The “new abnormal”: The rise of extreme flooding, briefly explained

Climate change is contributing to heavier precipitation, a major factor in flooding.

By Li Zhouli@vox.com

VOX

Jul 11, 2023

A mailbox sits in front of a flooded property on Route 11 on July 10, 2023 in Londonderry, Vermont. Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Li Zhou is a politics reporter at Vox, where she covers Congress and elections. Previously, she was a tech policy reporter at Politico and an editorial fellow at the Atlantic.

Parts of the United States’s eastern seaboard have been hit with massive floods in recent weeks, a phenomenon that’s expected to grow more common — and worse — as climate change warms the planet.

“It’s worse than a new normal. I call it a new abnormal,” says University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.

On Tuesday, Vermont was the site of heavy flooding that trapped people in their homes and shut down roads. Earlier this week, New York’s Hudson Valley similarly experienced torrential rains that led to severe flood warnings. Nationally, 11 million people remain under flood warnings as of Tuesday, while globally, countries including India, Japan, China, and Turkey have seen destructive flooding that has displaced millions of people and damaged property in the last year.

“Everywhere is susceptible to these impacts,” Mann said. “The western, central, and eastern US, Europe, and Asia — with one of the best examples being the Pakistan floods last year which displaced more than 30 million people.”

As the Earth gets warmer, the atmosphere is able to hold more water, leading to heavier precipitation when it rains, and a greater likelihood of flooding as a result. A 1 degree Centigrade increase in the atmosphere’s temperature corresponds to a 7 percent increase in water vapor that it’s able to hold, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. And estimates suggest global temperatures could breach a 1.5 degree Celsius increase threshold sometime in the 2030s, meaning much more rain to come.

We spoke with four climate scientists about the factors behind the rise of extreme weather, and how the government could respond to both combat it and alleviate its impact. These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Is flooding getting more frequent and intense overall — and what is causing this, if so?

Richard Seager, Columbia: In general, we know that heavy intense precipitation is increasing pretty much everywhere around the world, as a result of rising atmospheric temperatures.

There’s never a complete one-to-one relationship between heavy intense precipitation and flooding of rivers. But you could certainly say that heavy, more heavy, and intense precipitation is more likely to cause the kinds of flooding that we’ve seen.

We know from climate models, and just simple theory, that the atmosphere can hold more moisture as it gets warmer. We’ve known that ... this can happen for decades now and it’s really coming true.

Daniel Swain, UCLA: Let’s back up a little bit. Before we get to flooding, let’s talk about extreme precipitation. That’s sort of what the proximal cause is with terrestrial flooding, as you get too much water too quickly from the sky, in the form of rain generally.

One of the signatures of climate change is an increase in both extreme heat and extreme precipitation. And this is true almost everywhere.

This is exactly the kind of event you’d expect to produce extreme precipitation in the [New England] region — a slow moving, very moist storm system.

Flooding is a bit more complicated, because obviously, you need extreme, heavy rain for some sort of flooding, but then also, the antecedent conditions matter a lot. So if you had gone into this, say, in an extreme drought, the soil was super dry, it might have taken longer for all of this water to saturate and the rivers wouldn’t have risen quite as much. But … the soils were actually unusually wet going into [the heavy rains in the northeastern US]. So they were primed to respond quickly to the precipitation.

Michael Mann, University of Pennsylvania: Climate change is leading to anomalous warmth around the planet in general, and warmer ocean waters mean more moisture in the atmosphere that is available to produce flooding rains.

But climate change is also altering the behavior of the jet stream, and some of our work suggests that it is leading to a wavier, slower jet stream associated with stalled weather systems that remain stuck in place for days or even weeks on end — that’s when you see the worst flooding events.

Mohammed Ombadi, University of Michigan: In general, global warming is increasing the intensity of heavy storms.

Up until recently, we thought in the climate community that the increase in rainfall intensity is constrained to about 7 percent per 1 degree of warming, but there is growing evidence in recent studies that the increase might be much higher than that.

Is this year an anomaly or is this the new normal?

Michael Mann, University of Pennsylvania: It’s worse than a new normal. I call it a new abnormal, and these flooding events will continue to become more extreme unless we reduce carbon emissions and stop the ongoing heating of the planet.

