Author: Jelte

The Swimming Lesson

The Swimming Lesson

Feeling the icy kick, the endless waves
Reaching around my life, I moved my arms
And coughed, and in the end saw land.
Somebody, I suppose,
Remembering that medieval maxim,
Had tossed me in,
Had wanted me to learn to swim,
Not knowing that none of us, who ever came back
From that long lonely fall and frenzied rising,
Ever learned anything at all
About swimming, but only
How to put off, one by one,
Dreams and pity, love and grace,-
How to survive in any place.
– Mary Oliver

The Collapse of Complex Societes

(1989) Joseph A. Tainter

Tainter presents a detailed review of the major theories on societal collapse.  Through appeal to diminishing marginal returns on complexity, Tainter takes a pseudo-economic line to argue that decay is inevitably in the cards for any complex society.  Unfortunately, little attempt is made to constrain the notion of ‘complexity’.  In reference to the prospect(s) for modern society, one of Tainter’s more interesting observations is that complex societies that exist as islands in a sea of barbarism tend to collapse suddenly and dramatically, while those that exist amongst estimable competitors tend to undergo long, drawn-out decay as power is slowly but surely usurped.  Rather than the desperate bank-runs and grocery-store pillages envisaged by some, I would not be surprised if Tainter envisages a less catastrophic 21st Century in which the United States and Europe slowly deteriorate into a backwater of China.

Talk of collapse is becoming increasingly fashionable, as is starkly illustrated by analysis of the word ‘collapse’ in English literature: (using the on-line database at http://www.culturomics.org/)

Relative occurrence of the word 'collapse' in a large sample of English books

δ^2(Fellow species exterminated) / δ(time)^2

Global patterns of net change in overall extinction risk across birds, mammals, and amphibians mapped as average number of genuine Red List category changes per cell per year. Purple corresponds to net deterioration (i.e., net increase in extinction risk) in that cell; green, net improvement (i.e., decrease in extinction risk); white, no change. The uniform pattern of improvement at sea is driven by improvements of migratory marine mammals with cosmopolitan distributions (e.g., the humpback whale). Note that the intensity of improvements never matches the intensity of deteriorations.

Hoffmann et al. (2010), ‘The Impact of Conservation on the Status of the World’s Vertebrates’, Science 330 (6010), p. 1503-1509.

δ(Fellow species exterminated) / δ(time)

Comparison of recent and distant past extinction rates with rates at which species are “committed to extinction” during the 21st century (63). E/MSY is number of extinctions per million species years; “Fossil record” refers to the extinction rate of mammals in the fossil record (17); “20th century” refers to documented extinctions in the 20th century—mammals (upper bound), birds, and amphibians (lower bound) (17); “21st century” refers to projections of species committed to extinction according to different global scenarios: vascular plants (38, 18), plants and animals (7), birds (6, 19), and lizards (64). Extinction rate caused by each driver and total extinction rates are discriminated, when possible.

Pereira et al. (2010), ‘Scenarios for Global Biodiversity in the 21st Century’, Science 330 (6010), p. 1496-1501.

The proportion of vertebrate species in different Red List categories compared with completely (or representatively) assessed invertebrate and plant taxa on the 2010 IUCN Red List (15). EW, Extinct in the Wild; CR, Critically Endangered; EN, Endangered; VU, Vulnerable; NT, Near Threatened; LC, Least Concern; DD, Data Deficient. Extinct species are excluded. Taxa are ordered according to the estimated percentage (shown by horizontal red lines and given in parentheses at tops of bars) of extant species considered Threatened if Data Deficient species are Threatened in the same proportion as data-sufficient species. Numbers above the bars represent numbers of extant species assessed in the group; asterisks indicate those groups in which estimates are derived from a randomized sampling approach.
Global patterns of threat, for land (terrestrial and freshwater, in brown) and marine (in blue) vertebrates, based on the number of globally Threatened species in total.

Hoffmann et al. (2010), ‘The Impact of Conservation on the Status of the World’s Vertebrates’, Science 330 (6010), p. 1503-1509.

Walking the Plank

Projected rate of range shifts in marine organisms caused by climate change from 2005 to 2050 (52, 63). (A) Latitudinal shift of demersal species (excluding areas >2000 m in depth because of undersampling of the deep-sea region). (B) Latitudinal shift of pelagic species. The projections are based on bioclimatic envelope models for 1066 species of fish and invertebrates, under IPCC SRES A1B. For each map cell, the mean shift of the range centroids of the species currently present in that cell is given.

Pereira et al. (2010), ‘Scenarios for Global Biodiversity in the 21st Century’, Science 330 (6010), p. 1496-1501.

A Fire in Rome

Hubert Robert (undated, he lived 1733-1808), A Fire in Rome.

“[…] the age is now senile […] the World itself […] testifies to its own decline by giving manifold concrete evidences of the process of decay.  There is a diminution in the winter rains that give nourishment to the seeds in the earth, and in the summer heats that ripen the harvests.  The springs have less freshness and the autumns less fecundity.  The mountains, disembowelled and worn out, yield a lower output of marble; the mines, exhausted, furnish a smaller stock of the precious metals: the veins are impoverished, and they shrink daily.  There is a decrease and deficiency of farmers in the field, of sailors on the sea, of soldiers in the barracks, of honesty in the marketplace, of justice in court, of concord in friendship, of skill in technique, of strictness in morals. […] Anything that is near its end, and is verging towards its decline and fall is bound to dwindle. […] This is the sentence that has been passed upon the World […] this loss of strength and of stature must end, at last, in annihilation.” – Cyprian (~3rd Century A.D.), Ad Demetrianum.