The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis (30 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
HIS BOOK
, like the innovations described in these chapters, is not the work of a single individual alone. Three people in particular provided enormous help in shaping the book’s direction: my agent Elizabeth Evans at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency, whose keen insights guided the project from its beginning; my editor Thomas Kelleher at Basic Books, whose observations and advice made this a much better book than it would otherwise have been; and my colleague Amy Kohn, who steadfastly read every chapter multiple times and whose perceptive comments were invaluable.

I am also grateful to two friends and colleagues who generously read and commented on the entire manuscript: environmental historian John McNeill and ecologist Greg Asner. Rachel Brietta Bell drew the illustrations in the book, displaying both her artistic talent and good humor with multiple revisions.

With the breadth of topics covered in this book, inevitably there will be mistakes. The following colleagues from diverse fields were kind enough to read individual chapters and identify some of them, although the blame for any remaining errors lies solely with the author: Elena
Bennett, Dana Cordell, Joel Cracraft, Dana Dalrymple, Erle Ellis, James Galloway, Lynn Goldman, Helmut Haberl, Robert Harriss, Ted Hymowitz, Kees Klein, Eric Lambin, Jeffrey Lockwood, John Mustard, John Mutter, Shahid Naeem, Paul Olsen, Kenneth Olson, Matthew Palmer, Barry Popkin, Peter Richerson, Dustin Rubenstein, Jill Shapiro, and Charles Vorosmarty.

Joel Cohen and Mike DeFries were helpful in commenting on very early drafts of some of the chapters. I am also thankful to the teams at Basic Books and the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency for their help in bringing this project to fruition.

Finally, no work is possible without support from the ones who are closest. Deepest thanks go to my husband and life partner Jit Bajpai for his patience and encouragement; to Triveni DeFries for her inspiration and example to make the world a better place; to Avi Bajpai for always finding an unusual and astute angle from which to view the commonplace; and to my entire extended family in the United States and India whose names would fill many pages.

NOTES

Prologue

      
x
   
Becoming a misnomer:
Deforestation rates in Mato Grosso have declined dramatically since the early 2000s in response to policies to curb deforestation and market forces (Macedo et al. 2012).

      
x
   
Sweet potatoes and manioc:
Posey 1985.

Chapter 1: A Bird’s-Eye View

      
1
   
“. . . [E]ndless slough of mud”:
Plato, translated by Jowett, 1909–1914, Para. 605. A commonly cited interpretation of Plato’s text is “Man must rise above the Earth, to the top of the clouds and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives” (French and Burgess 2007, 127).

      
1
   
Are nearly everywhere:
For maps of the human influence on the land surface, see Sanderson et al. (2002).

      
2
   
Barriers nature presents:
Chenoweth and Feitelson (2005) discuss the debates between neo-Malthusians and Cornucopians in more detail.

      
2
   
Future is secure:
Simon 1981. The title of Simon’s Chapter 3 is “Can the Supply of Natural Resources—Especially Energy—Really Be Infinite? Yes!” Sabin (2013) discusses the controversies between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich about the future of natural resources. Ehrlich’s views are discussed later in this book.

      
2
   
Limits to Growth:
Meadows et al. 2005.

      
2
   
Planetary Boundaries:
See Rockström et al. 2009.

      
2
   
Catastrophic consequences:
Humanity is causing “consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world,” wrote Rockström et al. (2009, 472).

      
5
   
More than tripled:
Data on agricultural production are from the Statistics Division of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAOSTAT),
http://faostat.fao.org/
.

      
5
   
Any other time in modern history:
Rosegrant et al. 2012. The phenomenon of the changing share of income devoted to food is known as “Engel’s Law” after the economist Ernst Engel, who wrote in the 1850s that “the poorer is a family, the greater is the proportion of the total outgo which must be used for food” (Zimmerman 1932, 80).

      
5
   
Richer parts of the world:
See Bloom (2011) for statistics on changes in life expectancy and infant mortality in developed and developing countries.

      
6
   
Gave way to city living:
The drop in fertility rates is a general phenomenon, but there is considerable heterogeneity between and within different regions of the world, as described by Bloom (2011).

