The Battle Rages On

Abstract

These are fraught times for supporters in academia of economic development. Prodevelopment folk are viewed by many as being tainted by a number—and perhaps a majority—of the seven deadly sins, and for attempting to worsen one or another “existential” environmental problem. Thanks to luminaries such as Amitav Ghosh and Bill McKibben, they are seen as deluded, if not deranged, and chastised for striving to push the pace, even as the human race “falters.” In days of yore, one could expect some corners of academia—economics departments, engineering schools, programs in the history of technology—to offer robust support to proponents of development, to “have their backs,” as it were. Now, not so much, as the precautionary principle, safety-ism, and belief in Ghosh's “nutmeg's curse” course through academia, trumping the fact that in 2022 around 700 million people—over 9 percent of the world's population—still live in extreme poverty ($1.90 or less a day), with almost half of the world's population as recently as 2015 living on under $5.50 a day in terms of purchasing power parity or PPP, according to the World Bank. This is the bristly backdrop for Humans versus Nature, Daniel R. Headrick's important new book.On the surface, the subject of Headrick's book is a bit surprising. The author is not primarily an environmental historian but a distinguished historian of technology who has written a number of well-regarded studies in the latter vein, particularly pertaining to the early modern and modern periods. But certain changes in the way the history of technology is now being done make Headrick's new focus and argument more understandable. As implied above, until relatively recently, historians of technology, generally speaking, were bullish on invention and innovation. They typically focused on how human ingenuity transformed “nature” and its resources into tools, implements, methods, and processes that advanced humans' material well-being and made possible the more complex and sophisticated sociocultural formations and expressions we used to refer to, however ingenuously, as civilizations. To be sure, many historians of technology over the years, including Headrick, wrote on the deleterious distributional effects one or another technology often had for some humans and some human societies, even as said technology elevated others. However, unlike environmental historians, let alone environmentalist historians, few got exercised over the effects technology had on “nature” or the “natural world.” The title of perhaps the most famous modern history of the Industrial Revolution—The Unbound Prometheus (1969) by David S. Landes—is suggestive in this regard.How things have changed. Today, historians of technology, formerly admirers of innovation, often decry human “tools” and innovations such as large dams, nuclear power reactors, genetically modified organisms, and artificial intelligence. Some, joining up with kindred spirits in environmental history, charge humans with narrow, selfish speciesism, while still others, influenced by Arne Naess and other deep ecologists, are disenamored of the human “footprint” itself. Exaggerating only slightly: humans bad, nature good. Notwithstanding the title of his new book, Headrick is too sophisticated a scholar to fall into that dualistic trap. In his study, he correctly sees humans as part of nature, and ipso facto humans and the rest of the natural world as being connected inextricably, however uneasily and at times adversarially. At least at the margin, though, his present sympathies seem to lie with the “natural world,” whose “agency” in the form of negative “feedback” is increasingly giving ravenous, rapacious humans the comeuppance they have in his view long deserved.Headrick's foray into “big history”—technological, environmental, or otherwise—represents another departure from his earlier scholarship. Whereas his previous work never extended back in time before about 1400 CE, his temporal scope in Humans versus Nature is far greater, extending back almost 2 million years to the appearance in Africa of one hominid species, Homo erectus, from which many believe our own, Homo sapiens, emerged somewhere around three hundred thousand years ago. Headrick handles this immense swath of time with considerable aplomb. One of the many virtues of Humans versus Nature is its author's ability to organize the earth's environmental history over the (really) longue durée into comprehensible units of time and then cogently to describe and analyze the principal developments.As Headrick's title suggests, “interactions between humans and the rest of nature” are central to his study. According to the author, two aspects of these interactions stand out: “One is the human impacts on the rest of nature and how they have changed over time. The other is how nature, in turn, has affected humans and human civilizations, especially the ‘natural disasters’ that have disrupted (and sometimes reversed) the advancing power of nature over the natural world” (4). Well-chosen examples of such interactions—from the Paleolithic to the present—inform Humans versus Nature, which is divided into fifteen chapters, organized chronologically for the most part, along with a concise but effective introduction and a provocative epilogue.Chapters 1 through 3 treat the increasingly contested interpretive terrain regarding the proper classification and valorization of early human subsistence strategies and habitation patterns—that is to say, those associated with hunters and gatherers (“foragers”) and with farmers and herders. From my perspective, it is unfortunate that Headrick for the most part accepts the increasingly ascendant and, more to the point, trendy position elevating hunter-gatherers vis-à-vis farmers and herders, downplaying the positive dimensions and implications of the “Neolithic Revolution.” It is one thing to challenge the linearity of the move to agriculture and animal domestication, and it is also correct to point out the (many) problems occasioned by the shift. It is reasonable, too, to point out some of the dietary and health benefits associated with hunting and gathering and to note what seems to have been foragers' relatively light workloads. It is not acceptable, however, to do so without laying out in full the many problems and limitations associated with foraging communities, and without commenting about their low developmental ceilings. And it is as fatuous as it is unconscionable to refer to agriculture as “the worst mistake in the history of the human race,” as