Daniel Swain, UCLA: I usually try and shy away from the term “new normal,” not because this isn’t related to climate change, but because it suggests that we’ve reached some semblance of a stable plateau.

Whereas really, the new normal is continued change, continued escalation, and extreme. So if we call it “a normal,” it sounds like, “All right, we’ve reached this tipping point, we need to adapt to it. And if we can deal with everything now, we’re okay.”

And unfortunately, the reality is, this is our temporary, new normal, but in 10 years, we’ll have a new normal that’s escalated beyond today’s. We will see events like this — and worse.

Richard Seager, Columbia: Increasingly, we’re going to be seeing events, whether they’re heat waves, flooding events, or droughts that we thought looking back at our climate records would never be possible. Because of human-driven climate change, that’s going to create situations where things that have never happened before are going to become routine.

[In] another 10 or 20 years, we won’t be thinking they’re so abnormal, because these things are going to be happening more and more frequently.

Mohammed Ombadi, University of Michigan: It is somewhat a new normal. In the future, we should expect to see more of these events occurring. However, it is important to note that this does not mean we will experience such floods every year going forward.

Can you explain the increase in severe rain in some places and the rise in droughts in other places?

Richard Seager, Columbia: They are two sides of the same coin. So when the atmosphere can hold more moisture, it also transports more moisture, from one place to the other.

So like, in the Southwest United States, where I do most of my work on drought, when there are high-pressure systems … [with] winds blowing out of that area, those are the conditions that set up droughts in those areas. And the atmosphere is extracting moisture from those regions. So when it warms up, [the atmosphere] can hold more moisture, and move more moisture out of those areas. So droughts can intensify.

In the warmer atmosphere, you can get both more extreme droughts and you can also get more extreme precipitation and they’re connected by the ability of the atmosphere to hold more moisture and therefore move more moisture from one place to the other, thus creating extremes on both ends of the spectrum.

How effective is forecasting when it comes to predicting severe flood events and warning people?

Daniel Swain, UCLA: I mean, absolutely critical. And it’s actually quite good for the most part.

If you look at the NOAA predictions for [the floods in the northeastern US], several days in advance, there were [public predictions] that were like, “A significant flood event is possible.” The day before, it was like, “We’re highly confident this event will be potentially as bad as what occurred with [Hurricane] Irene, potentially even worse” — which is exactly what happened.

So it’s hard to fault that level of accuracy and the consistency of messaging. I know it still doesn’t mean that everyone gets the message. But that’s not a forecasting problem so much as it is a ... communication and mass messaging problem.

How can people and governments respond to the rise in more severe flooding?

Daniel Swain, UCLA: Day to day, aside from being aware of the weather and taking warnings seriously, as an individual, it’s difficult to adapt to the increased risk of extreme precipitation, flash flooding. I guess, be mindful of where you are during events, know whether your home or your place of work or places you spend time for other reasons are at risk during these events, but I feel like that’s weak advice.

[The] local and regional government level is actually where the rubber really meets the road here, in terms of planning and adaptation.

Cities and counties and local governments do update emergency response plans, they do update infrastructure as things age out, rebuild new things, whether that’s storm drains, or culverts, or restoring floodplains so that there’s less risk to the adjacent populated areas. Whatever it is, all of these sorts of interventions need to be climate aware.

No city, no regional government should be building anything, or updating any infrastructure at this point, without taking climate change into account. And taking future climate change into account as well, not just how much things have changed to date, but how much they’re likely to change in the coming decades.

When it comes to flooding, specifically, one example would be in urban areas: You have storm drains and culverts that have a fixed maximum capacity; there’s a certain cubic feet per minute. They max out and then things go haywire when you exceed it. Part of it is having building infrastructure that has higher capacity.

But the other part of it is in some ways the opposite, which is allowing the water to kind of do its thing in a safe or at least a semi-controlled way. That’s why things like river and creek setbacks, levee setbacks, restoring floodplains [are important] because of course, if you build right up on the floodplain, guess what’s going to happen when there’s a flood, you’re gonna wash away the structures, that infrastructure you built right on the margins of this natural floodplain.

