A Timely Warning from Easter Island

"The most important variable that determines the future is how well we succeed at integrating human communities with natural environments," said Diamond. He said that the course we're on today cannot be sustained for more than a few decades. Eventually, environmental problems will be resolved—either by our actions or by our inaction.

Diamond listed several environmental problems that threaten societies today: deforestation, soil erosion, unavailability of fresh water, excessive fishing, loss of biodiversity, depletion of the ozone layer, accumulation of toxins, climate change, and overconsumption of resources by humans.

"Think of these problems, and one can get pessimistic," said Diamond. "But one can be hopeful, because the risk we face today is not the risk of an asteroid—something beyond our control. These problems are entirely of our own making. So the outcome will depend entirely on our laws and policies."

We're lucky because we can learn from the past, he said. Thousands of past societies all serve as experiments. People in those societies lived in different environments, had different laws, and arrived at different outcomes. The results offer many lessons for today's laws and policies.

Why Some Societies Die

"There have been societies that have gone on for thousands of years where there has been no sign of environmental decline—for instance, Japan, Java, and the Inca empire," said Diamond. On the other hand, "there were societies where everyone ended up dead for failure to solve their environmental problems."

The simplest example of an environmental disaster is Easter Island. An isolated scrap of grassland about 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile, it was the easternmost outpost of Polynesia. Today, it's a barren island without native trees, known primarily for its gigantic stone statues.

The native people had developed the sophistication to carve their 80-ton monoliths with stone tools and transport them miles down a mountain to erect them on platforms. But when Europeans arrived in 1722, the native society was in a state of collapse. The residents were even pulling down their own statues.

The mysteries surrounding how this society evolved and why it collapsed have recently been solved. According to Diamond, when Polynesians arrived around the year A.D. 400 the island supported a subtropical forest and the world's biggest palm tree variety. Once settled, the Easter Islanders began chopping down the trees for agriculture, canoes, fuel, and monuments. The inhabitants carried on this deforestation for hundreds of years.

Then one day, they chopped down the last palm tree. Without trees, the soil eroded, agriculture declined, and canoes disappeared. The people stopped erecting statues. The island was transformed from a traditional Polynesian society to one dominated by military cliques. Ultimately, cannibalism ensued, because there was only one source of protein left on the island: humans.

What went wrong on Easter Island seems obvious to us today. But Diamond maintains that future generations will similarly shake their heads at us and at our laws and policies if we continue to make a mess of things. He predicted that a hundred years from now, people might ask, "How on earth did those Americans and Europeans not see the obvious environmental things going on?"

Why Some Societies Survive

Diamond cited two reasons why some societies survive longer than others do. The first is the lucky absence of bad advice. "Today, Western experts frequently go out to dry areas of Africa and Asia and tell the nomads to settle down. In about 10 or 20 years, the result is disaster, because settling down makes sense in Europe or the United States, but it doesn't make sense in a relatively dry area. Nomadism is a response that's evolved over thousands of years to avoid these problems."

The second reason for a society's longevity is the fairness of its laws and policies, specifically those that can reconcile clashes of interest. Diamond categorized disputes into three types: those between the powerful elite and the rest of society, those between regions, and those between generations.

Clashes between the elite and the rest of society can be seen in the United States today, especially if the policy of the current administration is to insulate members of the elite from the consequences of their actions, said Diamond. "But this is not just a governmental issue. It's also an issue of business law and policy." He said that recent corporate scandals—including Enron—demonstrate how the interests of the corporate elite can be at odds with the interests of the rest of the company.

The elite cannot be insulated forever against the damage that it causes, however. If nothing else, Enron proved that the actions of the elite could bring down not only the company, but also the elite itself. "What's good for the elite in the short run is likely to be bad for the rest of society in the short run," said Diamond, "and bad for everybody in the long run."

Regional disagreements also need to be resolved. What's good for one area may be bad for another. If Iowa farmers dump toxic runoff into the water table, the water ends up in the Mississippi River and then in the Gulf of Mexico. Fishermen in the Gulf lose income because of farmers in the Midwest.

The third type of clash is between generations. "What's good for us may be bad for our children—if we draw down our environmental capital, making it unavailable to them," said Diamond. He cited aquifers, forests, fisheries, and topsoil as assets that we are exploiting too quickly. This kind of unsustainable consumption, he warned, is "ultimately what did in all the past societies that failed."

CLIFF WASSMANN	AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/PAT SULLIVAN
Easter Island monoliths and Enron logo: icons of fallen cultures.

To resolve these conflicts between classes, regions, and generations, Diamond urged that governments begin by removing subsidies that reward people for environmentally destructive behavior. "Much local development in the United States involves governments supporting developers by putting in roads and water. Much agriculture in the United States—and most major fisheries in the world—would not be economical without government subsidies." He further suggested that governments subsidize environmentally friendly services instead.

"There are two big things today that might make one want to jump out the window or decide not to have children," said Diamond. "Today, there are far more people alive with far more destructive power than at any time in the past. Easter Islanders managed to ruin their environment with 10,000 people and stone tools. Today, there are six billion with metal tools."

The other cause for pessimism today is globalization. "When Easter Island collapsed, it didn't affect anybody else in the world," said Diamond. "Today, when the most remote country in the world collapses, say Afghanistan or Somalia, it's not just a local collapse. Because of globalization, every part of the world is connected to another part through diseases, terrorism, etc. The risk we face today is not like Easter Island—but a collapse of global society."

