Professor’s research used for national TV
USU Professor Joseph Tainter will be featured in a National Geographic Channel TV production for his research on sustainability and innovation for societies on Saturday.
“Collapse: Based on a book by Jared Diamond”, will look 200 years into the future to recreate what the world may be like if our civilization collapses. Tainter is among other experts including Diamond, the author of the best-selling book, to explore the possibilities of a societal destruction. The television program will explain Diamond’s assertion that societies fail when “overwhelmed by invasions, epidemics and environmental disasters.”
Tainter is the author of the 1988 book “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” which remains an important work on societal collapse. He has also been featured in an ABC News primetime special, “Earth 2100,” in 2009 and Lionardo DiCaprio’s 2007 eco-documentary “The 11th Hour”.
When it comes to his other works, Tainter said the themes are broadly similar but this production is more to feature Diamond’s book. He expects the documentary to address issues of environment like food, climate, and energy, although he said he isn’t completely sure of everything that will be included.
Tainter said the best part about what he does is the fact that it changes every year. He started out his career as an anthropologist who focused on how ancient societies collapsed, which he said is when he realized the things he was seeing didn’t just apply to ancient times.
“Once I realized what I was learning about the civilizations didn’t just apply to ancient times I switched over to sustainability for our future.”
Mark Brunson, the department head of environment and society, said Tainter’s research for the causes of societal collapse is important to everyone, including Utah State students.
He said if a modern civilization were to collapse, it would affect everyone on the planet, compared to ancient times when that wasn’t the case.
“These days virtually everyone on Earth is connected in ways the Romans or Mayans could never even have imagined,” Brunson said. “For this reason, Professor Tainter’s research is especially critical for people to understand.”
Temis Taylor, graduate student in bioregional planning, said Dr. Tainter’s work provides a framework for understanding societies, and the ways in which they deal with the problems they face. She said being able to understand what strategies people have used over time, and how those methods of coping and adapting did or did not work can be important to helping us better meet our coming challenges.
“One aspect of Dr. Tainter’s work is to clarify what we mean when we talk about sustainability, which can help us better formulate and reach sustainability goals,” Taylor said.
Brunson believes that in many ways, our society faces the same situation that faced the Roman Empire. He said he had a sign up in his home that read, “The chief cause of problems are solutions,” explaining that when an individual, family, or civilization perceive a problem, they usually want to impose a solution without recognizing “the potential new problems that their ‘solution’ inevitably causes.”
He said as societies grow more complex, larger and more influential like America has become, the number of problems increases as well as attempted solutions. This then adds more “layers of complexity” and as a result there is no way to support the society any longer.
Tainter gave an example of what Bruner talked about by comparing ancient Rome to America. He explained that as Rome was growing, they didn’t have enough silver currency to keep up with demand so they started to add more copper into circulation. As a result, currency became less and less valuable, similar to cost inflation here in America. He said this is just one example of how creating a solution to a problem creates new problems. A present day example Tainter mentioned would be the United States dealing with terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“The government developed new agencies, reorganized other government agencies, and have been developing new technologies for airport securities, each of which, have caused new problems,” Tainter said.
These aspects of society become more complex, have more parts, and all of that costs. He said this is the same problem the Roman Empire had in the third century had because of invasions and civil wars. These created the need to grow an army and grow their government which is very costly. The difference he goes on to say, is that Rome had a fixed energy, solar power. Having a fixed energy source made it so they couldn’t grow their economy and as a result, the society collapsed.
“Complexity causes fiscal weakness which causes collapse,” he said.
He said that the combination of growth in complexity to solve problems, which costs money, and not having enough resources, or energy, to support that growing complexity, is what causes societies to topple.
Taylor said it is surprising to realise just how similar America is to past societies and how learning from the past can give us an opportunity to avoid their mistakes.
“If we don’t have a good understanding of the problems we face, we are unlikely to come up with effective solutions.” she said.
Tainter explains the problem like this: energy and the economy are like a pie. If we have to spend a larger share of that pie on things like health care and rebuilding roads, the part of the pie that is available for consumption – money and energy – decreases. As a result of that decrease, the standard of living decreases as well.
Tainter said the most important thing we as a country have to look to is energy. Energy, such as fossil fuels, equals development and wealth.
Taylor also said energy is the most important thing right now when it comes to our civilization.
“The fact that energy is at the root of our ability to create culture and civilization makes it so important,” Taylor said. “How we meet and manage our need for energy is going to be a critical factor in the future. It’s not going to be a simple solution.”
Tainter said fossil fuel can’t last forever and the key to the future is energy and innovation. He said since fossil fuels won’t last forever, and it will take decades to transition into a new energy source, we need to start now in developing new options.
“There isn’t a lot we can do about finding new energy sources right now,” Tainter said, “but we can support programs and vote in politicians that are looking toward the future to think about those new energy developments.”
He suggests that investing more money into innovation, taking part in conservation and making individual choices in the right direction are ways to move forward with these problems positively.
Bruner agrees by saying that thanks to Tainter and other researchers, we know much more these days about how this “phenomenon” works.
Taylor also said by learning about Dr. Tainter’s research, students will be better prepared to participate in those processes.
“Hopefully if policy-makers and influential scientists and journalists understand the processes that lead to collapse,” Bruner said. “We can recognize the signs sooner and look for ways to reduce the negative impacts.”
When it comes to if problem-solving that reduces this complexity instead of increases it is possible, Bruner said he hopes so, “because our futures may very well depend on it.”
– megan.b@aggiemail.usu.edu