      
6
   
Around 1800 in northwestern Europe:
Societies generally pass through a demographic transition in the process of economic development and as improvements in standards of living take place. With poor prospects for children to survive, families are large, but many do not survive. Both birth rates and death rates are high. The two even out to keep the number of people fairly stable over time, and most people are young. This was the case for most of human history. Then death rates declined with improvements in health. Drops in birth rates followed. The gap in time between the two drops makes for a big bulge in more surviving babies. These babies grow up to have babies, and the population explodes. Over time, the two rates equal out, leaving societies again with fairly stable, even decreasing, numbers, but an older population. The time that elapses between the two governs the number of new mouths to feed. The causes and history of demographic transitions are discussed in Lee (2003), Galor and Weil (2000), and Galor (2012).

      
6
   
9 billion people on the planet:
Estimates for 1950s onward are from United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2012), and estimates for the years before 1950 are from Livi-Bacci (1992).

      
6
   
Midpoint of the twentieth century:
United Nations 2012. Nearly all of this growth in the number of people is projected to be in developing countries. See United Nations et al. (2012) and Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005).

      
7
   
Despite the surge in population:
The food supply in calories per capita per day are from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization FAOSTAT database. Trends in per capita consumption are also given in Kearney (2010). See also United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization (2013).

      
7
   
Undernourished at the end of the twentieth century:
The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), Figure A.1, reports that 918 million people were undernourished in 1970 in developing countries and 798 million were undernourished in 2000 (852 million globally in 2000). A more recent analysis (UN FAO et al. 2013) reports that 957 million (15.5 percent of the global population) were undernourished in 2000–2002, with 938.9 million in developing countries. In 1990–1992, 1.015 billion (18.9 percent of the global population) were undernourished. The number (842 million) and percentage (12.2) continued to decline in 2011–2013 (Table 1).

      
8
   
Farming or preparing food:
Some hunter-gatherers, such as the !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa, traditionally had an adequate diet with a relatively light workload to collect wild foods (Cohen 2000). The difference with ancient Jericho lies in the storage of surplus food.

      
8
   
Not unique to our species:
See Aanen et al. (2002), Farrell et al. (2001), Mueller and Gerardo (2002), Schultz and Brady (2008), and Sen et al. (2009) for research on farming insects.

    
10
   
Shape human culture:
Dawkins 1976.

    
10
   
Ireland’s Great Famine:
Sources for the history of the potato in Europe and the Irish potato famine include Brown (1993), Curran and Froling (2010), Fraser (2003), Langer (1975), and Nunn and Qian (2011).

    
11
   
Seville, Spain, in 1573:
Reported in Nunn and Qian (2011).

    
11
   
Sanitation explaining the rest:
Reported in Nunn and Qian (2011).

    
11
   
Grains for export to England:
Kinealy 1997, 5.

    
13
   
No doubt contributed:
Butzer and Endfield 2012.

    
14
   
Weeding and watering the crops:
Boserup 1965; Turner and Fischer-Kowalski 2010. Geertz (1963) identified the process of agricultural involution based on farming systems in Indonesia, whereby population growth leads to increasing labor intensity to increase yield. Ellis et al. (2013) combined the concepts for Boserup, Geertz, and Malthus into a general model of land-use intensification.

    
14
   
“. . . [L]imits of the world”:
Schopenhauer 2005, 37.

Chapter 2: Planetary Beginnings

    
17
   
Posed a basic question:
Fermi 1946.

    
17
   
“Fermi’s paradox”:
Jones 1985.

    
18
   
Might be more common:
The rare earth hypothesis was put forward by Ward and Brownlee (2000) in their insightful and accessible book
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe
.

    
18
   
Evolve and thrive:
Broecker (1985), Kasting and Catling (2003), and Lenton and Watson (2011) discuss the characteristics of a habitable planet. General references for the functions of the Earth system include Smil (2003) and Steffen et al. (2004).

    
18
   
Of other planets:
Seager (2013), Howard (2013), and Segura and Kaltenegger (2010) discuss the search for other planets that might harbor life.

    
19
   
A chance for life:
Lammer et al. (2009) describe the emergence of the concept of the Habitable Zone.

    
20
   
Fading white dwarf:
Schroder and Smith 2008.

    
20
   
Remain there for a billion more:
Gaidos et al. 2005.

    
21
   
Mars’s frozen fate:
Caitling and Zahnle 2009.