Michael Mann, University of Pennsylvania: Obviously better emergency response is critical, but we will exceed our adaptive capacity in dealing with these events if we don’t address the problem at its source, which is primarily the ongoing burning of fossil fuels for energy and transportation.

Richard Seager, Columbia: The lesson looking forward is to start planning for how we’re going to adapt to things that we have just never seen before.

[We need to think about] how populations are going to deal with extreme heat, how our infrastructure is going to deal with extreme precipitation and flooding. We’ve got to think through all of that and start making changes now based on what we expect will happen in the future.

What we’ve already done to the climate system is going to lead to more warming going forward. So a lot of these changes we’re talking about in the near term are pretty much inevitable.

Whatever we do in terms of prevention can certainly prevent it from getting as bad as it otherwise would. And the payoff in decades to come will be huge.

But by getting serious about reducing emissions right now, we’re not going to get out of this problem immediately because we have so much heating of the climate system that’s currently in the pipeline.

Mohammed Ombadi, University of Michigan: There is little that can be done at the individual level. Most of the efforts needed for adaptation must be taken at the local, state, and federal government levels. However, people can cope with those flooding events by avoiding building homes in regions that are vulnerable to landslides and hill slopes that can be severely impacted by such torrential downpours.

​​The big message here is that our infrastructure was designed for a climate that no longer exists. This is very clear with the ongoing floods in northeastern US as we hear news of washed-out roadways and bridges, damaged tracks in railroads, and swamped homes. We need to change the way we design and build infrastructure to be in line with the increase in rainfall extreme events predicted by climate scientists.

Scientists unveil the key site that shows we’re in a new climate epoch

The holy grail for understanding the start of the Anthropocene lies at the bottom of a lake in Canada.

By Sigal Samuel 

VOC

 Jul 11, 2023

In Canada, Crawford Lake’s well-preserved sediment layers show the start of the Anthropocene epoch, scientists say. AFP via Getty Images

Sigal Samuel is a senior reporter for Vox’s Future Perfect and co-host of the Future Perfect podcast. She writes primarily about the future of consciousness, tracking advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience and their staggering ethical implications. Before joining Vox, Sigal was the religion editor at the Atlantic.

This story is part of a group of stories called

Finding the best ways to do good.

An intrepid band of geologists has spent over a decade scouring the planet for the evidence they need to declare we’re living in the Anthropocene, a new chapter in Earth’s history borne of humanity’s impact on the planet.

On Tuesday, they declared they’ve found it.

Earth has gone through distinct geological epochs, vast chunks of time defined by changes in rock layers. To prove that the Anthropocene represents a new one, scientists had to find a “golden spike” — a physical site where the rock, sediment, or ice clearly records the change from a previous chapter in time to a new one. In 2009, they started hunting around the planet and found a range of strong candidates, from a peat bog in Poland to a coral reef in Australia to the ice of Antarctica.

But the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG), as the group is called, wanted to pick a site where the rock record indisputably shows that we’ve left behind the Holocene epoch, which started 11,700 years ago when the last ice age ended.

At last, the geologists say, they’ve found their holy grail.

It’s little Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada. There, the waters are so deep that whatever sinks down to the floor usually remains without mixing with the upper layers of water, so it stays preserved, offering an unusually good record of geological change.

Since 1950 — which is when the AWG now says the Anthropocene began — the sediment there has been inundated by the byproducts of human activity: plutonium isotopes from the nuclear bombs we’ve detonated, ash from the fossil fuels we’ve burned, and nitrogen from the fertilizer we’ve used.

“The record at Crawford Lake is representative of the changes that make the time since the mid-20th century geologically different from before,” said Francine M.G. McCarthy, an earth scientist at Brock University in Ontario and a member of the AWG.

Does this officially mean we’re living in a new epoch?

Not yet.

The Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy will consider the proposal in the next few months. Next, the International Commission on Stratigraphy will vote on whether the Anthropocene deserves to be designated a new epoch. Then the International Geological Congress will make the final determination.

