When the environmental problems exist, are they recognized and solved?
Diamond told the audience that his students at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he teaches geography, often ask him, ‘Why on earth do people do seemingly dumb things? Over hunt. Over fish. Not manage the water supply.’ It seems like a simple question, but it turns out the reasons why societies make fatal mistakes are complicated and interesting.” One reason is that a society may not anticipate a problem, because it is unprecedented. For instance, 30 years ago, no one dreamed of the possibility of global warming. It’s not that scientists were stupid, it’s just that there was no previous experience of it,” he said. Also, a problem may be imperceptible in its initial stages. “Take global warming, again, as an example,” he said. It was common for the earth’s temperatures to fluctuate and it took 30 years to see, buried in the fluctuations, a long-term trend of global warming. Even when a society’s problems are acknowledged, according to Diamond, they are not always confront