The good news is that we can learn from the past. "When I'm asked whether I'm an optimist or pessimist about the future, I say that I'm a cautious optimist," said Diamond. "We have problems, but the problems are ones of human making. Therefore, if we choose to solve them, we could."

Why We Regulate Some Drugs but Not Others

Speaking at a recent RAND seminar on drug policy, Courtwright offered new perspectives on why societies wage war on some psychoactive substances but not on others—and the potential lessons for policymakers.

He defined the term drugs in a larger sense to include psychoactive substances such as alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco. He called this group the "big three," because they "matter most in global psychoactive history." Marijuana, cocaine, and heroin he called the "little three."

The global spread and commercialization of the big and little threes provoked measures to restrict or prohibit them during the past century and a half. However, such policies have been highly uneven, noted Courtwright. Governments regulate the big three more lightly than the little three.

"During the last five centuries, people everywhere on this planet have discovered very powerful means of altering their everyday waking consciousness," he said. "But the 'drug problem' hasn't really been a problem until the last 150 years."

Medicines, Markets, and Morals

In the late 19th and 20th centuries, drugs were enormous commercial successes, but nations eventually began to change their policies toward them. "No one questions the use of narcotics for terminally ill patients," said Courtwright, "but a 17-year-old kid on the street corner sniffing heroin is a different proposition." He noted some exceptions for tribal cultures, but for developed nation-states, the distinction between medicinal and other uses is basically clear.

The distinction is the basis for the global regulatory environment. However, instead of applying consistent legislative standards to all substances, governments have selectively restricted certain ones. According to Courtwright, five primary factors drive this discrimination: direct harm to self and others, social costs, religious fervor, deviant associations, and group survival.

Harm to the drug user is not usually enough to prompt a prohibition, especially in the United States, where individualism reigns, said Courtwright. In societies where paternalism rules, self-harm is enough to spark regulation. However, the single most common and powerful argument against drugs is that innocent third parties are harmed.

One 19th-century example was the observation that heavy drinkers were hurting more people than just themselves. They were spending their wages on alcohol and impoverishing their families. Or take tobacco. For centuries, people had complained about the nuisances of tobacco. But regulations increased dramatically only after it was confirmed that secondhand smoke was carcinogenic. Tobacco opponents then translated the polite question, "Mind if I smoke?" to a more derisive rhetorical question: "Mind if I give you cancer?"

Social costs are another source of opposition to drugs. The contention is that private gains, however large, often produce unacceptably high costs to society. Profits by merchants and taxes for governments are not sufficient to justify drug sales if the harm to society outweighs the benefits.

Modern econometric techniques have made it possible to estimate those social costs with some precision. Using complex calculations—involving variables such as wages, taxes, potential opportunities for farmers, and even uncollected pensions from dead people—experts realized the bottom line: Billions of dollars were being lost. "Heavy drinking becomes everyone's business in a society where a liver transplant costs a quarter of a million dollars," said Courtwright.

Religious opposition stems not from the act of altering consciousness, but rather from perceived spiritual laziness. "Religions are all about altering consciousness," said Courtwright. "They want you to alter your consciousness through prayer, fasting, meditation, and other spiritual means. Drugs are regarded as forms of cheating, like chemical shortcuts.

"Suspicion of drugs is strongest among the true believers," he continued, citing the most committed, conservative, and fundamentalist religious individuals as those most likely to favor prohibitions. "Most people on the planet regard drug abuse as a moral failure, requiring punishment," he said. "You may not like it, but this is an incredibly powerful force in determining drug policy."

The association of a particular substance with a disliked or deviant group also plays a role in policymaking. American history is luridly rich with examples: Liquor was associated with lower-class Catholic immigrants, opium smoking with Chinese laborers, heroin with urban delinquents, and cocaine with black men.

In every instance where an unpopular group was associated with a substance, prohibitive legislation of that substance followed. The legislation may not have been based exclusively on prejudice, but prejudice played a role. According to Courtwright, "If Viagra had been created in a clandestine inner city drug lab and nicknamed 'Hardy Boy,' its subsequent regulatory history might have been very different."

Opposition to drugs also stems from the perception that their use endangers the future of the group, whether the group is defined as the tribe, the community, or the nation. This perception is the basis for concerns about teenagers. "The biggest anxiety is usually what drug abuse is doing to young people," said Courtwright, "and with good reason."

BETTMANN/CORBIS

Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin share a joke and a smoke at Yalta in 1945.

He also underscored the influence of the political elite as a secondary factor in driving uneven drug policies. Courtwright cited a well-known 1945 photograph of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin at Yalta. "As the photo was taken, Roosevelt—with cigarette in hand—was dying of congestive heart disease exacerbated by the fact that he smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. There's a saying that the leader's religion determines the religion of the people. To some degree, the leader's vices determine the vices of the people."

A Smarter Prohibition

Using a rating system originally developed in the 1950s, Courtwright assessed the relative danger posed by individual drugs. He discovered that policy is way out of alignment with the potential danger of a drug. "I'm not here to preach against hypocrisy," said Courtwright. "I'm only here to explain it."

Still, when queried about potential policy directions, he said that a prime offender throughout history has been tobacco smoking, which he suggested may have paved the way for an increase in the use of all other psychoactive substances.

"Other kinds of drug abuse increased after smoking was introduced," said Courtwright. "From a policy perspective, I think the drug to attack is the cigarette. And, well, I'll just leave it at that."