Bonnie Goodell
The Polynesians provide interesting models of what happens to populations when a new source of easy protein is discovered. I think these case histories could easily be applied to oil, as regarding human behavior, at least. Christmas and Easter Island are the two most horrific – where the colonists just plain used up everything, in short order, even the trees, and were then reduced to scrabbling pretty brutally for the survival of a few.
According to James Belich’s “Making Peoples” about New Zealand, when the Maori got there, there followed a few hundred years of killing and eating a remarkable cornucopia of easy protein in the form of sea mammals, giant flightless birds, etc., until they had been decimated or destroyed, at which time they had to go back to sweet potatoes and much reduced protein consumption, along with a population crash. The Hawaiians did the same thing – caused the extinction of giant flightless birds, etc. Some Hawaii scholars think that the Kapu (in Hawaiian, Tabu elsewhere) system developed first as resource management, and only later as enforcement as classism and sexism.
The resource management systems they developed are the same as what is now being reinvented, in a few positive instances. For instance, certain areas and/or times of year were kapu to fishing, either of all fish or certain species. (Note the recent news about the function of oceanic fishing reserves in vastly increases available catches outside the reserves. Polynesians would say “Duh!”) In Hawaii, the konohiki- resource bosses – was charged with imposing these kinds of kapu as needed to protect resource health. Hawaii, using these systems had developed, by 1770 a stable system, based mostly or Kalo (taro) culture and (ocean) fish ponds, capable of supporting up to a million people (comparable to current population) requiring only a couple of hours of labor a day, and no outside inputs. This was a very sophisticated stone age culture that was, upon the arrival of westerners, already in the process of transitioning from tribalism to nationalism. May I suggest that the larger land masses of New Zealand and Hawaii gave these peoples more time to figure out what they were doing wrong and adjust their behavior, though probably not without going through some pretty lean times, and population crashes. Oil, being a finite resource, is unlike birds and trees. But the human behavior involved is, I think, the same. Fossil fuel IS protein for the purposes of its function in stimulating human population growth.
The UK and some other countries have been much more successful that the U.S. in at least seeing the need for an environmental commissioner that functions like a konohiki. But not nearly far or fast or local enough to ease any transitions, yet. Even in Hawaii, although there are remnants of parts of the Hawaiian system, as in public beaches and gathering rights, without the konohiki to tell people when to leave the resources alone to regenerate, decimation is once again occurring.
Konohiki had pretty absolute authority, delegated by chiefs, but would lose their jobs if the resources declined. Most isolated cultures probably eventually developed the konohiki function. But commerce, which is basically ritualized and socialized looting of tribal neighbors, has within it always the hope of getting the best of a deal ã exploiting someone else. Not that it is bad, but hope of dominance springs eternal and inevitably leads to cycles of population crashes.
It is indeed sad that it is the U.S., by its dominance, which will be the last to suffer and have therefore the most time to change behavior and so prevent much local suffering. Other countries, for whom the writing on the wall is much more legible are understandably frustrated by the U.S.’s
continued insistence that the writing is not yet legible. But, in fact, as long as the US views itself tribally rather than globally, our crazy policies are not actually crazy. Sad.