And here’s the thing: many expect that, ultimately, the highest strata of geological timekeepers will reject the idea that we’re living in a new epoch. The debate arguably says more about the purpose of the classification — is it solely scientific, or is it also political? — than it does about some objective moment when the Anthropocene started.

Crawford Lake’s sediment layers contain clear evidence of humanity’s impact on Earth, including

 plutonium isotopes from bomb tests.

 AFP via Getty Images

When and how did the Anthropocene start? It’s controversial.

Carving up time is a very messy business. One that scientists tend to fight over — a lot.

Even among those who agree that human activity has ushered in a new epoch, there’s disagreement over when the epoch started. Should we start counting from the Industrial Revolution? From the dawn of agriculture? Some other milestone?

Back in 2019, the AWG voted on whether to designate the middle of the 20th century as the starting point; four voted against, but 29 voted in favor, citing this as the time when we start to see major changes in phenomena like global warming, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, the spread of ash and plastics, and the explosive growth of domestic animal populations.

But some argue that it doesn’t even make sense to recognize our current interval as its own epoch, since it’s incredibly brief in geological time. If the previous epoch, the Holocene, lasted 11,700 years, does it really make sense to give the same designation to an interval that has so far spanned only 73 years?

Erle Ellis, an environmental scientist at the University of Maryland, doesn’t think so. “The Anthropocene is a geological Event, not an Epoch,” he wrote on Twitter in the minutes following the AWG’s announcement.

For the non-geologists: Earth’s professional timekeepers use “epoch” to describe a chunk of time that’s bigger than an “age” but smaller than an “eon,” “era,” or “period.” It’s a technical term with technical criteria, voted on by scientists. By contrast, an “event” is a much looser, more informal term. It can refer to any shock to the Earth’s system, like a mass extinction or an asteroid hitting the planet.

“Narrowing the Anthropocene definition to [a] single year marked by a thin band of sediment in a single lake makes no sense at all,” Ellis wrote.

But whether it makes sense to say we’re now living in a new epoch depends on how you understand the point of these designations.

If you’re a scholar, like an archaeologist or anthropologist, who uses the geologic time scale to orient yourself and situate your work amid unimaginably long spans of time, it may feel unhelpful to have a term usually reserved for stretches lasting millions of years suddenly applied to an interval that’s lasted only decades.

Yet it’s not only scholars who use these labels. The public uses them too. And the term “Anthropocene” is already widely used and understood — in 2020, the musician Grimes even released an album dubbed Miss Anthropocene. The term has become a way to get people to take climate change more seriously. In other words, it’s not just a scientific question — it’s also political.

Some scholars embrace that. The geologist Emlyn Koster, for example, told the New York Times last year that geologists shouldn’t think of defining the Anthropocene as solely the AWG’s business. “I always saw it not as an internal geological undertaking,” he said, “but rather one that could be greatly beneficial to the world at large.”

Others are uncomfortable with the idea of scientists using the “Anthropocene” label to make a political statement about what humanity is doing to the planet.

But the truth is, it’s political either way. If, in the coming months, the highest bodies in geology vote to officially recognize the Anthropocene as a new epoch, that will have political ramifications: it will be read as a clear indictment of humanity’s recklessness on this planet, and a plea to think more about what we owe to future generations. If they decide to withhold the designation, that will also inevitably bear a political meaning.

Ultimately, the fight over “Anthropocene” is not just a fight over a thin band of sediment. It’s a fight over how to make meaning of what we humans are doing on Earth, and to it.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-anthropocene-canadian-lake-mud.html

340,000 UPS workers could go on strike July 31. Here’s what it means.

Our reliance on delivery gives the Teamsters union a lot more leverage in UPS negotiations.

By Rani Molla@ranimolla 

VOX

 Jul 11, 2023,

Teamsters in Queens, New York, hold “practice” picket signs on July 7, ahead of a potential strike. Timothy A Clary/AFP via Getty Images

Rani Molla is a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.

When UPS workers last went on strike in 1997, the New York Times reported that the labor stoppage “created myriad inconveniences, large and small, for companies and consumers across the nation” and “largely crippled” the company. It lasted 15 days before the delivery company acceded to many of the union’s demands.

