Jared Diamond Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions Summary

It is easy to deny the reality that the state of the environment plays a large role in the survival of society. People who argue to protect and preserve it are seen as “hippies” or “tree huggers” and discarded by society. On the other hand, those who support deforestation are seen as “killing us all.” This conflict that is often portrayed on modern media is actually one that span all the way back to the beginning of civilization. Jared Diamond, recipient of the Lewis Thomas Prize and physiology professor at UCLA School of Medicine, his essay “Why do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions” published by Edge on April 26, 2003, argues exactly how societies can doom themselves. Diamond creates his own roadmap as to how and why problems occur. He shows the various ways of how a problem may arise and be

mishandled to create something bad. In this paper I will analyze Diamond’s roadmap and the support he gives all of his points. Diamond’s roadmap is essentially a guide to how societies can recognize how problems lead to disaster therefore, helping them prevent it.
Throughout the text, Diamond is able to make his point that environmental disasters can happen to any culture and explains how they can occur. His graduate students all ask the same question after hearing about the mistakes and failures of societies past, why? It would seem simple to anyone that destroying what keeps a society alive, would then cause a problem for that society. However this is not just a problem that once faced out ancestors, Diamond clearly shows with his examples about how these types of disasters occur in modern and past societies. The essay relies heavily on logic and ethics; each of his claims is backed with an example that shows the facts about what has happened to previous societies. Along with the facts Diamond also shows the ethical intentions behind the mistakes made by past societies. An example used that shows both of the logical and ethical intentions of a society is the forest fires in Montana. Diamond explains that forest fires are a problem thought the United States, however the way that the fires in Montana were handled created even more problems.
“They had no previous experience of forest fires in a dry environment where there’s a big buildup of fuel, where trees that fall down into the understory don’t rot away as in wet Europe and as in the wet eastern United States, but accumulate there in a dry environment. It turns out that frequent small fires burn off the fuel load, and if you suppress those frequent small fires, then eventually a fire is lit it may burn out of control far beyond one’s ability to suppress it.”
While yes it does make sense to want to put out fires because they can be hazardous, in this situation the fires are helping the environment.
The first of the stops on the roadmap that Diamond created is that the problems encountered were not expected. This can easily happen when an experience was forgotten. The Mayan cycle of the droughts had come in a cycle of every few hundred years. It is natural to assume that the Mayans would have some sort of recording for what occurred during the droughts and more importantly, how to survive them. “Although the Maya had some writing, it just preserved the conquests of kings and didn’t record droughts” (Diamond). Because the historical writings left out the droughts, there was nothing to warn or prepare the people. All of this led to the failure to anticipate because they had forgotten the previous experiences, creating a problem for the people.
Another failure to predict problems would be using a false comparison between two events that are not congruent with each other. Diamond uses the Vikings immigration to Iceland as a model for this disaster. Back in the Vikings homeland, soil erosion was not a problem. However when Iceland was colonized Vikings started to cut down vegetation to make room for pastures, the soils that were primarily made of volcanic ash that is “as light as talcum powder.” The wind then was able to blow much of the topsoil into the ocean. Diamond is showing the effects on the environment thus proving the damage these mistakes can have on society and the generations after it. The Vikings assumed their methods would work in a different environment, their misconception about what they were dealing with, and they did not anticipate the issues. This evidence that Diamond has provided is persuasive examples of problems that became disastrous to its citizens.
The second reason for problem that Diamond gives is that “a society has anticipated or failed to anticipate a problem before it arises.” Some of the environmental issues seem to appear out of nowhere but actually the opposite is true.

One way this type of problem my arise is with “wide up-and-down fluctuations.” Diamond addresses the problems from global warming because for years after it had started, people noticed little change. The earth’s climate naturally fluctuates: “It is difficult to recognize that this year is worse than last year, and each successive year is only slightly worse than the year before, so that one’s baseline standard for what constitutes ‘normalcy’ shifts only gradually and almost imperceptibly.” A common saying is ‘seeing is believing’ without a quick and drastic change; it takes years for even climatologists to recognize the approaching problem. With almost all of the warning signs hidden, failing to anticipate is incredibly easy. I believe that this is one of Diamond’s more persuasive examples, unlike some of the other issues outlined within the text, global warming is something that affects all societies and is impossible to

isolate.
Third, Diamond claims that “a society’s failure to solve a problem that it has perceived” can create a disaster. Some problems affect certain groups of people more than others. Typically it is companies and the rich who are affected less by these problems because they have their money to get them what they need at the expense of others. Instead of doing what is moral and just, the path most taken is to make conditions worse for the majority of people due to selfishness. Diamond uses two strong examples for this part of his roadmap. The first is of mining in Montana. For many years there were no regulations on the pollutions coming from the copper mines. Then in 1971 the state passed laws making cleaning the waste from abandoned mine mandatory. Instead of cleaning their own waste, mining companies “just declare bankruptcy before going to the expense of the cleaning up. The result has been billions of dollars of clean up costs borne by the citizens of the United States or Montana.” This so called solution only benefited the heads of the companies at fault.
The other example used for failing to try solving a problem is tragedy of commons. In the ocean there is almost no way to regulate fishing. The reasoning used by each fisher man uses is that if not them then someone else would, taking away from their possible profits. With every fisherman in that mindset it is easy for all the resources to be depleted. The case with logging is the same. Loggers want to get the most out of their land so they cut down all of the trees within the land they lease. Their own short-term goals harm the next generation. Government mainly focuses on “only those problems with the potential to cause a disaster within the next 90 days” (Diamond). Because these examples are so shocking they are incredibly persuasive. This selfish, narrow-minded focus gives little thought or incentive to preserving something for the future, even if I means destroying future livelihoods. Without even attempting to solve current problems because of the few who can benefit in them, the issues pile up like snow on a mountain; leaving the rest of the people to wait for the avalanche to come.
Diamond’s final reason is failure to succeed in solving a problem. Some problems are seen, as either too much work or effort. Like the introduced species in Montana that Diamond describes, are too expensive to or difficult to fix. Some of the weeds introduced have “roots 20 feet deep, too long to pull up by hand, and specific weed-control chemicals cost up to $800 per gallon.” This problem got to far out of hand for it to possibly be fixed thus, endangering the native wildlife. Just like the weeds there where similar effects from European foxes being introduced to Australia. The government did not want to put in the effort or funding to get rid of the foxes at first, once the severity of the problem was realized there was little that could be done because the foxes had already started to breed Both of these examples were still problems to local environments when Diamond wrote this essay. However sever both of these issues may be this, to me, are some of his less persuasive points because I do not relate to any of the examples.
Many of Diamonds examples show the causes and effects a society can face when an environmental problem is not solved. Most of his historical anecdotes follow the same pattern of sub claim, example reason why it is a problem, effect of the problem. By using examples that have happened, Diamond connected with the audience on an emotional and ethical level. He establishes his ethics by showing how he wants to prevent current and future societies from making decisions that lead to more disasters.
One of Diamonds strongest points in my opinion is the one he makes about global warming. . With this, failure to solve this problem will not be problematic for one group but could be deadly to all. However, at the end of the essay he shows examples of where problems were found and solved; “The Inca Empire, New Guinea highlanders, 18th Century Japan, 19th Century Germany, and the paramount chiefdom of Tonga all recognized the risks they faced from deforestation, and all adopted successful reforestation of forest management policies.” Diamond’s main purpose is to show not only how problems arise but also how to recognize them to solve what could bring disaster.