Jared Diamond, one of the champions of hunter-gatherers, infamously did many years ago.1 To his credit, Headrick's support of the new orthodoxy is measured. His balanced assessment in chapter 3 of the emergence and development of complex, hierarchical, agricultural civilizations based on sophisticated water control/irrigation works in various parts of the ancient world—Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, and the Americas—testifies to this point.In chapters 4 and 5 Headrick pushes ahead, homing in on the Eastern Hemisphere and treating the interactions between humans and the environment in Eurasia and Africa between about 1500 BCE and 1400 CE. Obviously, it is difficult to generalize about developments over such a huge area over such a long period of time, but Headrick emphasizes the constant tension between aggressive human populations pushing, seemingly inexorably, to expand both economically and demographically, and an overstretched nature pushing back. Such pushback was sometimes insidious, but sometimes blunt and brutal, as in the cases of the Justinianic plague of the sixth century CE and the so-called Black Death of the fourteenth century CE, which Headrick views as outgrowths and unintended consequences of the expansion and increased connectivity of human communities across Afro-Eurasia.Readers today will be particularly interested in one of the timely topics treated in chapter 5: the so-called medieval climate anomaly. This anomaly, marked by a pattern of significantly warmer temperatures in much of Afro-Eurasia from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries CE, promoted the expansion and growth of human settlements over much of Afro-Eurasia. It was followed, alas, by the dislocations of the so-called Little Ice Age, some of which are interpreted by Headrick as expressions of nature's agency manifested in harvest failures, plague, civil strife, and other forms of negative “feedback.”Headrick shifts his attention to the Western Hemisphere in chapter 6, detailing the monumental and, for Native Americans, cataclysmic consequences of the opening of contacts between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, understood by most scholars today in the context of Alfred Crosby's famous term “the Columbian Exchange.”2 So profound were the consequences of this exchange—biological, demographic, economic, cultural, political, and so on—that it is difficult even today to comprehend them fully.More or less the same time period is treated in chapter 7, but the focus is back to the Eastern Hemisphere, which, of course, was deeply affected not only by the Columbian Exchange, but also by shocks—harvest failures, famines, political and social upheavals, and so on—sparked by, or at least associated with the cooler weather prevailing during the “Little Ice Age.” The deleterious effects of cooler weather for humans were most powerful in the early modern period but stretched well into the nineteenth century in some areas. No part of the Eastern Hemisphere was immune to weather-related shocks, disturbances, and dislocations, which reverberated through Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.Humans fought back with a vengeance, as it were, beginning in the eighteenth century with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. For our purposes, this metaphorical revolution can be interpreted as shorthand for the development and/or increased deployment of new energy sources, along with technologies and methods relating to production, organization, capital mobilization, communications, and distribution. Taken together, this led over time to significant and sustained gains in economic output and productivity and to the vast range of changes that have often been subsumed under the rubrics of modernization or development. The changes growing out of this “revolution,” according to Headrick, led to a “sudden increase in the power of humans over nature,” which, however enriching and beneficial to humans, has left nature reeling (6).Headrick devotes chapters 8 and 9 to the key economic and environmental changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. He focuses in the first of these chapters on two of the centers of the revolution, Great Britain and especially the United States, documenting the economic transformation and massive surge in economic output associated with industrialization as well as its sizable environmental and human costs, which in the United States would include at minimum land and water pollution, deforestation, the “Bison Holocaust,” and the devastation of Native American communities as a result of wars and diseases.In chapter 9, Headrick shifts his attention to the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the periphery—that is, nonindustrializing parts of the world, particularly in Asia. This topic has been the subject of much of Headrick's best work over the course of his career, and his mastery of the material comes through loud and clear. However much the Industrial Revolution transformed economic life in Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century, and in so doing improved living standards in the aggregate, the case was otherwise in much of the nonindustrializing world in the nineteenth century. The latter area, confronted with increasingly profound power asymmetries vis-à-vis the industrializing world, were routinely rendered into economic and political dependencies of the industrializing powers, and typically reduced to supplying raw materials and plantation commodities to Europe and the United States in exchange for manufactured goods and commercial/financial services. This reorientation wreaked environmental havoc on the nonindustrial world, including deforestation, the rise of monocultures and the loss of biodiversity, epidemics, and the intensification of droughts and flooding (particularly in the aftermath of El Niño–inspired weather events) because of ill-conceived or poorly executed irrigation projects.Headrick carries the story forward in chapters 10 and 11, detailing how industrialization, economic growth, population increase, wars, and mass consumption affected the environment all over the world in the twentieth century, straining the earth's carrying capacity, depleting and despoiling resources of all kinds, and spurring worrisome changes in climate, most notably greater weather variability and rising temperatures. So powerful were the environmental effects associated with industrialization, development, and the triumph worldwide of what might be called the ideology of developmentalism