Now, UPS workers are slated to strike again at the end of the month if they don’t come to a union contract agreement. If they do strike, things could be a lot worse this time around, putting even more pressure on companies, consumers, and UPS. That’s because the economy a quarter-century ago is entirely different than now — one where package delivery is more important than it’s ever been.

“That was a very long time ago and the world was very different,” said Gregg Zegras, president of the global e-commerce business unit at shipping technology company Pitney Bowes, which collects data on the package delivery industry. “Everybody shopped in stores.”

While competitors like FedEx and the US Postal Service could pick up some of the deliveries, experts said logistics networks are too strained to fill many of the gaps that would be created by a UPS strike. That means headaches and delays for many of the people relying on UPS, which is responsible for about a quarter of all parcel delivery volume in the US, according to Pitney Bowes.

“There’s no good that comes from this for the consumer. There’s no good that comes from this for the merchants. And there’s no good that comes from other players in the industry,” Zegras said, adding that there’s not enough capacity among the remaining parcel delivery services, including Pitney Bowes, to handle the demand.

In the event of a strike, UPS itself stands to miss out on domestic revenue of up to roughly $170 million a day, based on last year’s third-quarter earnings.

E-commerce had already been a growing part of Americans’ shopping before 2020, but it shot up during the pandemic and, though down from its peak, is only expected to grow. E-commerce makes up about 20 percent of all retail sales when you exclude things like gas and motor vehicles, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by Jason Miller, interim chair for the supply chain management department at Michigan State University’s business school, and it’s up about 25 percent from pre-pandemic levels. Another way to look at it: Employment in the courier and messenger sector stands at 1.1 million, which is double what it was in 1997. UPS employs about a third of those workers.

“We’re certainly much more reliant right now on parcel carriers than we were back in the ’90s,” Miller said. He pointed out that the situation isn’t just about consumers getting their Amazon packages. Businesses, too, are much more reliant on carriers like UPS to send them everything from sneakers to medical supplies to car parts, and about 40 percent of UPS shipments go to businesses.

In other words, a strike at UPS doesn’t just mean trouble buying stuff online and receiving anything from food to medical supplies from merchants — you’d also have trouble buying stuff at stores.

“If I had to put it on a scale with one being not at all disruptive and seven being pure economic catastrophe, this is probably a five right now,” Miller said of a potential strike. He estimates that competitors could pick up about 20 percent of UPS package volume, and that’s only because they’ve held onto workers even as e-commerce demand has dipped from pandemic highs.

But for the 340,000 UPS workers whose contract is up at the end of the month, a strike may be the only option to secure additional benefits for some of the company’s lowest-paid workers. Negotiations over a new contract fell apart last week, with each side blaming the other; the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents UPS workers in the country’s largest private-sector contract, said UPS put forth an “unacceptable offer to the Teamsters that did not address members’ needs.”

UPS told Vox in a statement, “We’re proud of what we’ve put forward in these negotiations, which deliver wins for our people. The Teamsters should return to the table to finalize this deal.”

While the union and UPS had come to agreements over issues like getting rid of a two-tier wage system that the union said underpaid part-time workers and getting air conditioning in vehicles, the sides are still at odds over cost of living increases and raising pay for part-time workers.

“They’re fighting for the little guy,” Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s labor relations school, said. “It’s not just, ‘We have all the strength of all the drivers because the Teamsters are known for truck drivers.’ This is for those moving boxes. It’s a little lower on the totem pole or the hierarchy of the company — it’s the lower levels is what they’re really fighting for.”

Given the stakes, some company analysts had expected the negotiations to go more amicably, predicting a “handshake deal” earlier this month. Others think the company will wait till the last minute to offer a better deal, rather than risk a strike.

If workers do strike, experts say it likely won’t last long, and UPS could come back to the table quickly in hopes of limiting the damage to its bottom line.

However negotiations are resolved, they will likely have big impacts on other package delivery companies, including Amazon, which has a logistics operation to rival UPS and has also been fighting its own union battles.

Indeed, the Teamsters have set their sights on unionizing Amazon, and some California delivery drivers working for an Amazon contractor have already unionized with the Teamsters. If the Teamsters get a good contract for their workers at one delivery company, it will force competitors to raise wages and benefits as well, lest they lose workers in a tight hiring market.

