'Are We Doomed?' USU Researcher Explores Societal Collapse

Utah State University researcher Joseph Tainter, head of USU’s Department of Environment and Society, is among scientists featured in companion cover stories in the April 5, 2008, issue of the journal New Scientist. In “Are We Doomed?” and “The End of Civilization” by writer Debora MacKenzie, Tainter discusses the complex factors that lead to societal collapse.

Doomsday scenarios typically feature a knockout blow: a massive asteroid, all-out nuclear war or a catastrophic pandemic. Yet there is another chilling possibility: what if the very nature of civilization means that ours, like all the others, is destined to collapse? 

 

“For the past 10,000 years, problem solving has produced increasing complexity in human societies,” says Joseph Tainter, an archaeologist at Utah State University and author of the 1988 book The Collapse of Complex Societies.

 

There is, however, a price to be paid. Every extra layer of organization imposes a cost in terms of energy, the common currency of all human efforts. And increasing complexity, he says, produces diminishing returns.

 

To keep growing, societies must keep solving problems as they arise. Yet success generates a larger population, more specialists, more resources to manage, more information to juggle – and ultimately, less bang for your buck.

 

Eventually, says Tainter, all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. Then when the climate changes or barbarians invade, overstretched institutions break down and civil order collapses.

 

Tainter sees diminishing returns as the underlying reason for the collapse of all ancient civilizations. Western industrial civilization has become bigger and more complex than any before it by exploiting new sources of energy, notably coal and oil, but these are limited and constant innovation is needed.

 

For years we have been warned that a pandemic is coming. There is a widespread belief that our society has achieved a scale, a complexity and level of innovation that make it immune from collapse. A growing number of researchers, however, are coming to the conclusion that far from becoming more resilient, our society is becoming even more vulnerable. 

 

There have been pandemics before. The Black Death killed about a third of Europe’s population but (its) civilization did not collapse. After the Roman empire was hit by a plague with a similar death rate around AD 170, however, the empire tipped into a downward spiral. The difference? Complexity.

 

“Population decline affected agriculture, which affected the empire’s ability to pay for the military, which made the empire less able to keep invaders out,” says Tainter. “Invaders in turn further weakened peasants and agriculture.”

 

A high-mortality pandemic could trigger a similar result now, he says. “Fewer consumers mean the economy would contract, meaning fewer jobs, meaning even fewer consumers. Loss of personnel in key industries would hurt, too.”

 

Much would depend on the extent of the population decline, says Tainter. “Possibilities range from little effect to a mild recession to a major depression to a collapse.”

 

 

 

Contact: Joseph Tainter (435) 797-3270 [joseph.tainter@usu.edu]