress his case against Fogel, and Karl Gunnar 
Persson (and by extension Amartya Sen). More modesty in the 
presentation of his hypothesis and less hubris in his claims would 
avoid potential embarrassments.

The essays I have mentioned are outliers because they are acceptable 
scholarly exercises; the other essays are not. The worst that this 
book has to offer is that by Dennis L. Meadows ("Evaluating Past 
Forecasts: Reflections on One Critique of _The Limits to Growth_"). 
This essay is an extended attack on a book review of _The Limits to 
Growth_ that appeared in the _New York Times_ on APRIL 2, 1972. What 
can we say about an author placing in a collected volume an essay 
that is devoted to attacking reviewers a full quarter-century after 
the review? Well self-indulgent, monomaniacal and bizarre are some 
adjectives that come to mind. Meadows' main complaint of the review 
is that the authors (P. Passel et al.) did not read his book. To 
ascertain the truth of his complaint I dutifully read the original 
review, and then checked out _The Limits to Growth_. I cannot say 
whether Meadows' claim is correct, but I believe it may be because 
the book is truly unreadable. In Meadows's (et al.) book there are 
charts of time series that have multiple simultaneous outcomes, 
impenetrable flow diagrams, numerous unquantified feed back effects, 
and, all-in all, the diagrams and prose are impenetrable. The passage 
of time has not been kind to _The Limits to Growth_ -- literally, 
empirically, and figuratively. In the distant future, given past 
behavior, there is a non-trivial probability that Meadows will savage 
me for these comments; so be it.

I will stop my comments on the individual essays following parental 
injunctions about not saying anything if unable to say anything nice. 
The basic problem with the remainder of the essays and the book 
itself is captured in its title: "Sustainability or Collapse?" The 
hubris evident in the title infects the remaining essays. They are 
typically self-indulgent, jargon-ridden, confused and confusing, 
replete with self-citations, and dogma. The dichotomy in the title is 
false; it is supported by neither science nor history. Entropy is 
continually reducing complexity to uniformity. To maintain 
civilization (complexity) humans have to utilize dense packets of 
energy to offset entropy. What is "sustainable" is a function of how 
effectively humanity can discover and manipulate the resources 
available to combat entropy. What is "sustainable" now, was not 
sustainable two centuries ago. There is a possibility that humanity's 
ability to find new and more productive ways to manipulate the 
material world will cease in the near future, but that possibility is 
dwarfed by the chance that the Earth will be negatively affected by 
an asteroid, and _that_ is a remote, albeit real, possibility. 
Inherent in any prediction of "collapse" are necessary corollary 
predictions on the basic limits to human knowledge. There will be no 
fusion, fission energy will remain costly and politically difficult, 
nanotechnology will be fruitless, genetic engineering will never 
produce organisms that reduce the carbon dioxide content of the 
atmosphere, and so on, and on. I suspect that most predictions that 
today's futurologists make about future technology will prove to have 
been overly modest given what we have seen happen to humanity's 
knowledge and control of the material world over the past quarter 
century. So, when we talk about "sustainability," what level of 
technology are we specifying and what margin of error is "reasonable" 
for that specification? These questions are not considered.

With the exceptions noted, the essays in the volume are also innocent 
of economic principles. Considerations of costs and benefits are 
tertiary; what discount rate to apply to future cost/benefits is of 
no concern. Critics of catastrophic environmentalism are completely 
ignored. The majority of the essays contained in this volume are 
simply normative exercises in du jour environmentalism. If you are a 
believer and want to reinforce the faith, read it; but if you want a 
serious discussion of the issues, by and large, it is to be avoided.


Philip R. P. Coelho is Professor of Economics at Ball State 
University. His current research is on the effects of morbid diseases 
on economic productivity, and economic methodology and ethics.

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