“The best thing they can do to help organize Amazon is make a big win at UPS,” Cornell’s Wheaton said.

 

Twitter Vs Meta’s Threads: The Strangling Of Innovation, Competition, And User Freedom – OpEd

 July 11, 2023

By Shadab Jabbar

The digital arena might host a high-stake legal battle as the social media’s behemoth Twitter squares off against Meta’s Threads app. As the world turns into a fast-paced technological hub, disputes over intellectual property are becoming a widespread appearance however the clash between the two social media giants is far from being an ordinary common skirmish as Twitter’s threat to sue Meta over its Threads app poses a serious challenge to innovation, competition, and user freedom in the social media landscape.

The two dominant social media platforms, Twitter and Meta (originally Facebook) have engaged in clashes over a variety of issues over the years. Their rivalry intensifies as both continue to contest for user attention and market dominance, resulting in the enhancement of services by launching new apps, features, and functionalities. One such app is Meta’s Threads which has become the heart of the ongoing conflict.

The debut of the micro-blogging app on July 5, 2023, was perceived as a significant threat by Twitter, claiming that its copyrighted features are being violated. It maintains that Meta’s Threads app replicates its unique user interface and design elements, confusing users and diluting Twitter’s brand. The app allegedly violates Twitter’s intellectual property rights because it replicates the threaded conversations functionality too closely.

Furthermore, on July 5 Meta received a letter from Twitter threatening a legal suit against Meta Platforms, claiming that Meta had exploited it to create its new social media app and asked Meta to stop utilizing its trade secrets and that Meta had employed several former Twitter employees and had deliberately put them to create a replica of Twitter. The allegation has been denied by Meta.

Against the backdrop of the Twitter v/s Meta showdown concerns have been raised in the tech world. Even though Twitter may have strong reasons for its actions its outcomes and influence on innovation, competition, and user freedom can not be neglected. Twitter’s threat of filing a lawsuit against Meta’s Threads app mirrors a concerning trend of the monopolization of the social media space. Twitter has a substantial market share already provided its status as one of the pioneers and top platforms in the industry, its goal to suppress competition and maintain its hegemonic position is made obvious by going after a young startup app like Threads. In addition to restricting user options, such conduct also impedes the development of innovative platforms that have the potential for offering distinctive features and experiences.

Moreover, there are also concerns regarding the impact of the dispute between Twitter and Meta on innovation. Start-up and smaller developers may be deterred from entering the market because of such legal challenges because they are concerned about facing costly legal battles and the responsibility of defending their intellectual property. The possibility of innovation being stifled hampers development and deprives users of new innovative platforms that might have emerged in a more cooperative setting. The prospect of the full potential of unique ideas may be unlocked through fostering collaboration, licensing agreements, or even acquisition conversations.

Additionally, the clash serves as a strong reminder of the significance of strong competition in the realm of social media networking as it has the potential of influencing healthy competition. By encouraging the introduction of new features, enhancing user interfaces, and offering a variety of options, competition fosters innovation and benefits users. The users have more options to select from, depending on their preferences and demands when several platforms compete for dominance. However, user choice is limited when potential competitors are put off from entering the market by legal battles.

Although Twitter’s threat of legal action against Meta’s Threads may represent an effort to safeguard its identity and preserve a constant user experience it stifles competition, restricts users’ ability to use alternative platforms, and exposes the struggle between platform control and embracing innovation. The dominant social media platforms should welcome competition in order to empower people and keep up with the rapid progress of technology. This will encourage platforms to continuously advance and adjust to changing needs, boosting innovation in addition to enhancing consumer choice. Hence, in order to guarantee a just and flourishing digital ecosystem for all users, the concerned regulators and stakeholders must take it upon themselves to ensure healthy competition, digital innovation, and user freedom by actively addressing these issues and displaying responsible conduct.

Shadab Jabbar is a Quetta-based undergraduate, final semester student of International Relations at the University of Baluchistan. She is an advocate of Human Rights and Environmental Security and is an executive member of the Human Rights Council of Pakistan, Baluchistan Wing. She aspires to advance in research and policy-making. Her areas of interest are Foreign Policy Analysis, Diplomacy, Strategic Studies, International Political Economy, National Security Policy, and Cyber Warfare.

