The Commons in History: Culture, Conflict, and Ecology

4. Questions for Good Ancestors

4 Questions for Good Ancestors In March 2005, the Onondaga Nation of Indians filed suit against the state of New York and several large corporate polluters that had done business in the vicinity of Syracuse. In their complaint, the Onondagas said that they were “one with the land and consider themselves stewards of it. It is the duty of the Nation’s leaders to work for a healing of this land, to protect it, and to pass it on to future generations.” The state and the corporate polluters, they claimed, must undo the damage that they had done to the Onondagas’ traditional homeland , especially to Onondaga Lake, the site of the founding of the Iroquois League in myth and memory. The Onondagas, in short, brought a land claim not to drive New Yorkers out of their homes, as some feared that they might, or to gain leverage to acquire a casino but “in the hope that it may hasten the process of reconciliation and bring lasting justice, peace, and respect among all who inhabit this area.”1 Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a bestselling environmental history book. Although not an academic work, it is well referenced and draws widely on the historical literature. Diamond, a geography professor who is known for his books on popular science, uses historical examples of societies that he suggests have collapsed due to environmental factors to argue that we should learn from history 102 Chapter 4 to take better care of our environment. It is difficult to summarize Collapse, but it does illustrate some of the difficulties of using the past to guide future sustainable practice. Among the historical examples that Diamond examines, the most controversial has been Easter Island. He argues that historical and archeological evidence suggests that the once lushly forested but remote Pacific Island was wrecked by overexploitation: “I have often asked myself, ‘What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?,’” suggesting that the islanders might argue that technology would save them or the “market” would rescue their environment and society from disaster.2 Jared Diamond’s conclusions have been debated at some length. His argument that the islanders were living in poverty when Europeans arrived has been challenged. It has even been suggested that the deforestation may have been a result of the introduction of rats rather than through thoughtless overfelling.3 His suggestion that islanders were so affected by self-induced environmental catastrophe that they resorted to cannibalism has been strongly criticized. The debates around Easter Island’s environment are complex, and European incursions reduced the preexisting population even after the supposed collapse. Causation is problematic: if the island suffered degradation, was this self-induced, and did it lead to political collapse? Or did a failure of political institutions lead to less effective environmental management, which caused deforestation ? Diamond should be commended for drawing attention to environmental problems in the past, and he does briefly address the question of commons. He also illustrates that environmental history is more than a parable of destruction. Environmental sustainability introduces complex questions, and the past can help to answer them but does not automatically produce answers. Questions for Good Ancestors 103 The word history implies a story, and the stories that historians tell can condition the ways they research history. Narrative frames influence the questions asked and help to shape the conclusions made. This book is conditioned by a narrative, too—a story of effective commons management and the enclosure of the commons by the rich and powerful. Environmental sustainability has been treated using other narratives, such as the notion that degradation is an inevitable result of growing population and exploitation. Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” is part of this view and is developed in his notion of “lifeboat ethics.” Hardin argues that on a small lifeboat (such as the small planet Earth), unless some passengers are thrown overboard, the boat will sink and all will be drowned. Vicious exclusion is compassionate because compassion for all would mean extinction. Thomas Malthus, the early nineteenth-century economist, argued that overpopulation would lead to disaster , and Hardin’s criticism of the commons was strongly linked to this concern that humans cannot control their numbers. A narrative of technological optimism that has been termed cornucopianism counters this rather bleak Malthusianism. This approach assumes that market forces...