that many environmental writers argue that we have now entered a new geological age often referred to as the Anthropocene, highlighting the powerful role of humans in shaping and, in the eyes of most of these writers, ravaging the environment.In the last four chapters of Humans versus Nature Headrick discusses both the most salient environmental problems associated with humans' seemingly unceasing quest over the past two or three centuries for more development and the human responses these problems evoked. Here he must, of course, be selective in his coverage, but he wisely devotes space to issues relating to climate change in chapter 12, resource depletion (focusing on sea life) in chapter 13, the ominous threat of wholesale extinction of terrestrial species—what some refer to as the “Sixth Mass Extinction”—in chapter 14, and the rise of environmentalism across the globe in chapter 15. Headrick closes with a short, illuminating epilogue wherein he lays out several possible scenarios regarding what the future will hold for the increasingly fraught relationship between humans and nature, ending somberly by forewarning that “whatever happens, people may look back upon our age with envy” (473).Before raising a few caveats about Humans versus Nature, let me state for the record that I agree wholeheartedly with the overall assessment of the eminent environmental historian J. R. McNeill, who, in a back-cover blurb, calls Headrick's book “the most comprehensive environmental history in existence.” Moreover, I would add that Humans versus Nature is not only comprehensive, but also exceptionally well structured, up-to-date regarding scholarship, clearly written, and, as stated earlier, generally measured and balanced in its interpretations. In other words, the book should be considered a resounding success.This said—and said in all sincerity—I have questions regarding Headrick's rather blinkered depiction of humans and what I view as his overly critical view of their behavior toward nature over time. He is particularly critical of what he calls “our Paleolithic minds”—that is, of our will to dominate nature. But what is so wrong with attempting to shape and exercise control over nature, even of attempting to gain mastery over it? Where would we be had we settled for low-level equilibrium (“harmony”) with it? Why not try to set the terms?Humans' interest in “improving” nature and mobilizing it for our advantage goes way back. In both the Bible and the epic of Gilgamesh, for example, humans are charged with establishing dominion over the natural world. Indeed, one can argue that the process first began to take off well before then, when one of Homo sapiens' most creative predecessors, Homo erectus, began making systematic use of fire. It has been a long slog for humans ever since, but we have finally reached a position where larger and larger proportions of the human population are flourishing in a material sense, due to our ability to shape the environment in ways that enhance human welfare.Although Headrick and many of his scholarly confreres are distressed over what they view as an unhealthy and unsustainable relationship between humans and nature, humans, as a result of the Industrial Revolution and “developmentalism,” are by many measures now living in the wealthiest and healthiest age in our entire history, as Matt Ridley, Stephen Pinker, Hans Rosling, and Deirdre McCloskey, among others, have pointed out. And there is a lot of room for improvement in the human condition: I started this essay with some figures on global poverty. World income per capita in 2020, despite significant gains in recent decades, was still only about US$10,520 in constant (2010 dollar) terms—albeit somewhat higher in terms of PPP. So plenty of people could use more development.OK, but what about the relationship going forward between development and the environment? Some see demand for “environment”—that is, environmental services—as a superior good, rising more than proportionally vis-à-vis income, while others view it as a normal good. In either case we can expect demand for “environment” to increase. Per the so-called environmental Kuznets curve (EKC), as development makes individuals and countries richer, after a certain point they value environment more and more—and are increasingly willing to pay for it—which, ironically, renders environmental amelioration dependent at least in part on development.Certainly, we face a litany of serious environmental problems, but none of them is likely “existential,” not even climate change. Despite all the chatter about the depletion of this and the danger of that, one thing we are not short of is human ingenuity. Economist Julian L. Simon famously treated this matter long ago, focusing on what he called the “ultimate resource”: human imagination coupled with the human spirit.4 Headrick, almost in spite of himself, acknowledges this in Humans versus Nature, which is peppered with references to humans' flexibility, adaptability, creativity, drive, and so on. These are the features that got us where we are today—whether in a predicament or in what I see as an advantageous situation. If the past is any indication, we will likely not merely survive but thrive. If someone had asked experts in 1900, when world population was about 2 billion, if it would someday be possible for humans to produce sufficient food to feed 8 billion people—which number we are expected to reach as early as 2023—those experts would likely have considered the questioner daft. But we now produce sufficient food to feed 8 billion with a comfortable surplus left over. Development and developmentalism made that possible.In my view, some combination of R&D-induced reductions in the cost and improvements in the reliability of sustainable energy, innovations in carbon capture, and improvements in nuclear power technology—perhaps with some geoengineering wizardry thrown in—will get us through our climate problems. After all, flexible, adaptable, ingenious humans have weathered massive climate changes before. And what if I'm wrong (which I doubt) and groups such as Extinction Rebellion are right? Well, the earth survived the extinction of the dodo, last seen on the island of Mauritius in the late seventeenth century, and it will likely survive the eventual end of human life on Earth too. After all, as Headrick points out, “99.9 percent of all the species of living beings that ever inhabited the Earth have become extinct, making this a natural process” (403). That's where Elon Musk comes in. On to Mars—in a figurative sense at least!