 

Learning From History, If We Dare – OpEd

 July 11, 2023

By Gary M. Feinman

The New Gilded Age, wars along the Russian border, a global pandemic, battles for women’s rights, even the Titanic: history does rhyme with the present. Yet as former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert once observed: “If history tells us anything, it’s that we never learn from history.”

That’s something we can realistically change. And if we do, we’ll have an easier time addressing the macro and multiple challenges humanity faces, and finding the pathways to necessary compromises and alliances with people across all borders.

But our blinders and misconceptions about the past constrain the knowledge that we have to plan for a better future. Societies don’t get much out of living memory because the longer-term ramifications from recent decisions generally remain unsettled, and most of the big problems we face are the cumulative products of decades or centuries of the wrong approach to humanity’s histories and transitions. To leverage and learn from humanity’s history regarding what fostered sustainability in the past, we need to know the outcomes.

The good news is that through concerted research in history and archaeology, we now know a great deal more about the different paths that people have taken and their outcomes than we did just fifty years back. Long-term perspectives on cities, states, and empires are now much fuller and more regionally diverse than was known decades ago. Synthetic, comparative analyses have been undertaken. We now know what worked and what did not.

To draw better inferences and learn from past human histories, it is necessary to challenge three pervasive myths, which fundamentally shape not just what we think about the past, but why so many see history as irrelevant when it comes to guiding the present and shaping the future. Each myth is pervasive and entrenched as the ideas and presumptions behind them were born and entangled with the roots of the Western tradition of social sciences, baked into the frameworks through which researchers traditionally study the past.

The first myth supposes that humans in their natural state are nasty, brutish, and self-absorbed, only tamed by the power and coercion of the state. Clearly, humans do have the capacity for great selfishness, but as a species, we also are better cooperators with non-kin than any other animal. This seeming paradox is explicable if we recognize that people are not by nature either uniformly cunning or cuddly, but rather humans, past and present, are capable of both cooperation and selfishness depending on context. Our nature is not one-dimensional. Cooperative behavior is situational; we engage when an individual’s wants dovetail with their larger social network. Lack of alignment short-circuits cooperation whether the network is large or sma

The first supposition or myth undergirds a broadly held second one—that large premodern societies were universally coercive or despotic in organization. Autocratic governance kept the ever-selfish in line, the argument goes. Ancient Athens and republican Rome generally have been categorically distinguished as the unexplained exception to this presumed premodern path, which came to an end just a few centuries ago when ideas from the Classical era were rediscovered, giving rise to The Enlightenment, when Europeans adopted reason, science, democracy, and more.

The latter scenario became the mid-twentieth-century justification for the third myth, the walling off of modernity from the deeper past. Only after the Enlightenment with rational thought could people organize themselves democratically, in forms of governance where voice, power, and resources were not monopolized by a few. 

These three myths underlie the severing of deep history, especially non-Western pasts, from the present. Often in the absence of robust historical information, contemporary observations of non-Western peoples were categorically slotted into imagined pasts that led stage-by-stage to modernist Western presents and futures.

Progressive visions of human history spurred research in history, archaeology, and related disciplines. What we have learned over recent decades does not conform with those starting myths and expectations. Change was not linear, nor was it uniform from region to region. Likewise, premodern governance was not consistently despotic, especially in the Indigenous Americas. Yet in every global region, how people governed themselves shifted over time.

When it comes to the past, we also know the outcomes. And, in the region where I study, prehispanic Mesoamerica, cities that were governed more collectively with less concentrated power tended to persist as central places longer than those urban settlements that were ruled more autocratically. A similar pattern, albeit less definitive, was also found for a global sample of states and empires. More in-depth study is necessary, but these historical patterns seem worth investigating in other regions and probing further where they have been documented. The role and success of governance and institutions in facing and meeting the challenges of the past unlock a treasure trove of information that just may guide us toward better futures.

This article was produced by Human Bridges, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Gary M. Feinman is the MacArthur curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian anthropology, at the Negaunee Integrative Research Center.